Today I thought I would talk about a little philosophy that has powered me for the past couple of years.

This is the philosophy of advanced laziness.

It’s the same philosophy that has made me exercise every single day since January 1st of 2019, which makes today’s run Day 1740 of exercise without stopping.

It’s the same philosophy that makes me work hard in many areas and to carry forward doing many of the things that I have been doing without stopping.

It’s a philosophy that seems to bear almost no relation to laziness, and may at the end of the day just be a profound rationalization based upon delusional reasoning.

…But I believe in it.

Let me explain.

I believe that somewhere within a person’s spirit, they have things that they wish to accomplish and would wish to accomplish no matter what the circumstances are. As goal-driven beings, we seek to accomplish or do certain things with our lives, and therefore face an innate wish to strive for these things.

Here are some examples. A person might want to lose weight or to learn an instrument. Maybe they might want to successfully create a business that will sustain them or to sustain a social enterprise that is brought forth on the strength of their personality and many other things along the way.

Maybe some of these things are formed by society or from the people around us, or maybe even random interactions between ourselves and the world.

Nonetheless, their existence remains undeniable fact: To deny them is to pay for a future in which one sits up in bed and ponders why the goal has yet to be achieved, to question every moment that came before, and to recognize that one didn’t manage to pay respects to their inner will, leading to existential crisis, confusion, and a recognition that one should have done better.

It is to eventually return and remember the innate wish and see that it hasn’t been fulfilled in the world, and therefore face doubt, anxiety, and a wish to strive for the goal again.

Advanced laziness is founded upon these premises which may well just be assumptions at the end of the day, but it is founded on the basis of the belief that the most efficient way to strive and to minimise the time that a person looks back on life and tries again to achieve something that they could have achieved before is to simply pursue it every single day and with all of their heart to minimise the total amount of time that a person ends up wallowing in regret and wondering about things that could have been and instead capitalising on the benefits of compounding and the growth that comes when a person dedicates themselves daily towards small improvements brought forth manageably as they pursue the goals that arise from within their deepest being.

It is a philosophy that is based upon the idea that benefits compound through daily practice and regrets can be minimized if one doesn’t have a reason to have them in the first place because one is engaged instead in the pursuit of moving the needle forward with each day, interaction, and moment instead. This has always seemed like a more appealing way of living life to me than the converse, though I feel that on a personal level, it hasn’t always played out in that way.

Like any other person, I have moments when I feel subjectively that I’m not up for something, that I’m tired, that I cannot push forward in the way that I would like because of external circumstances, time constraints, or any number of other things that could make life difficult that I haven’t been able to push past constraining me from doing the things that I want on a day-to-day basis. But one thing I’ve come to learn throughout the course of life is that what we want is manifold, and it’s not always clear that we can make rational judgments about what should take precedence over what, and moreover that time inconsistency also assails us with the inability to make decisions on a consistent basis across multiple time periods in the situation that we do not spend time reflecting.

When I reflect personally on the different things that I’m doing, including Korean, cello, making videos, and pushing forward in learning how to educate people, I recognize at many different decision points that these things are difficult to balance because they require discipline and many other facets of personality which I have only imperfectly developed throughout the relatively brief duration of my life upon the mortal coil that is the wick of my life upon the candle of earth.

There are times when I am tempted to deviate and simply rest and stop and pause for a quick bit, allowing the wave of freedom to wash over me, only to realize that this decision represents, when I reflect upon it, a denial of my previously freely chosen decision to pursue these things in the very first place and represent an insult to my earlier self. One could very well contend that a person should be free to make decisions at an earlier point and then also to make decisions to deny that earlier decision when a person has changed. But has a person really changed along the way? Not necessarily. I know that I definitely haven’t. When I reflect upon the deepest parts of my soul, I recognize that the things that I say are valuable, remain valuable, regardless of my immediate feeling of stress or difficulty with coping. Because when I look at the deepest part of my being, I see that I value knowing how to speak Korean and with the world at large. And I know that I value music and its ability to unite people by appealing to the soul in ways that can only be brought forth with skillful practice and a sensitivity not only to rhythms but also to the souls of those who lie without. I see in the balance of things that impacting souls and helping them to strive for better, to live for better in the eventuality of things is and remains something tremendously worthwhile to aim for.

