AI Doomsday Scenario: Truth or Hogwash? (Part 1/2)

The month of September in 2026 was almost completely dominated by one headline, in the world of tech, that is. Drumroll...

The Artificial Intelligence Doomsday Scenario.

Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk - all CEOs of AI tech companies, all came out to warn us that AI tech is dangerous and could result in wiping out all of humanity, and called for regulatory measures. And I find all this less than convincing. 

It's not that I disagree that regulation is needed. It's overdue, even. But the timing is... interesting. It just seems awfully convenient that this comes at a time where OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to IPO (OpenAI's plans seem to have been curtailed at this time of writing), and China is producing cheaper comparable models and giving away the services for free. These three wouldn't be trying to cripple competition via regulation, would they?

Here's the problem, tech CEOs. People with an IQ higher than the average box of rocks, don't just want to listen to your dramatic fantasies. We want to be given a plausible framework for how this could happen. Who do you think you're talking to, superstitious villagers doing a rain dance?

We're too old for bedtime stories. Show us the math. You said AI will being about the end of the world. That's a big statement. Go on, walk us through it.

Dangerous things.

Any idiot can tell me that AI is potentially dangerous. I could be a terrible driver, and even worse marksman, and still be able to tell you that cars and guns can be lethal. "AI has the capability to do great harm" isn't exactly an Earth-shattering revelation. You're major decision-makers in famous tech companies. I expect more.

Only Amodei has even made the attempt. It still sounds like science-fiction, but to be fair, it's more than either Altman or Musk have given us. Though, come to think of it, wasn't Musk the same guy who said AI should compile binaries instead of generating code? You know what, I think we'll do just fine without his input.

Amodei also called for curbs on selling chips to China.

The China issue

I would caution against putting China in this position. Remember Huawei back in 2018? USA put them in a situation where they'd have to create their own OS instead of leveraging off Android. How'd that turn out? I'll tell you how it turned out - Huawei came up with HarmonyOS and have now conquered the China market.

China has the raw materials and the energy resources. They're also known as the world's fastest builders, a reputation cemented during the COVID crisis. And also the world's foremost manufacturers, a reputation cemented long before the COVID crisis. If, on top of their capabilities and resources, they're given the motivation, do these US companies think things will go well for them? Take note of the words "capability" and "motivation" - they'll be relevant again very soon.

Building fast!

Also, speaking of Huawei, they're actually working really hard to become an alternative to Nvidia, with their work on the Ascend series chip. So if anyone thought the HarmonyOS analogy was weak, here's a fact for you: Huawei has already started building chips, not just mobile OS. And they appear to have accelerated their plans. 

Jensen Huang takes the opposite stance

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the firm selling GPUs to the various players, has come out to say that "there's a 0% chance of that happening by 2030", "scaring people is unnecessary, it is irresponsible" and "not grounded in science". 

That elicited a chuckle. I'm a great admirer of Jensen Huang with his distinguished grey hair, suave leather jacket and impressive ability to ooze sincerity while spewing complete horseshit. Guy basically just wants to sell more chips. It's not wrong. It's literally his job. I'm just laying out the obvious incentive.

All of these people are saying things I agree with - more regulation, apocalypse unlikely - albeit for eyebrow-raising (and very self-serving) premises. I'm not saying that they're lying to our faces, exactly... but when the timing is this convenient and the incentives this obvious, we're entitled to examine the claims. Scratch that; we're obligated to.

It strikes me that both those claiming a doomsday scenario (Altman, Amodei, Musk) and those claiming otherwise (Huang) haven't really supplied any kind of reasoning chain as to why it will or won't happen. It's cute to watch them both play this game.

What do I mean by "reasoning chain"?

Here's an example. Amodei has cited the recursive self-improvement of AI and the recent cybersecurity breaches known as OAI-HF as scaled-down examples of what could happen. He's supplied the capability.

However, he's missing the propensity - what are the tendencies of AI, and what would motivate it to use those capabilities against us? Does AI eventually discover that human farts are a great source of fuel and decide to farm us? There you go - capability and motivation. These are important.

After capability and propensity, we then look at opportunity. What are the mistakes we would have to make, in order for a highly-capable, properly-motivated AI to get its opening?

No chain.

Without these three parts, there is no chain. Sorry, Amodei. Maybe you should have gotten Claude to help you with that.

One last obvious thing I want to point out. Altman says we should slow down AI development. OK. What's he waiting for, permission? Does he need a signature somewhere for him to proceed? He's literally the CEO of OpenAI.

Is he waiting for everyone else to slow down at the same time? China, too? Well, I guess we're all screwed, then.

