Mails from Hogwarts

It’s already one day after Mother’s Day, but still I’m going to open today’s journal with a long-term tug-of-war with my mom. Mom’s always super helpful whenever I’m searching for a job, finding a master’s program or some PhD program tailored to my interest. She would quietly collect all the information needed, and the next day, I receive dozens of job ads, program vacancies in our chat. At first, I find it super convenient, until one day I can no longer put up with all the affluent information coming too often to the chat. I find my personal time and pace being interrupted. So I spoke to her, starting with appreciating her kind support and effort, then gently put “Maybe that’s enough for me.” It only stopped for a while, then the messages come back, like mails from Hogwarts are everywhere in Dudley’s house — my mind is full of information I don’t need every day. I tried to mute our chat but guilt would drive me to check the phone regularly to make sure I don’t miss any important messages from her.

The tension between my mom and me becomes unbearable, even contributes to my anxiety.

The war finally burst out right before my three PhD program submission deadlines in a row. After the morning ritual in our family group chat of saying hi to everyone, my mom bombed me with more PhD programs that are still open for application. I was so furious and called immediately; the answer to my first question really fueled my anger: “Do you know why I called?” Mom’s like “No, why?” Then I started to complain about how many times I’ve talked to my mom on this issue, “enough is enough.” I don’t know why she cannot understand it. I even asked “I’m also just checking up if you are intentionally doing so or you are just suffering some dementia.” My mom burst into laughter, which made me even angrier. Later on, I guess she finally sensed my anger by my hysterical statement “if you do that again, I’ll not continue with PhD applications.” She apologized, and said she never thought I’d really mean it when I said enough is enough. Yes, mom keeps her word this time, at least to date.

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If we leave out the cliché of how Asian parents don’t give enough respect to their children today, my mom actually symbolises how modern-day technologies are trying to take every inch of attention in your mind. We’ve also seen the annual keynotes of Apple’s event, bragging about chips several times faster for AI than the last model. AI pioneers like OpenAI and Anthropic train their large language models on as much public scrapeable text as can be assembled. Personalized ads are everywhere now, based on the accurate user profile they model you from tons of behavioral data collected, sharing in between services.

I would describe all of these above as an improvement of computing power and the implication of it. However, the boom of computing power also entails a demand to handle and process this new information in human brains. We are so trained by TikTok and Instagram reels to swipe between media of different context, purpose, even format in flickering seconds. And there are discussions going on about the correlance between these short videos and more ADHD children diagnosed in recent years. But what I’m talking about is more than tech’s fight over your attention — it’s how scaled-up information floating “in the cloud” and speeded-up processing is going to reshape our behaviors, even brains.

Certainly, reflecting on each tech boom happened in the history, human society has been reshaped by these new techs again and again. And hardly ever we regret that happened. But still, from a techno-realistic POV, I’d like to give some awareness to the society, and to the elite labs who research alignment between AI and human expectation. Is our brain really prepared and aligned with the scale and speed already?