More builders look to robots to tackle Singapore’s construction labour crunch

Click HERE

could ease Singapore’s reliance on foreign labour, which has been becoming more difficult to recruit and retain.

a lack of interest from locals to join the industry...The younger generation isn’t interested in this line because it is dirty, hard work. But if work is playing with robots, it might be something that attracts them

 use of robotics also reduces workers’ exposure to potentially hazardous environments...deployed drilling robots and remote-controlled robots that break concrete structures, keeping workers away from dust and vibration

robots have been able to achieve a level of precision and quality that workers cannot

the end goal is to eventually replace human beings on site, robots have to be as versatile and as agile as workers. “If I design a robot for one specific task, that is it. It may do that task extremely well, but chances are, I am not going to be able to get that robot to do something else

Qn: To what extent is artificial intelligence replacing the role of humans? (Cam. 2019)

Why AI summaries pose a danger to learning

Click HERE

They take a question and swiftly return an answer, compressing what used to be a meandering journey through the internet into an immediate arrival at your destination. The explorative phase of searches – clicking through links, stumbling onto unexpected pages, following a reference that leads to somewhere unplanned – is disappearing.

By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity – and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world.

curiosity puts the entire brain into a mode of heightened receptivity – not just for the specific thing you want to know, but also for everything around it. Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board. But the window stays open only as long as the question remains unanswered. When an AI tool answers your search query in three seconds, the window closes before curiosity can deepen. You got what you came for, but you also lost what would have turned curiosity into learning: the adjacent article you might have read, the resulting tangent you might have followed, the connection between two ideas with no obvious relationship.

Scientific breakthroughs, artistic leaps, technological innovation – these rarely emerge from efficient retrieval of known information. They emerge from periods of undirected exploration, when people follow questions further than they need to and find things they weren’t expecting

Our technology is increasingly treating the territory between the query and the answer as dead space to be eliminated, when that territory is where most of the learning actually happens. 

Qns:

1. 'Our use of technology has narrowed, rather than broadened, what we experience.' Discuss. (DHS Prelim 2025)

2. ‘The most important aim of a scientist is to satisfy human curiosity about the world.’ Evaluate this view. (Cam. 2025)

As AI gets more human-like, China grapples with the cost of virtual intimacy

Click HERE

For issues on AI....

Would you let AI Michael Caine read you The Odyssey in a new audiobook?

Click HERE

It is not just actors, but also people who lend their voice, who are at risk of losing jobs to AI. 

But Caine is not really telling the story. Instead, he licensed his voice to ElevenLabs, a company that produces audiobooks and other content voiced by artificial intelligence, which used an AI clone of his voice for the project.

may question whether such a rendition can capture the emotional and dramatic scope of Homer’s tale.

fearing a future where publishers and audiobook production companies can cut out human narrators entirely by ordering up faster, cheaper AI narrations featuring facsimiles of famous voices.

synthetic voices cannot recreate the emotional nuances of the text. ....With a human narrator, “the voice and the thinking behind the character can emerge over the course of the performance”..... “It’s hard to see how AI can really do that

Qn: To what extent is artificial intelligence replacing the role of humans? (Cam. 2019)

Hong Kong star Lawrence Ng sells image rights for AI film, gets paid without having to act

Click HERE

See the contrast with the post HERE

See HERE too.

Note rebuttal regarding AI taking away vs preserving jobs for actors/ fashion models.....

artificial intelligence was used to digitally recreate his appearance as a 20-year-old for an upcoming movie. They used what I looked like at 20 to make a movie. I didn’t have to film anything

the project not only allowed him to experience being a leading man again, but also came with a handsome payout.

In the future, I can sit down without filming anything and still get the job done. Even if I break my legs, I won’t have to worry

has no concerns about his likeness being misused by the production company, as the agreement is supported by a comprehensive contract

Qn: To what extent is artificial intelligence replacing the role of humans? (Cam. 2019)

Chinese actor Xu Peng now sells vegetables at market after AI dries up acting jobs

Click HERE

Qn: To what extent is artificial intelligence replacing the role of humans? (Cam. 2019)

Gen Zs less hardy than their parents, regional survey finds

Click HERE

No wonder older folks often describe this group of youngsters as the strawberry generation because they are emotionally sensitive and “bruise easily” when faced with stress or pressure.

Gen Zs place less importance on money matters, especially when it comes to traditions and social norms.

For instance, 63 per cent of older folks would frown upon adults who do not support their elderly parents and would describe such people as “ungrateful”. But almost the same proportion of Gen Zs (61 per cent) would think that it is not compulsory for children to support their parents since they have their own financial obligations to bear.

Gen Zs think that success in life need not be related to money, but about half of those in the older age groups still believe that wealth is important in determining a person’s worth.

some young people in Asian communities have the unhealthy habit of not working because they prefer to live off their parents......these kids think this way because their parents plan for them, including buying properties for them.

it is definitely not fair to pan the whole group of Gen Zs as “strawberries”, because those who are less resilient are probably so due to their overcaring parents.

For issues related to youth.....

Comparison may be the thief of joy, but you can steal it back

Click HERE

Is AI an exoskeleton for the mind?

Click HERE

Qn: To what extent has technology had a negative impact on the skill levels of people? (Cam. 2010)