Next

Jacob Coxon and the ten-year warning.

Ten Years of GitHub Usage

There was a time I shuttled code between the workplace to home, in the most comically retro manner possible - via email. I would be fiddling with some stuff at home, think it would be interesting to use in a workplace project, and send it to my work email account. And at work, if I didn't feel like leaving my code in the workplace and wanted to continue over the weekend, I would send it to my personal email. As the frequency of this increased, it soon became untenable. I actually only really started a GitHub account almost a full two years after starting this blog.

It's been ten years since. I looked at the heatmaps generated from my activity, and there were some interesting patterns. Really took me back. I realize that just going by the number of commits is a poor metric. Almost as poor as the number of lines of code for measuring code quality. But we've all got to start somewhere...

1. 2016 (46 commits)

At this time, I had just set up my GitHub account the previous year. The line chart of my contributions could be charitably described as "tentative".

Looking at the heatmap of my activity, the word that comes to mind is "sporadic". I used it a couple times a month, each time to commit a bunch of stuff.

Looks pitiful, eh? Basically I was just feeling my way around. Getting comfortable with the interface. There were even months where I had no activity whatsoever.

2. 2017 (96 commits)

The second year wasn't that much better, at least in terms of consistency. There were still a couple months where I failed to register any activity.

The line chart shows a marked improvement over the previous year. Though, to be fair, it's hard to do worse.

However, in the months where I did do shit, there was an uptick. Instead of a couple commits here and there, I was starting to register double digits on a semi-regular basis. This was definitely an improvement. Much of this could be attributed to me coding more ambitious projects. Projects that couldn't just be finished in a couple hours, and had to be periodically saved.

3. 2018 (179 commits)

This was the year one could practically see me shifting into third gear. There were no months where I neglected GitHub. More and more months were registering double digit commits. At the highest point at the end of the year, I even registered 50 commits. Compared to what I do consistently today, this is nothing. But it marked a start of something.

The trend line shows that I was still finding my feet, though some months were better than others. I was struggling for consistency as far as GitHub usage was concerned. This was at least partly due to me being busy studying for my ACTA.

Room for improvement? Definitely. But I was still using GitHub pretty much like a layperson. I used it to store code and not much else. I wasn't using GitHub anywhere close to its full potential.

4. 2019 (138 commits)

Things dropped off slightly in 2019. I suspect a lot of it was due to adjusting to my first year of being married and all. (Yeah, way to blame the wife, dude.)

My GitHub contribution was a jagged line. I would be a GitHub hero for a couple of months, then almost a zero the next month.

And in October, I even registered an entire month without a commit. This might have been due to the impending dominion of COVID-19. Suddenly we were all distracted by this potential life-or-death issue.

But for sure, my use of GitHub was still going strong, just not as strong as the previous year.

5. 2020 (286 commits)

This is where it started to get interesting. Some months, my usage climbed sharply, and plummeted just as quickly the next few months.

If you look at the heatmap below, it almost mirrors the line chart - periods of increased activity punctuated by periods of low activity. If there was any consolation, there were less fluctuations than the previous year.

This was because I was retroactively going through all my Readme files, and reformatting them for better readability. Also, now I was actually establishing proper code commits instead of merely updating via copy-pasting directly into repositories. I had GitHub Desktop open on my Lenovo, and open on my MacBook. This led to a whole lot of increased activity.

6. 2021 (227 commits)

This year, activity dropped off slightly, though my usage was arguably more consistent than it had been the previous year. The line chart shows a jagged line, though less jagged than previous years, with a peak near year end.

The heatmap of my activity was looking more spread out.

I was going through school for Data Analytics, and this affected the time I had for code experimentation. I'm proud to say, though, I managed to dedicate at least this much time.

7. 2022 (651 commits)

This was the year my usage really started to take off. For one, I was really seriously beginning to commit code the way GitHub was meant to be used. The lowest number of commits I tracked was 34 in January, and it never fell below that number for the rest of the year. The highest at one point was 76 in March. The line chart still shows a jagged line, but the minimum has risen dramatically.

The heatmap shows an ever wider spread of contributions over the year. A whole lot more heat. Almost three times the previous year's.

I had also begun to manage the contents of the website on GitHub, under a private repository. This was so I could look up previous versions of files and potentially restore them. I really should have done this a lot sooner. The thing was, my Lenovo was beginning to sputter and I really didn't feel comfortable having all my content stored there. Thus, my hand was forced.

That was pretty much how the number of commits jumped that much.

8. 2023 (872 commits)

The number of commits continued to jump. Compared to the peals and valleys registered in previous years for monthly commits, it was a relatively straight, consistent line.

