The Car Wash Question Wasn’t About AI

A simple question went viral recently: “The car wash is 40 meters from my home. I want to wash my car. Should I walk or drive there?” People shared screenshots of AI that didn’t immediately answer “Drive.” In many examples shared online, AI models suggested walking, focusing primarily on the short distance. Many people found … Read more

When AI Took the Wheel

Last month in Jakarta, I met an old friend. He picked me up in his new electric car. I knew it had advanced features and he mentioned that it was equipped with AI. I had seen similar technology on YouTube before, demonstrations of self-driving systems, automatic parking, futuristic dashboards. But this time I was not … Read more

The Fragility of Trust

Recently, I watched The Last Frontier on Apple TV+. In one scene, the characters were discussing trust in aviation. They mentioned that around 100,000 flights operate daily, and then asked a simple question: how many failures would it take for people to stop trusting the system? The answer was not a large number. It was … Read more

The Value of Slowing Down

A foggy morning in Kintamani, Bali

It was 6am in Kintamani, a quiet mountain area in northern Bali. The air was cold. The morning was quiet. A soft layer of fog covered the landscape, blurring the outlines of mountains and trees. Nothing felt rushed. Even the world itself seemed to be moving slowly. We were there during our December holiday in … Read more

A Glance in the Mirror

This was our last evening of the year. A small coffee shop in Negara, a quiet town near the western tip of Bali. Rain on the street. Warm light inside. We sat there for a while, talking, laughing, and simply enjoying the quiet before the year ended. We had spent a week in Bali and … Read more