2026 JULY ISSUE
RACING
WITH
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Written by ANDREW SIA
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From the Desk of the Publisher
This piece of writing is not to resist artificial intelligence but to embrace it as if we can use it intelligently it can be a very powerful tool for us. We have to use it correctly and to have a very humanly approach. We have to be fully alert and understand the reason why we have engaged it every time. We shouldn’t lower our awareness as there are many bad elements in our society who are using them to suit their evil purposes. We know that the AI can clone our image and voice to extort money from us and our families. It is especially dangerous for the senior citizens who could have lowered their alertness and led to financial losses.
I stated in the piece that I have set this as a mission to embrace our younger generation, and I want to build this adoption of AI as something that we will do in a cross-generations attempt. I hope that this can bring out our human side and make us stronger and can bond the generations together.
Among my friends, especially those in my age group who are mostly the Baby Boomer, there are many of them who are still trying to avoid using anything relating to artificial intelligence because of the distrust. I believed that we have to hold each other’s hands to come out from this doldrum. This can also draw the two generations closer so to speak.
I believe in a saying, and it is: “if you can’t fight them, join them”. Perhaps it is also one of the attitudes that we can use.
I am doing a report about the coming up of the data centers to support the demand in the AI, and some aggressive forecasts suggest that U.S. data centers may require around 1000 additional gigawatts of power capacity by 2030, driven largely by AI.
The AI data center rush may require tens of thousands of acres of land by 2030, and potentially far more if power generation and expansion buffers are included. Much of the pressure may fall on rural and agricultural communities.
This AI infrastructure race by the companies like:
– Microsoft
– Google
– OpenAI
– Nvidia
– Amazon
– Meta
– Oracle
– Apple and others
They are known as “hyperscalers” and they are capable of building and operating enormous cloud-computing and AI infrastructure at global scale.
I call it the “Gold Rush” in our modern time because many believe AI may become the most powerful economic engine in the 21st century. It is similar to the following discoveries:
– Oil was found in the 1800s
– Electricity was found in the early 1900s
– Discovery of use of oil during the industrial age
– Railroads during the 1800s
It is said that whoever control AI infrastructure may control the future economy and AI is going to affect the following sectors in our society:
– Finance
– Medicine
– Military systems
– Education
– Robotics
– Logistics
– Science research
– Entertainment
– Government
It is also said that whoever fall behind now, may never be able to catch up.
The technology world can still remember those who missed the last technological revolution, such as:
– IBM missed personal computers
– Nokia missed smartphones
– Yahoo missed the search engine
– Sears missed e-commerce
It is also known not only as an economic weapon, but also a military advantage, as well as a strategic national asset. It is becoming geopolitical issues and earlier on my piece about “The Taiwan Strait – The Fault line of the AI Era” is telling whoever controls advanced chips may influence the future balance of global power.
I take the whole approach differently as most people today would ask how their companies can become more efficient with AI, but my concern is how human beings, especially our young people, can still find dignity, opportunity, and purpose in this new age?
The danger is so real that corporations may use AI mainly to reduce labor costs, automate entry-level work, centralize power, and concentrate wealth. Historically when every major technological revolution displaced people first before society can adapt, such as:
– The Industrial Revolution displaced craftsme
– Mechanization displaced farm labor
– Computer displaced clerical workers
– E-commerce disrupted retail
Now we are seeing that AI threatens cognitive and white-collar jobs. But this time it is different as AI is beginning to take away the very thing humans believed was uniquely theirs, such as thinking, writing, analysis, and creativity. This is making many young graduates feel very uncertain about their future.
This writing is trying to help our thinking how to use AI to become a tool of empowerment and not a replacement. Our young people must learn how to work with AI, how to direct AI, how to verify AI, and how to build human-centered value around it.
It may not be only those programmers, engineers, or great corporations, but the people who can combine wisdom, humanity, ethics, creativity, communication, and discernment.
We know that AI can generate information, but it is still struggling with moral judgement, empathy, human trust, spiritual understanding, and authentic human relationships.
This can direct our younger generations toward organizations like:
– Small entrepreneurship
– AI-assisted creativity
– Healthcare support
– Eldercare
– Counseling
– Education
– Wellness
– Faith-based communities
– Local manufacturing
– Human-centered services
– Specialized craftsmanship
We have to know that the world has become more digital, authentic human connections may become even more valuable and treasurable.
We have to keep on thinking for “How do we preserve humanity inside technological civilization?” This is a very meaningful direction to consider.
Our concern of the “Gold Rush” is relevant in today’s investment of AI as our concerns are:
– Fear of missing out
– Fear of losing dominance
– Fear of falling behind China, a key player of AI
– Fear of being disrupted
We have witnessed big corporations rushing into massive spending in the facilities:
– Data centers
– Chips
– Power generation
– Robotics
– Cloud systems
History has taught us that this can only benefit a smaller group of people. We have also seen farmers are tempted to lease their land to the use of data centers and infrastructures that will come along. We are talking about income of the multiple of ten times in exchange for the yields of crops like corns for instance.
We have to think the following questions:
– Where will our young people fit?
– What does all this mean?
– What happen to our dignity?
– What happens to our community?
– What happen to our spiritual life?
These are all human questions and not anti-technology questions. We have to remember our civilization cannot survive without asking ourselves to all these questions.
In fact, this writeup was triggered by a recent conversation with a scholar who was referring about the students nowadays don’t depend solely on professors for information. Knowledge has become instantly accessible, and AI can now summarize, explain, compare, and even generate answers in seconds.