I had begun to use GitHub to store my blogging drafts. Now this may not sound like much, until one considers how I blog. It starts as a skeleton made out of ideas in point form, and slowly I flesh them out bit by bit. Along the way, I may make revisions - rewording and rearranging stuff. I may only have over 70 blogposts a year, but that's multiple commits per blogpost!

This was partly due to my Lenovo being on its last legs. I began the process of writing drafts in GitHub instead of storing them in text files in my Lenovo, and when my Lenovo finally died in the latter half of 2023, my caution was rewarded.

The end result was, there were only three dates in the entire year where I didn't register a single commit. Compared to last year, the number of commits in a single month ranged from 61 to 80. In the heatmap, you can see that almost the entire map is shades of green.

9. 2024 (991 commits)

Now that I was writing drafts in GitHub full-time, that translated to daily commits. I would get an idea, open up GitHub, and commit it. I registered maybe one or two dates the entire year where I didn't commit anything. Most of the time, though, I was supremely consistent. If you look at the graph, the line was even smoother than the previous year's!

Looking at the chart, my usage started out at 70 plus commits per month, then steadily climbed to the high 80s through the course of the year. I remember at that point trying to rein myself in. I didn't want to end up setting a bar I couldn't commit to long term. The heatmap, as in 2024, shows almost total coverage of shades of green, but a lot more is bright green.

In addition to that, some of my projects were a little complex. They required frequent commits. I could push ten commits in an hour on a ReactJS project. This was also the year I started with NodeJS, and as you can probably tell, this also translated to a lot of commits.

10. 2025 (1007 commits)

The trend continued. I was hitting my stride in my usage of GitHub, and the consistency was really starting to show. Commits per month were now in the 80 plus range, until near the end of the year where I decided to give myself a bit of breathing room. Looking at the trend line, it was almost a straight line except for that year-end dip.

In the case of blogpost drafts, sometimes my updates were just little typo corrections and adding a few sentences here and there. Most bloggers will tell you that the incremental nature of writing a blogpost means that potentially a whole bunch of corrections accompany every one. While this was already the case in previous years, I took it up a few notches.

Here, the heatmap shows an entire year with no gaps. There is obviously higher usage during weekends. Of course, one commit could be as small as correcting a single typo, or be as big as including new functions into the code base. Thus, it can't be a complete representation of how hard I work here. But it's a decent indication.

What a decade!

It's interesting to me how my usage of GitHub evolved through the years. From just another online file system to a means of tracking code changes, and from there expanding to tracking all document changes. Even with code, my usage also changed, with more frequent commits due to establishing CI/CD pipelines.

Most of all, I think it shows my growth as a techie. My usage could still be improved, but at this point I think I'm getting close to a sweet spot. What has your usage been like?

With much commitment,
T___T

A Software Developer's Vacation in... Singapore (Part 3/3)

Another day of my vacation was spent covering the locations I hung out at from the entire year of 2012 and onwards. In the next few years, I would shuttle from company to company, never staying more than a couple years at each one.

2012 to 2013

These were the first years I spent away from the Beach Road / North Bridge Road area.

Novena/Balestier area.

In 2012, I found a job in Goldhill Plaza, in the Novena area. Goldhill Plaza looked pretty much the same when I visited. It's still the color of salmon, shaped like a giant penis reaching up to the sky. I got a kick out of taking a walk around the base of the "shaft" to soak in the vibes of where I used to take my smoke breaks.

Goldhill Plaza

Velocity

In the vicinity, Velocity was as fancy as ever. I never bothered much with that place, or with United Square, though I had a soft spot for the Katong Laksa outlet there. It seems that post-pandemic, prices have risen alarmingly. It's now seven bucks for a small bowl. You know what, at my age I think I could stand to eat less laksa.

Laksa at
United Square

A short walk away, Balestier Road beckoned. The entire stretch, when I last hung out there in 2013, was a throwback to an age long gone. That was where I met my buddies for supper and drinks after a long day in the office. When I last left it, modernity had started to creep in, in places such as Zhongshan Park, which, to be fair, is really pretty.

Zhongshan Park

Balestier Plaza

However, a lot of the old stuff is still there. Balestier Plaza is one such example. When I visited, I had a rollicking good time wandering its cold empty halls and soaking in the retro vibes. Aside from that, the entire area has a lot of old architecture. It seems to be one of the areas that the Singapore Government has never been able to fully get its mitts into.

This was the final part of my tour for revisiting former offices in this area. This next part was set solidly in the east. Interestingly, it was all around the Tai Seng and MacPherson area up till the year 2017.

