The Ability to Be

Over the past year, my work as a software designer has increasingly shifted from drawing interfaces to helping machines to think like humans. It turns out the most difficult part of it all is not acquiring knowledge — modern AI models already have access to vast amounts of it. It’s the ability to disambiguate meaning and manage contexts.

To solve this, we design programs with carefully crafted logic for interpreting tasks. We help models approximate memories and incentives. We write instructions, map connections, and build guardrails to prevent failures.

But the more time I spend thinking about these challenges, the more I started to appreciate how effortlessly human consciousness navigates these complexities and chaos.

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It reminded me of something I've been reading recently, With My Back to the World by Victoria Chang. Each single poem in the book is named after a painting by Agnes Martin, an American abstract painter.

Martin described her work as a way to guide viewers into a meditative state, like “walking across an empty beach to gaze at the ocean.” Chang extends this idea further, laying out her words to mimic Martin’s compositions while exploring her personal memories of depression and grief.

Two distinct mediums, themes, and interpretations—seemingly unrelated—yet they coalesce in a way that feels profoundly meaningful.

Unlike machines, we don’t need rules to understand, remember, or reflect — we simply do. Our experiences shape our feelings, and our feelings define who we are as unique individuals. It's our ability to be, not just do.

I want to embrace all those feelings — to experience them fully, to feel them more deeply. Now more than ever.