Ontok-Ontok

I just saw several different pics from the ASEAN Quantum Summit. Well done and I look forward to what comes next for us in Malaysia. I would like to explain my absence there despite the suggestion of a younger colleague from Xiamen to get funds to go there. My response then is that it is better to fund a younger person to go there. The actual main reason is purely economic as travel requires substantial money, which I don't have much right now. Even when my other half went to visit her nephew who was hospitalised (broke both of his arms and underwent surgery), I did not go. When you don't have enough, in the language of Rawa, "dudok rumah, ontok-ontok" (stay home quietly). 

It would have been nice to meet friends at the summit, but besides that, what added value would I be? I recalled my own trip to SQST 2024, I thought that my presence would have meant something but upon reflection, it meant little, I think (financially got burned instead but it was my mistake). So it is much better for me to sit back and watch how things unfold. It is good to see how quantum science & technology is garnering more attention but then it prompted the thought if (almost) everyone wants to jump on the quantum bandwagon, should I be doing the same. It is the same pattern of thought during my early career years when I tried to do quantum but everyone else is doing materials science or condensed matter physics. Here, I'm not trying to say that one should shy away from joining the crowd but merely thinking what 'new' value can one bring. It is certainly not a 'rebel' since rebelling is just a manifestation of arrogance (recall Al-A'raf 11-25). Indeed, in those early days, I did make a few attempts to go into condensed matter without much success (not trained for that).

Just to demonstrate that I am not close-minded, I still read books on AI (another favourite these days) and listen to AI podcasts. This morning, had just listened to Hannah Fry's interview of Shane Legg of DeepMind, which I really liked. This is because of it is more level-headed in comparison to many others. Perhaps the current rave about AI is not quite understood by many. Unlike the internet disruptive technology that takes time to develop because of the needed infrastructure had to be developed first, the current AI technology simply uses the same infrastructure and hence its disruptive nature will be realised more swiftly 'everything, everywhere all at once'. Just to give an example of an existing AI tool that everyone has been using (crept in silently but swiftly) is the navigation assistant like Google Map or Waze for our travel. I think the younger generation would probably not know how we used to have literally awkward cumbersome paper/book maps to help navigate our travel. Generalise this: consider how further developments of AI  now can augment our everyday tasks and that possible paths that AI-augmented future can take seems to be endless. Thus the current thought of AI disruption of our lives within a decade or less (note that we should remind ourselves that the future can be very different than the ones that we are imagining and AI are simply 'created' tools subject to the same physical laws as all creations). So for now, "ontok-ontok bolajar"and be well-prepared.