Each of these things is something that bears the possibility of failure the moment one moves away. A person cannot learn a language by simply choosing not to continue a class and hoping that one’s innate nature and supposed freedom will bring them on the path towards a greater mastery.

The same applies for learning an instrument. In the absence of teaching, it’s not always clear what I would do on my part and therefore, any freedom that would be brought forth on that front would eventually be drawn back closer into the sphere of what I had attempted to do before, across all different things, which in turn leads me yet again as what goes up comes down in what seems to be a teleological direction of return towards facets that I had identified before and that innately I know I should continue to pursue. These are facets that will ever remain as part of me, and that if I wish to chase with efficiency, I must muster the strength to push forward each day.

There is no guarantee that other people abide by the same way of living or think of the world or value improvement in the same way.

But I feel that this will resonate for those who do.

Here’s to advanced laziness to those of you out, there are striving for better and seek to accomplish it in the most efficient way possible, while paying respect to your nature. Thanks for reading.

One of the most solid pieces of advice that I’ve ever received is that you should write the way that you speak; it’s something I think that I still fall short in, a piece of advice that I’ve wanted to implement but struggled to take, something that I personally want to improve myself in.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that in life, using difficult words and complicated expressions isn’t going to do you any favours – the people whom you’re supposed to serve won’t understand you, which means that if they are going to continue reading what you’re writing, they will have to use a dictionary or otherwise rack their brains trying to understand what you’re trying to say.

The answer probably is a solid no.

Even if you want someone to appreciate the high flown nature of your ideas, and to somehow elevate themselves, if they don’t get what you’re trying to say, then, there is no point – you have just wasted your time, which you could have spent either leveling yourself up so that you would be able to express better ideas, or perhaps, even just watching a television show in the first place:

People will most likely take one look at what you’re saying and immediately go away in favour of greener pastures or messages that they can understand; congratulations, you lose the attention war.

This isn’t to say in any way that people are dumb because they don’t appreciate difficult vocabulary and neither, by the way, is it to say that people should avoid difficult vocabulary altogether. Rather, it’s to say that when we express ourselves, whatever the scenario, we want to do it in such a way that the maximum number of people can understand us.

I feel that the underlying message is solid: whatever you communicate, make sure to phrase it in such a way that you aim to be understood by the person on the other end because if you’re just writing things in such a way that you use things that people won’t get out of hand, your communication will be unsuccessful.

Still, it’s something that I’ve identified and want to get better at, so here’s a note of vulnerability.

This is something that I myself struggle with, because when I think about things, I don’t always think about the most simple, or intuitive way of phrasing things – I tend to think in terms of complete ideas and full sentences, just as I have read them in books; I also tend not to filter them, so they come out the same way that they appear inside my head – unfiltered, often dense, and usually very quickly without any further consideration for the person on the other end.

Often it’s not the case that I think directly about what the person on the other side must be understanding or receiving from my words, hence everything comes out, unfiltered, overly convoluted, reflective of my thought process, and in short lacking usefulness.

I want to have my thoughts more relatable to people so that they can immediately respond rather than face confusion in top of getting what I’m trying to say, and why I’m saying it – that means being able to relate to people a little more and chatting with people in the knowledge that they can understand everything that I’m getting across.

I want to have more people understand the thoughts that I’m conveying, which isn’t just about changing the language that I use so that it can be more easily understood, but also learning how to think about ideas that are worthwhile to share in the first place, and to understand why and under what circumstances to share them.

