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Feb 17

SCMP: Inter Miami + Messi Mess in Hong Kong

by ccue

Few in the States follow the Inter Miami pre-season world tour. Its stop in Hong Kong was a PR disaster for the pre-season. The no-show of Messi and the seemingly lack of empathy towards his fans have turned a Messi-mania in my beloved city to a Messi-mess. After a few days of ubiquitous  media coverage, the government demanded explanations, the organizer agreed to a 50% refund, and the sports authority in China canceled two upcoming exhibition matches of the Argentina team in China.

The reaction of the city dwellers, the organizer and the government are surprising. I wrote an article to the SCMP, the top English newspaper in Hong Kong, with the intent to those who still felt anguish about the situation. HongKongers hated to be disappointed, even worse, hated to lose face 唔俾面, and hated to be caught as dumb consumers 水鱼. Looking back, there is the silver lining with the unity of the city in their anger and frustration. I have missed the unity of the city in the last many years.

SCMP is a Hong Kong English-language newspaper founded in 1903, has a daily circulation of 100,000+ readers and an online version. SCMP published my article about “Give Messi the benefit of doubt” here, with some minor publishing edits and some related pictures/links. 

Here is the original version.

Title: Reason and Respect : Messi deserves the benefits of doubts

The 2022 Qatar World Cup was a fairy tale moment for Messi. My family has followed Messi & his matches since. After defeating France in the final, he was often booed when he played for PSG in France. At age 36, he joined Inter Miami in a city of many Spanish speaking people. This opinion is for those who are still suffering from the anguish of the Messi no-show.

In sports, injury happens, fatigue happens. Messi is an “old” man in the soccer world. He played so many matches last year. He has not been close to 100% for at least a few months.

Soccer is not even in the top 3 sports in the US. Yet, Messi created a Messi Mania last year when he and Inter Miami won matches one after another. Many bought the highly inflated stadium tickets, drove hours only to find out Messi could not play. While disappointed, most understood and enjoyed the game. It is unfortunate that he had a no-show in Hong Kong. Soccer is a team sport, not a solo concert. The game carries on with or without Messi.

Inter Miami was ranked the lowest in the league for a reason. Often, their games were even hard to watch. I thought the Hong Kong team had a real chance to win. Sadly, the Inter Miami team never trailed, and the Hong Kong team lost comfortably. That was the only game Inter Miami won on this world tour. If you were a coach, what decision would you make? Would you risk the stars?

There were many theories about disrespect. Do people know Messi rarely showed up in US press conferences? He arrived in Hong Kong on a long flight after losing the last game six to zero, in Saudi Arabia. He was likely not 100%. Give him a break. He is not a PR pro. 

With the no-show, the Hong Kong exhibition achieved international coverage on CNN, Times, CNBC and more. The US media covered the complaints from HK CEO Mr. Lee and the HK fans; and was overall empathetic.  

This is no doubt a PR disaster for Inter Miami. Hong Kong receives some sympathy. Let’s wish Messi a quick recovery, a great season and show up in HK soon.  

For the super fans, there will be an Argentina vs Chile game in June in New Jersey. His show up is no guarantee.

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About Learning Dear Diary Hong Kong Misc.

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Feb 2

AI Challenges

by ccue

Toastmasters, a global organization about communication excellence, is celebrating 100 years. Toastmasters has global presence, with over 200,000 members and counting. I served as president of one toastmaster club for two terms. I remain active in two Toastmaster clubs including the AI club, the first toastmaster club with an AI themes. It is fitting to combine communication excellence and the latest AI technology as Generative AI storms into our lives, like no other technology before. Below is the speech script of my 7-minutes speech about AI challenges and how everyone can become an AI ambassador to have more people participating in the AI future.

I have been an active Toastmaster member and served as president of a Toasterster club for two-terms

We wake up with water, electricity and the internet. What if I decide not to use any of them? From where I live, the nearest body of water is over 5 miles. I would walk without Google Maps, no electric car, in the dark, to fill up buckets of water I need for the day. It would take over 4 hours for the round-trip. Technology has made our lives better. We have taken for granted people use helpful technology all the time. 

To my AI club fellows, I would like to share the obstacles facing AI adoption. By being aware of it, we can concretely set plans to address these obstacles.

I’m leading an initiative focused on upskilling and enabling AI, particularly GenAI, at all levels, to as many as possible for the company .  Every single day, I am humbled “people are not rethinking how their work and life can be improved with AI technology”. The reality is, technology adoption requires intentional effort to bring people along. Why is that? There are technical obstacles and psychological resistances.

Starting with the technical challenges,

  • We live in places with cutting edge technology. Do you know just about 65% of the global population are online (w/i internet). AI depends both on electricity and the internet. That means around 3 billion who do not have reliable internet, likely cannot benefit from AI. 
  • AI is intimidatingly complex. Some techies unconsciously throw out jargon. Terms like LLM, gpu, tpu, langchain, multimodal, neural network, encoder, decoder, transformer, hallucinations…just scared people away. 
  • Concerns about data privacy, biased input and security are real. Can you trust technology? When to trust , when not to trust AI? 

We develop strong opinions and emotions about things too. Every new technology challenges our comfort zone and injects the fear of the unknown, fear of mistakes and fear of losses.

Many people fear errors or lack of control when using AI for tasks traditionally done by humans. It is natural we are uncomfortable with machines generating creative content or making decisions in their personal lives.

  • Elon Musk said “We will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human. There will come a point where no job is needed.“. He may have spoken his mind. How would you react about AI replacing human jobs and YOUR jobs?
  • When Singapore Prime Minister Lee was recently interviewed by Bloomberg, he said “There are a lot of things in AI that we don’t know.  We don’t know where it is going. The researchers do not know where it is going.”.  How could you manage the unknown?

You belong to this ai club toastmasters. I think you can do something. You can start with one thing.  Here are some suggestions.

  1. Listen to others’ concerns in adopting the technology. 
  2. Share how AI has benefited you
  3. Invite their curiosity to learn more.

Thomas Edison brought electric light to part of Manhattan in 1882. Even 4 decades later, only half of all homes in the US had electric power. Many Americans still lit their homes with gas lights and candles.

I invite you to stay aware of these Ai technical and psychological  obstacles, it is as easy as starting with one thing. Take the time to listen to concerns, share how AI works well for you and invite curiosity from others.  If you all do at least one thing, AI can be in more hands. We don’t need to wait 50 years.

Are you willing?

Thank you.

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