For centuries, teachers were the primary gatekeepers of knowledge and the student’s need of books, lectures, libraries and professorship. Now the challenge is how do we interpret, verify, apply and wisely with information. This changed the role of the educators completely.
It hurts my heart to say that the professors are becoming something different. AI and Google are taking over facts, summaries, calculations, and interpretation. We can say that they cannot fully replace life experience, wisdom, mentorship, discernment, emotional encouragement, moral guidance, and human inspiration.
Our strength is real-world experience, failures and successes, observations, relationships, and industrial understanding.
Teacher is more of a guide than a lecturer and we have to learn the new model where AI provides information and teach helps students to think. In fact, students may need mentors more than ever because AI can overwhelm them with endless information.
Gone were the days when we can use the same curriculum for many years. During my time of teaching, I instinctively rejected stagnation and moved on with the latest knowledge out there in the commercial world as I was teaching fashion business in the 1990s.
In this age we have to know that we can’t compete with AI in memorization alone, and we have to know that AI can’t be wise, ethical, compassionate, creative, trustworthy, and deeply human. This is not our perception of old wisdom, but this may become survival kit for us for the next generation.
I have the mission to motivate people of our generation, mostly the “Baby Boomers” to help our younger generation and try to bring the two worlds closer together. We can provide the older world’s human relationship and mentorship and try to merge with this emerging world shaped by technology and AI.
We have noticed the younger people are not only worried about jobs, but they are also worried about relevance, identity, confidence, purpose, and whether they still have a place in society. They may not need another technical lecture, but more on encouragement, direction, practical wisdom, and an honest conversation about the changing world.
Many of us may use our experience in business, our observation of globalization, the reflections on AI, most important our faith and concern for humanity.
We have to let them know that the world is changing too quickly for rigid careers, and this generation needs to become multi-skilled, entrepreneurial, collective, and become lifelong learners.
Our education needs to change and reintroduce humanity into its system to emphasize more on the following:
– Efficiency
– Automation
– Metrics
– Productivity
we have to build the human foundations by listing the importance of those factors, such as:
– Character
– Empathy
– Ethics
– Responsibility
– Resilience
Without the above elements, our society may only become technological advanced and yet spiritually exhausted.
We have to bring up the building of communities, and not only the careers as the young people are often digitally connected, but emotionally they are often isolated. Try to put them together with mentors, fellowship, supporting systems, and real conversations. In this way they can reflect and express themselves through dialogue, faith, and most important, encouragement. This is very different from the cold corporate model.
We have to understand that AI will certainly replace some tasks, and our danger is not AI alone. Our danger is the following that we ought to pay attention:
– Allowing technology to advance faster that wisdom
– Allowing profit to allure humanity
– Allowing young people to feel abandoned during the transition
We have to walk them through our experience, and we came from the eras of:
– Slower human-centered eras
– Globalization
– Industrial shifts
– Retail transformation
– Birth of the internet
– Enter of the AI age
Don’t think that all these challenges are easy on us. They have brought tears into our eyes when I noticed that a generation standing at the edge of enormous technological change, I am uncertain and at a loss whether the future is welcoming them or replacing them.
We have to share with them wisdom, calmness, encouragement, and most important to walk beside them. Make them know that we are aware that the world may change technologically, but the human soul is longing for purpose, love, belongingness, truth and hope. All these can’t be replaced by machine.
We have to make sure that when we are talking to this generation, we are not dominating them but rather becoming their mentors, guides, and most important, listeners. We can organize the following for them. For instance:
– Social gatherings
– Forums
– Cross-generations fellowship discussions
– Mentoring sessions
– Practical talks
– AI-awareness workshops
– Career guidance
– Emotional support
– Faith and ethics discussion
– Intergeneration conversations are most important
We should observe the taboos, such as:
– Not corporate
– Not political
– Not ideological
We only observe human values.
The statement that we can use is simple, “We may not know every new technology, but we know only something about life, which is perseverance, failure, faith, relationships, and humanity. Let’s help one another.”
Our young generation can help us in many things, such as:
– To become more efficient
– Better connected digitally
– More informative
– Use of devices
– AI tools
We need to be educated by them how to use AI more intelligently and don’t fall into preys by the bad elements out there.
Our joint mission is not to fight with AI but become more preserving humanity while learning to live with AI. With passion, we try to hold small conversations, make small gatherings, and encouraging one another.
Our “Baby Boomer” generation spent decades building families, businesses, institutions, churches, schools, and communities. We hope that our new generation can inherit something better.
We already felt very sorry during the time of the Covid pandemic, that we didn’t stop the spread out of the virus in time and have caused greater losses. We wept for the generation who graduated during the period that their graduation ceremonies were cancelled.
We feel that our older generation shouldn’t abandon or neglect the younger generation during this historic transition. This time the challenge is not only about the pandemic recovery, but it is about the AI disruption, economic uncertain, helplessness, digital overload, and fear about the future.
We want to embrace them by sharing with them the guidance, explore the opportunities out there, lending them our ears, giving them encouragement, and offer ourselves to stand beside them.
Show to them that what we are sharing with them are not the following:
– Algorithms
– Social media
– Corporate system
But only actual human being who will listen patiently, asking thoughtful questions, encourage quietly, and helping them and make them believe that they still matter a lot to us. They might return to us with new perspectives, technological understanding that we don’t have, new creativity, openness and maybe they can encourage us to adapt. We should try to make it become a cross-generations experience where two generations helping each other and survive a changing world.