I’d like to caveat that to some extent, though. I don’t think that learning how to share your ideas with the world necessarily means dumbing them down – in many ways, it means understanding how people will relate to things, how they will engage, and how they can understand things through examples, analogies, and many of the other things that link us together as human beings in the common experience.

Writing in a simple way often isn’t reflective off linguistic simplicity, but rather it’s something pretty darn sophisticated, because in order to write, simply, you often have to really boil down the essence of what makes an idea what it is and then convey those things to the person who is listening while paying attention to what they’re catching onto and constantly listening to their needs – definitely not something that’s possible in the course of writing, an essay, but something that a person needs to be able to imagine and demonstrate effectively when they’re in the process of writing an exam.

This too is something that I’m trying to learn at the moment, and I think I can do it to a southern extent, but perhaps writing it down here will solidify my intent, and make it more clear what I’m trying to achieve. Here’s the hope that in the days ahead, I’ll be able to better implement.

As part of the process of applying to universities in the United States, no doubt many of you have encountered the dreaded college essays, pieces of writing in which you are meant to address some of these rather abstract prompts that ask you about things as deep as your identity, your dearest beliefs, and the concepts that you hold to most attachedly in this world. 

Each of these prompts, as the student will soon discover, presents a conundrum: 

The conundrum of how to speak meaningfully about the content of one’s soul, one’s life, and moreover, evaluate these things in sum to create something that is ultimately valuable, worthy of consideration, and that showcases the person’s personality, interests, as well as future and anticipated potential within the years to come. 

By no means is this a trivial process, but in this guide, we will go into some of the issues and considerations that come with writing this piece of work, and also some helpful tips for understanding how to do so in a way that will not only impress an admissions officer, but also offer lasting benefits that will endure throughout the entire course of a lifetime that will be filled with many reflections and moments that are worthwhile, not only of consideration, but also of memorializing.

With that in mind, I present 9 convenient steps that you can follow in order to produce a great response to some of these essay questions. Ready? Let’s go!

Step 1.

Consider the prompts.

The first thing that you want to do when you’re writing an essay is to spend some time just looking at the prompts and thinking about what they are asking you about. Dedicate perhaps an hour or two hours to simply sit down and read them as you contemplate the possible ways in which you can respond. During this time, you will think most likely about some of the things that you experience and the ways in which you can possibly write your essay. Write everything down on a piece of paper.

That said, this is not the only thing that you should do, as writing a college essay isn’t just about sitting down on one specific occasion and being able to pen out your entire soul. No, chances are, the moment you first write out your thoughts, you will have a confused mixture of different things, an activities list, a list of achievements. You may not even know what you’ve done or how to take stock of it just yet.

This naturally brings us to the next step. 

Step 2.

Create an activities list. 

Your activities list is a list of the different things that you were involved in on an extracurricular basis throughout your time in school and leading up to the college application. 

Here’s where you will get a chance to think about the specific things that you’ve done and also to accomplish something important for the purpose of applying to college. 

The reason I mention writing the activities list here is that writing an activities list has a dual purpose. 

First of all, if you write it and format the list correctly, ensuring that you stay under 150 characters for every single description that you provide, you will, in turn, have a properly formatted and useful activities list which you can utilize for the purpose of submission alongside your common application. 

That’s the first purpose. 

The second purpose is that you’ll also have something that you can look at so that you can take stock of the things that you have done throughout the course of your high school career and in turn, obtain the raw material that’s necessary for you to reflect upon as you think about the common themes that resonate throughout your application and that can be manifested throughout each piece of your application.

As you write your activities list, you will have a good sight of the different types of things that you are involved in, and can begin to then identify the themes that extend throughout your application as you consider who you are. That’s the very next step.

Step 3.

Reflect on your motivation.

College essays are a chance to showcase yourself, but they are also a marketing exercise to demonstrate why it is that you are a good fit for a selective institution of higher education. 

The good thing, though, is that what colleges respond to in this marketing process corresponds to what you can meaningfully identify about yourself as you think about all the things that you have done, are doing, and will be doing in the future and manage to successfully identify the things that resonate about your college application and also about yourself. 