Paya Lebar Road

2013 to 2014

During this year, I ended up at this grand-looking building known as Starhub Green. It was pretty modern and upscale - glass walls, glossy foyer, hipster cafes. I remember ending up here and thinking, rather naively, "I've made it!"

Starhub Green

Honestly, I didn't hang out at this area any longer than I really needed to. This was merely another stop on my quest to ascend the pay scale.

2015 to 2016

The next company was at Tai Seng, at least until they folded. We were at this building, and visually it was a pretty big downgrade. LHK2 is a long oblong on the map, and pretty easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for.

LHK2

It sure was nice to see their smoking point again, though. What fond memories I have.

LHK2's
smoking point.

The surroundings were more ghetto than the last one, but I expect this was just a matter of what the company could afford. I didn't hang out here; this was the year I was studying for my Specialist Diploma in Mobile Apps Development and I just didn't have the time. At the time I was working there, most of the surroundings were under construction - that day in December when I visited, places like Tai Seng Point had sprung up.

The tragedy was that I had been planning on serving my time with this company until the time came to move on. It was one of those ruthless business decisions where I use a company as a springboard to bigger and better things. Unfortunately for me, they crashed and burned before I could pull the trigger. Kind of like your spouse dying and turning you into a widow/widower even though you already planned on a divorce.

2017

Next I was at Vertex. It looked just the same as ever in 2025, as it did back in 2017. It's a huge building that houses numerous showrooms at the ground level, and tons of smaller company offices squirreled away in its upper floors. And one of those companies was a startup I worked in.

Vertex

This was the company I actually had more of a soft spot for, as opposed to the last two. This one was at a tech startup where I was finally working alongside people who knew as much as me, or more. I was here less than a year, but this was where I stepped up the intensity back to 12-hour days, almost 7 days a week, because I enjoyed the work and I enjoyed my co-workers.

After 2017, I ended up back in Bugis area, where I hung out with my new colleagues at the new Funan and sometimes ate at Peninsula Plaza together. And thus I spent another three years until COVID-19 hit the world.

2020 to now

I've spent it mostly working from home and hanging out around my neighborhood, as stated at the beginning. Which was why I wanted to go get to know my island again.

I visited other places from my past during my vacation, of course. My old schools were I spent my formative years, my late grandfather's old estate, my late grandmother's neighborhood... all of these held delightful memories as new  developments were juxtaposed among the old (and some ancient) ones.

In conclusion!

This wasn't just a vacation in Singapore. This was a retreading of old stomping grounds, making contact with my past and taking the time to appreciate how I got here.

In these days, I relived the career struggles I experienced, and marvelled at the obstacles I had to overcome. Sometimes we all need that moment of introspection. To remind ourselves that if we've come this far, we can totally do this.

It's okay to vaykay!
T___T

A Software Developer's Vacation in... Singapore (Part 1/3)

In recent years, I've been writing about my vacations in different parts of Malaysia to meet up with friends I made online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, I didn't leave Singapore at all. Instead, I still cleared my Annual Leave - but in Singapore. This was more than just me being a cheap bastard - I mean, I am a cheap bastard, but there's more at play here.

You see, back in 2019, one of my several uncles, David, died. He hadn't even turned sixty. I saw my Aunt Serene at the wake, in a wheelchair. For reasons we won't get into, Aunt Serene was only ten months older than me and we played together a lot as kids. This would be the last time I would see her alive, for she succumbed to a brain aneurysm just a year later. Then two years ago, the twin brother of one of my friends passed on from a heart attack. He was only a couple years older than me.

Rest well, guys.

Now, granted, I would consider myself a significantly healthier and fitter specimen than any of the ones who've died, rest their souls. This, however, taught me not to take anything for granted. Around my age, anything can happen. I am going to celebrate the fact that I am alive and able to walk... by being alive and walking.

The past five years of working from home meant that I hadn't really needed to leave the neighborhood very often. I hadn't really seen how Singapore had changed post-pandemic. 

Initially, I went through the places I hung out as a kid, but eventually, inevitably, this turned to revisiting old workplaces because my career took up so much of my life. And I've always had a soft spot for old malls compared to some of the more modern cookie-cutter fare out there. It's not that the old stuff is objectively better; there's just a certain charm about the old-fashioned double rectangular layouts that speaks to me.

Today, I want to go through some of the sights I saw in my wanderings as I revisited the places I used to work through my long and storied career. Bear in mind that I did not visit these places chronologically, but I will be recounting them in a certain order, for clarity.

Early to mid 2000s

My career began after graduating from University, amid an economic downturn around 2002. After months of temp work and putting myself out there, I landed a job as Desktop Support at a legal firm. The pay wasn't great, and the prospects sucked ass... but it was better than what I had currently, which was pretty much nothing.

