SINGAPORE: With Singapore celebrating its 60th birthday on Saturday (Aug 9), Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University as well as a political analyst and podcaster, published a wide-ranging wish list for the city-state on his Facebook account.
“6 wishes for Singapore’s 60th. I wish:
1. That Singaporeans stop saying, ‘If LKY was around, this wouldn’t have happened.’
2. That no Ministry, Stat Board, organisation, or food establishment respond to a query with: ‘you can download our app.’
3. That Singaporeans, especially younger ones, use ChatGPT less. Just because we wish to be a ‘Smart Nation’, doesn’t mean that we have to embrace all technology at all times uncritically.
4. That Singaporeans stop complaining when kids are playing (football) in the neighbourhood.
5. That no one says ‘I am manifesting’ this.
(That’s just the secular version of prayers. Wanting to pray without believing in God)
6. That Singapore recognises a Palestinian state,” he wrote.
His post has gone on to receive a lot of attention from fellow users on the platform, some of whom responded with wishes of their own.
“That the standard solution to our problems isn’t ‘Hey, you know what? Let’s form a committee. Let’s form five of ’em! Yeah, that’s sorted,’” wrote one netizen.
“Stop saying ‘let’s move forward’ before properly proceeding with what happened,” added another.
One chimed in with, “Be a more thinking & independent nation, and avoid being a blind follower of certain deceptive narratives.”
A commenter, meanwhile, took a lighter tone when he wrote, “My wish is for Singaporeans to stop making fun of Manchester United!”
Dr Walid’s fourth wish about kids playing football in Singapore appeared to resonate with a number of netizens, one of whom wrote that “if Singaporeans do that, then they have no right to complain about why our football team sucks!”
Another wrote, “This I agree to a tee!”
As for the academic’s point about ChatGPT, a Facebook user observed that “the use of AI may not make us a smart nation. In fact, it could easily produce the opposite effect. What we really need to be smart is developing natural intelligence and not artificial intelligence.
In fact, the term artificial intelligence is arguably an oxymoron to begin with, for intelligence must be natural since it is an attribute of sentient beings, not super-computers, no matter how complex their man-made algorithms may be.” /TISG
Read also: Academic Walid J Abdullah calls Mdm Halimah a voice of ‘moral clarity’ in his new book