Ask yourself along the way some of the following questions. 

1. What was my motivation for undertaking some of the activities I did?

2. How are the activities I listed related to specific facets of my personality?

3. Are there discernible patterns or common threads in my activities that reveal something about me?

4. Why did I choose to engage in a particular activity at a specific time, and what does this decision reveal about my character?

5. What do my actions and choices suggest about my future potential or aspirations?

By addressing these questions, you’ll be better positioned to highlight attributes and experiences that resonate with your college application and personal self-awareness.

It’s worthwhile also to note that answering some of these questions will give rise to even more sub-questions, and that somewhere along the way you may find that this will lead into a recursion of numerous why questions. This is both perfectly normal as well as extremely desirable, because it requires you to in turn begin the process of answering deeper and deeper questions about your internal motivation as you proceed along the journey, and in turn become more aware, reflective, and consider different aspects of your personality or psyche that may be underpinning your manifestation of decisions and also actions in this world.

That said, while reflections are wonderful, occasionally you can go down a rabbit hole which is not conducive towards the overall goal that you are trying to accomplish. 

At some points, it’s good to signpost yourself and to look back at the overall direction that things are going as you steer yourself in alignment with a direction that is conducive towards your overall goals. This naturally leads us to the next step. 

Step 4:

Recalibrate and reconsider the prompts.

It’s crucial to ensure that this process does not get out of control though, and also to condition the thought process and the general direction of your thoughts by constantly referring to the prompts that you are considering, proceeding to identify which prompts resonate most with the thought process that you are experiencing, and then procedurally eliminating the ones that do not seem relevant towards the direction that your thoughts are taking. 

Of course, some argue that it’s entirely possible to write an essay without referencing the prompts in the very first place, and then simply at the end of the day fitting a particular line of thought or essay towards the prompts, or choosing a free response prompt though, I personally would aver from this because I do believe that they are valuable for the purpose of conditioning a person’s thinking and directing them along a pathway that will lead towards attainment of meaning in the course of reflections. 

So do think about the questions as a whole, and use them to guide your thoughts. They are a tool for reflection, and not simply just a challenge, as almost everything in this world is as well.

So far we’ve talked a lot about the cognitive process of deciding what to write in the course of an essay. That being said though, although the cognitive process of thinking is tremendously important, it can also occasionally be overwhelming. And therefore I prefer the next step not as necessarily something that you should do as part of a linear process, but also as a separate and modular step that can interface with the previously mentioned steps in any particular order with respect to an understanding that the possibility of each individual step is in simultaneous causality with the others.

Step 5.

Simply begin with any prior preparation. 

In a recent interview with a former student of mine who is now at Harvard University, he provided some insight on how he managed to obtain a 4.0 GPA at the university. 

In mentioning how he had managed to do so, he observed that he took a problem-focused approach by which he simply goes into the process of solving problems without necessarily understanding how to deal with the material, supplementing his understanding and appreciation for the concepts that he is meant to learn by filling them in procedurally along the way. 

While the context is not exactly identical, it does rhyme, because both dealing with problems as they arise and writing college essays requires the ability to embrace uncertainty, and not simply to embrace uncertainty, but to dance with it. 

With that in mind, the very same problem-centric approach can be taken towards college applications and also with respect to writing an essay because the process of beginning a piece itself can catalyze certain thoughts that otherwise may not have existed within a person’s mind in the very first place. Although of course, if it was undertaken blindly, then it would simply lead to the conundrum that so many people face when they begin this process for the very first time, unable to decide what it is to write about in the very first place. 

Still, there are some merits to this process of reflection only to a minimal extent before beginning the process of writing because the very act of tackling the problem in the very first place, ideally via short and spaced sessions that serve as a touchpoint upon which the project itself can begin, can stimulate thoughts as well as a beginning that will not correspond to wasted time but rather contribute both proximally and ultimately towards the attainment of the final goal to which an applicant aspires.