North Bridge Road

Peninsular Plaza

The office was in Peninsula Plaza along North Bridge Road, a place mostly visited by the Burmese and Indians. Upon my visit during my vacation, the building seemed to now be inhabited by small Thai businesses from the collapse of Golden Mile Complex. It really seemed to be a case of seeing how many grocery shops and hair salons one could squeeze into four floors of an old-fashioned rectangular layout.

Aside from that, Peninsula Plaza didn't seem to have changed too much from twenty years ago.

Funan

Across the street was Funan, one of the places that my then-Manager often sent me to, to purchase tech supplies. The last time I ventured there was in 2018 (more on that later), and it had completely changed from the Funan I knew as a teenager, or even as a young adult. It had become all kinds of fancy. There was a hotel, and a rock-climbing wall. Upscale restaurants. The works. I don't begrudge evolution, but honestly I didn't want to rub my own face in it either. I had places that held memories that I could actually revisit.

Peninsular Shopping Complex

The basement.

Next door to Funan was Peninsula Shopping Complex (not to be confused with Peninsula Plaza) and Excelsior Shopping Center, which, if I'm being honest, are so old and decrepit and joined at the hip they might as well be one unit. The basement held all the stuff that enthralled me as a kid - I remember blowing much of my earliest paycheck on a belt and some rocker t-shirts. They still have this cool stuff down there, and it doesn't look like it's let up in the past three decades. If anyone's got a hankering to cosplay as some stereotypical badass biker, you could do worse than start here. Just for old times sake, I dropped a bunch of cash on some Iron Maiden t-shirts. Probably got ripped off, but whatevs, it's just money.

Excelsior
Shopping Center

This was creepy.

A little bit of exploration in Excelsior Shopping Center made me realize just how ghetto this place was. I'm all for it, but there were times it got a little creepy. Like this little stairway, for instance. Total horror movie vibes.

The dodgy-looking ladies at the upper floors rapping on the glass windows as I passed, certainly did nothing to make this experience less creepy.

The Adelphi

The colorful building known as The Adelphi was another stop. They still sold vinyl records and CDs, imagine that. There was even a shop that dealt in vintage action figures. That took me way back. Now I've never ventured to The Adelphi much even when I was working nearby, but on this occasion I'm glad I stepped in.

Mid to end 2000s

After three years, the firm relocated to Beach Road. This was the more upscale end of Beach Road near to the Esplanade.

Beach Road

The Gateway was an acutely-shaped building where I spent another three years of my career.  The shelter between the towers, pictured below, wasn't there during my time.

The Gateway

The area in between the two glass towers was where I took my smoke breaks. I'd forgotten how beautiful the surroundings are.

The Gateway's gardens

Back in the day, I spent time around Shaw House along Beach Road. This is what Shaw House looks like now, being reconstructed, but back then it was my goto for horror movies. I distinctly remember watching Ringu here.

Shaw House

The surrounding areas have also evolved. Tan Quee Lan Street and Liang Seah Street appear to have undergone the most changes, with regards to the shops and businesses open. These days it's a lot of Chinese restaurants.

Golden Landmark
Shopping Complex

Another stop I made was at junction of Victoria Street and Ophir Road, where the decaying sight of Golden Landmark Shopping Complex stood. I can't believe that dump is still around; I used to go in to get my hair cut.

2008

In 2008, I ended my Desktop Support career and moved into web development. This was at a little company inside Bylands Building along Middle Road, just a couple streets away from my previous company. Now, if there's ever a timeless spot, it's the entire area around Middle Road. 

Middle Road

Bylands Building

On the other side of Middle Road was the Four-face Buddha and Fu Lu Shou Complex. This remains a classic. It looked like this almost twenty years ago, and looks the same now when I visited it last month. Really took me back to the evenings spent wandering this area while I ruminated on why my code was failing.

Four-face Buddha and temples

Fu Lu Shou
Complex

Just a bit further pas this was Bugis Night Market, and to my everlasting joy, it was going strong! There's a certain charm about it that rivals Kuala Lumpur's Petaling. that since this is Singapore where space is a premium, things were a lot more claustrophobic.

Bugis Night Market

Parklane Shopping Mall

At the ass-end of Middle Road, I took a few minutes to go through Parklane Shopping Mall. Back in the day, as teenagers, my buddies and I came here for pool and gaming. It was still going during my professional years, but that day when I visited, it was like a morgue - cold, lifeless and dull. Damn, this is sad.

Next

Revisiting offices I worked in 2009 to 2012.