Whatever you have experienced throughout the past one year, life is always full of ups and downs. But, no matter how tough life is, we must never give up easily, but should instead pick up the pace and march towards 2024 with inflated self-confidence.

We need to come to terms with the reality that the world we are living in is far from being perfect. We don’t have to keep turning back and look behind us, but must learn to fine-tune our attitude, and walk steadily forward, one step at a time.

Entering 2024, we will gradually find that a “smart world” is no longer a fantasy too remote for everyone of us. In its stead, it is well within our reach, and is very much real!

We begin to get bedazzled by all sorts of sophisticated technologies popping up before our eyes, as we can’t wait any longer to jump straight into such a fascinating smart world, feel and experience the infinite possibilities promised by state-of-the-art technologies.

The same goes with the media industry which naively believes that this dazzling smart world will open up a whole world of opportunities, such as replacing a human news anchor with a virtual figure, or harnessing ChatGPT to save on manpower costs.

David Lim, founder and CEO of WISE AI, has put it forthright that AI helps companies raise productivity and trim cost, but if we were to deploy a virtual news anchor in the place of a real man, we may have to spend a lot more money than the salary paid to a human anchor.

While adopting AI and smart tools, media organisations must also take into account the returns on investment, system maintenance, technology upgrade, user experience and a host of other factors.

Although AI can boost efficiency, given the vast differences in human values and social backgrounds, the unique human abilities in shrewdly handling moral and content sensitivities, as well as emotional expressions of a real human can never be completely taken over by AI technology.

Even with a plethora of AI tools available, we still need human editors to inspect every piece of machine-generated news or content.

I remember when “new media” started to gain traction years ago, managers confidently proclaimed that “digitisation is the trend of future”.

Back then, everyone was fully convinced by such a claim, but fast forward to 2023, few media organisations have actually managed to make the first bucket of gold from digital transformation, because all the gold has been swept up by tech giants with powerful platform-building capacities such as Google and Facebook, leaving only specks of gold dust for the multitude of media organisations to scavenge.

Up till this very moment, many media operators are still busily creating an endless stream of crappy content on the many new media platforms on a daily basis, in their never-ending pursuit of virtual traffic volumes, instead of focusing on quality content creation or safeguarding the journalistic ethics.

No doubt, web traffic is of tremendous importance to the survival of a media organisation. The emergence of various new technologies has provided the industry additional channels and tools in their content delivery.

Nonetheless, it is all the more crucial for media practitioners to faithfully adhere to their journalistic professionalism and ethics while safeguarding media credibility, creating reliable and high-quality news content without compromising on journalistic ethics and principles, at a time the cyberspace is overwhelmed by all kinds of fake news and misinformation.

In this era of smart technologies, it has become an important mission for media practitioners to lift the media literacy of their readers or audience.

With the smart era comes an enormous cache of information the authenticity of which is highly dubious. And as a matter of fact, an overwhelming majority of information recipients seriously lack the ability to verify the authenticity of whatsoever information fed to them.

The break-neck development of smart technologies has also started to encroach on our privacy. Face recognition technology could be abused, and technological advancement makes it much easier in constructing deepfakes.

We must bring ourselves back to the world of books and newspapers, picking up some useful knowledge, honing our independent thinking ability and appreciation of the beauty of literature, in a bid to elevate our spiritual cultivation.

Facebook, Douyin, TikTok and other popular social media platforms continue to become hotbeds for the dissemination of misinformation and extremist views. This gives mainstream media an unassailable responsibility in righting the wrong in this rumour-infested age.

In addition to assuming the role as watchdog over people with power, the media must also care for those in need. Be it in the past, present or future, our society constantly needs the media to show some care.

No doubt, life has become excessively complicated because of the advent of modern technologies, and people are becoming increasingly impatient and restless.

Today, many people dread receiving calls from strangers, worrying they will be the next to fall victim to online scams. In a world teeming with traps craftily set up by scammers, social media platforms have become the source of all evils!

People spending long hours each day on social media platforms will soon discover that they have been disengaged from realistic life. Life is becoming less and less real, as many squander their youth on the virtual sphere, ignoring the beauty of the real world and the importance of interpersonal relations.

And this has prompted people to start looking back and contemplating how they can re-establish their links with the real world, and pursue a life that is more enriching, stimulating and nourishing.

While modern parents keep “feeding” their children with smartphones and iPads, the Swedish government is resolutely bucking the trend, urging the public to wean themselves from technology and revert to the conventional way of learning, including getting the students to pick up their pencils and paper textbooks once again.

Many experts believe that primary school students’ deteriorating read-and-write ability has very much to do with their over-dependence on computers and tablets. They also find that these students’ concentration is being gradually eroded.

Sweden’s reversal to paper reading should serve as a wake-up call for those still addicted to social media platforms and their smartphones.

AI is like a double-sided sword. It brings endless innovation, convenience and immense opportunities, but also concerns and challenges.

As a matter of fact, in our unpredictable world today, many are still unprepared for human-machine co-living, and governments have yet to rein in the many smart tools available in the market, allowing the criminals to ravage and thrive.

To some extent, people have started to grow weary or even fearful of cyber lifestyle.

We must not allow ourselves to go on living with an empty shell devoid of soul. While exploiting the latest technology to make life easier for us, we must be wary of getting addicted to and over-reliant on the machines, but to strike a balance between modern conveniences and convention.

From time to time, we need to learn to put down our phones, take a break from the unreal virtual world, and revert to Nature and rediscover the joy of picking up a book or newspaper.

We must bring ourselves back to the world of books and newspapers, picking up some useful knowledge, honing our independent thinking ability and appreciation of the beauty of literature, in a bid to elevate our spiritual cultivation.

Finally, it is my wish that you will recoup the faith and energy for self-uplifting in your respective life journeys.

As we usher in the year 2024, let’s continue to grow together with boosted confidence in overcoming the obstacles that stand our way.

May you find your own balancing point in life in the year ahead.

Happy New Year!

Yours sincerely,
Kuik Cheg Kang
MCIL Group (Malaysia) and Sin Chew Daily Editor-in-Chief