Step 6.

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate.

As you may have noticed from the description of Step 5, each of the steps that I’ve mentioned so far are related to one another in some way and can also be undertaken independently from one another, and are part of a process of daily feedback that in turn leads to self-improving over the course of time, and also will become part of a daily process of improvement that will span over a period of time that will certainly be longer than the five minutes that you may have taken to read this piece. 

The process of developing sufficient self-awareness and depth of thought to be able to consider one’s life on a deeper level than 99% of the human population is not something that can be accomplished in the course of mere minutes, hours, or likely even days. Rather, it is more of a war than a battle, and it will take a significantly longer period of time than you might initially imagine. 

Therefore, dedicate time to this, knowing that how long it may take for you to reach the requisite level of insight to create something that is meaningful or otherwise valuable to an admissions office may differ compared to someone else who may have undertaken this process at greater length relative to you at some earlier point in the past. 

Tweak a paragraph. Change a sentence. Rephrase something. Each individual word that you choose can entirely influence the meaning of the sentences that you write. Inspire a new idea. Change the story that you tell. And lead in turn to further thoughts. Embrace this uncertainty. Embrace the fact that you do not know. And also embrace the possibility that you can confront the things that you will know as they come out, step by step, one after another, in ways that may not seem to have a significance to you at the moment, but ultimately underlie something that is deeper and of greater significance than you can have imagined at an earlier point of your life.

Nothing is ever wasted. Therefore, do not think of time spent in nothingness as wasted. Rather, appreciate the deeper significance of each moment towards accomplishing the goals to which you aspire and also their role in determining the future goals that you will have that you may achieve them as well, and keep trying and standing up, showing up to do what you need to do to reach the goal of unleashing your inner potential while at the same time impressing an admissions officer through a method the nature, means, or parameters of the solution that you will uniquely create be unknown to you at this point in time. 

Step 7.

Do not be afraid to ask for help. 

I mean exactly what I said here. You should immediately ask for help in the event that you do not think you can do something. Literally just abandon your ego. It’s overrated. You think to yourself that you are the master of everything? No, you are not. Throw that away and immediately look for someone who knows you better than you do yourself, knowing that that at best can only remain a temporary thing because eventually, through this process, you will develop greater understanding. But so long as you do not first begin by seeking help either through people such as your parents, your friends, who are close to you, your teachers, or perhaps even me if you choose to engage me as a consultant.

The process of developing sufficient understanding of oneself in order to create a piece that contains the entirety of one’s soul is by no means a trivial process. It is a process for which many people are woefully underprepared, partly in virtue of the fact that the education system does not convey the ability to do these things as a matter of course, and it requires a certain level of self-investment, reflection, and also maturity of thought that can either be brought about by intentional activity or, in turn, by certain accidents that may transpire along the way.

Seeking guidance from the eyes and perspectives of other people in order to understand oneself is crucial during this process, as we can sometimes see aspects of ourselves that we may not have been able to understand simply by using our own vision. 

This is particularly true for people who know us well, although it’s crucial to remember that at the end of the day, he or she who writes about the nature of their soul is the person who knows that soul the very best, even though at the bottom, life was already tremendously complicated at the point at which we became conscious of it and began to comprehend it.

So yes, seek help. Do not be totally reliant upon it, because that will never work at the end of the day. But above all, remember, seek help. Sooner than later. Ensuring that you have enough time to deal with the implications of your reflections, and will be able to go through this process while allowing yourself the space to extend the range and domain of the reflections that you will have about your soul.

Step 8.

Be kind to yourself. 

First off, let us acknowledge that this process is not an easy one, and that not everybody is equally prepared to undertake it. 

Having acknowledged this, realize nonetheless that you should be kind to yourself, understanding that the depth of your reflections, or the ideas that come out from your head, may not be as extended or deep as those of others. 

You may question your ability to write, your extracurricular activities, and the different things that you did or did not do in the course of your high school career as you undertake this process of application. 

During this time, it’s crucial to remember that your greatest enemy is yourself, and that it is the demons that lie within your head that are far more dangerous than those that lie without. For the world is not out to get you, and if somebody wishes to crucify you and succeed, it is far less likely that they should succeed in doing so if they were something external to your mind than if you were the person who was imagining a theatre in your head, in which an unnamed mass were undertaking that process of putting you upon a stake and setting you on fire. That imagination and that image can only be initiated by yourself, and it is by you and by your own hands that you have the strongest possibility of quenching the fire and using the ashes to stimulate the growth of your dream.

The famous theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is credited to have written the words of what is now known as the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

As human beings, we are all individuals, and we have undertaken different things and experienced different things along the way. And on the surface, it can seem that some of our achievements are less stellar relative to others, or we may have won fewer medals, or accomplished things that are less of note. But during this time as you reflect upon yourself, it’s worthwhile to consider that at the end of the day, the thing that distinguishes an individual is not the shine of the medals that they have obtained, as the light reflects upon them, but rather the light that emanates from within, as a person reflects upon themselves. In life, it is crucial to remember that in a world of glitz and shine, it is infinitely more important to see not the beauties of the world that lie without, but rather the wonder that lies within the ordinary. Far more impressive is it to be able to see the wonder that lies within mere grains of dust when one looks upon them with greater clarity and with a lens that has been shaped towards greater understanding, rather than simply looking at pictures of the Cinque Terre on Instagram and wishing that one were there.

This naturally leads me to the final step. 

Step 9.

Have confidence in yourself. 

Along the way, as you go through this journey, you may face several forms of doubt, some of which may dominate more relative to others as you consider the way in which you can or will present your achievements. In this time, it is crucial to recall the reasons as to why you decided to undertake this process in the very first place and to use those reasons to give you strength as you consider the nature of the goal that you wish to accomplish.

Beyond those individual reasons which you can see upon the surface, it is likely that there is something deeper that is driving you in ways that you may not even be aware of at this point in time, or you would not have read up until Step 9. 

If you are here, I would applaud you on this, as it is something rare to see that somebody would have the necessary degree of attention and focus to be able to continue up until this point. 

Still, if you are here, perhaps it is for a reason that lies beyond the immediate appreciation of your consciousness at this point in time. 

Do pay respect to that and let it drive you forward, as you remember that there is a certain meaning to what it is that you are doing at this point and will continue to do in the future. 

Yet do not beat yourself up because one at the end of the day should not compare the highlight reels of another person to the blooper reel of one’s own.

This is a marathon and not a race, and it is a worthwhile journey to go on as it will pay dividends to you long after the moment in which you consider the words written upon this page.

Treat it as such, and enjoy your journey along the way.

Now, I did say that there were just nine steps, but here’s one that underpins every single one of them.

Step 0.

Start early. 

This should be evident or otherwise completely obvious to you, but you should start early. 

Time is an objective thing, and it is a limited resource. One can gain nothing by disrespecting this, hoping that somehow or another the parameters of reality should be overturned, and that one can expect that doing something at a later time will lead to a better result. Compare to the result that one could have gotten in an alternate scenario or state of the universe where one had begun earlier and given oneself the time requisite towards attaining the outcome of which a person had sought.

Conclusion.

And that’s it. 

I know that it was a long piece, but if you did indeed read this to the end, know that I wish you my very best as you undertake this process and go forward. There is a significance to what you have done, what you are doing, and what you will do. 

There’s not very much left to say beyond this point, but that I wish you the very best in this journey, which I hope will take you to somewhere wonderful that you could not even have imagined before you had even begun reading it or taking part in it.

Receive my wishes for your success as you move forward, knowing that while it is a selective process, and that at the end of the day, only a select few will rise above the circumstances, the fact that you are reading this at the moment means that you have given yourself a chance, and you have believed in yourself enough that you see the seeds of possibility that may sprout or may not, that you too can be one of those few who do rise above!

Over the last week, I had the chance to drop by USApps, the event that Chen Chow began many years ago and that caters to the needs of Malaysian students all around my country who want to, for some reason or another, pursue higher education in the States.

I too benefited from this event many years ago, and it was a joy to come back for the second time in two years, an opportunity that I would not have had if not for Hamdi Hakimi, who randomly called me out of nowhere and asked me to speak at last year’s USApps event.

It was strange then, and it remains strange now, that things happened the way that they did, but suffice to say, I think it was all for the better.

Was very grateful to speak to many interesting people along the way and started a small new project in which I interview different people just in general about education and their reasons for valuing it, which has brought me into contact with people from lots of different universities, and all of uniformly high and boundary-breaking intelligence.

Beyond that though, it’s opened up an interesting new vista of… well, I don’t really think I should call this opportunity, but rather just interest in pursuing a course that I just find interesting and meaningful.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to watch the interviews that I have been doing in the hope that they will be interesting and enlightening to you. Have a look here.

– V

What you’re reading this the result of dictation from an M2 Max Macbook Pro, to which I upgraded after some time of pretty much just realizing that I needed a new computer.

I don’t know how good it is going to be, but I have expectations that it will be a little better compared to what we have on the iPhone and other devices that we can use as part of the Apple system. So far, it seems there are some issues with the system because it recognizes some words incorrectly – partly that could be because I am pronouncing those words in a way that is not really concordant with what the algorithm is able to imitate. Hence, it ends up transcribing the wrong things, because what it hears is, in fact, something incomprehensible.

When it comes to automatic speech recognition, the algorithms that process our speech face problems when the expected input is ambiguous and can possibly match several possible outputs. The automatic speech recognition function is, after all, based on making predictions, based on the likely input that would be expected from a user over time. In the event that the prediction made by the algorithm is incorrect, the software may be penalized as a result of the input not matching the prediction. The ultimate goal is to have a scenario where every prediction generated by the model, as the person speaks, matches what the person intended to say with the least possible corrections required.

Let’s start with the voice’s pitch and ambient noise.

For an algorithm to receive the correct input, the sound it receives should match the specific waveforms used in the training dataset that guided the development of the automatic speech recognition system. If there is a deviation in the sound pattern, either due to ambient noise or tone of voice, the generated text can be inaccurate because the system receives problematic inputs in the first place. This is natural, because if you feed garbage in, you will naturally receive garbage out. There is a sort of equivalent exchange at play.

Let’s now talk about something different altogether – the device’s processing power. I’m not sure if this is a factor with the automatic speech recognition system on Apple devices, but I suspect it is. Each device needs to perform complex calculations that allow it to make predictions at a relatively high rate of 100 to 130 words per minute. If you look into the memory usage of the computer as it performs this process, you may see that the memory does not get consumed at a high degree – that is something I plan to test in the coming days.

The last possibility is that there is a problem with the algorithm itself in recognizing certain patterns of waves. There can be some variation depending on the quality of the input, but it’s also possible that the algorithm used to process the data can make mistakes on occasion. I’m confident that Apple is making strides to improve the output quality of its algorithms, and for that reason, I am optimistic about the improvements they can bring about.

I give this much thought because it is one of the most important aspects of any generative artificial intelligence system. These systems rely on good input into the algorithms, and speech recognition systems are extremely important as sources of input. As we interact with natural language on a daily basis, which is often faster than typing or pressing buttons on our devices, I believe that accurate dictation and procedural proofreading of our daily writing will lead us to a new era of AI.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds, particularly as we approach the end of 2023 with developments like iOS 17, AI generators, and all the different forms of technology that are becoming more prevalent. Time passes, and it is somewhat sad to think that we are coming closer to the end of our lives before these things come to fruition – still, the show is not over until it is over, and I can’t wait to see what is going to come!