The first time I was featured on BBC, I had hundreds of journalists contact me. Only a few decided to publish my words after we had spoken. I realized that many of them came to me with ready made quotes. They were hoping I would repeat those words so they can quote me:

• Journalist: So would you say that "every company should avoid using AI like the plague?"  
• Me: No, I wouldn't say that.  
• Journalist: So what would you say companies should do about AI?  
• Me: (long explanation about how we are all discovering this together and we are learning as we go)  
• Journalist: I see, so they should avoid it at all costs because we don't understand it.
• Me: ...sigh...  

Being honest and telling the truth is rarely dramatic. For example, if you correctly label some systems as Automated Systems instead of AI, few people will want to talk to you. The truth is more down to earth, it's less flashy, it is the truth. But the truth is not sexy.  

I wanted to avoid this mistake this time around. A new round of journalists called me after my latest article on BBC. But, what is the alternative? If I don't tell the truth, what do I say? Do I blatantly lie? What's the alternative to dry, yeastless factuality?

I found out that if you don't tell the truth, the alternative is not to lie. Rather than tell them that what they are referring to as AI, is merely a sophisticated stack of if-and-elses, I'd tell them about the utility of such software. With racial tensions, when they ask if I had been bullied as the only black programmer in my team, my answer is to explain the effect of being the only black programmer. There are many ways black people have been treated unfairly without getting lynched. In itself this is a much more interesting story then bullied vs not bullied.

When honesty can only get you so far, the alternative is to stop lying.  

August 3rd, 1492. Christopher Columbus left Spain for what was an accidental journey to America. This was 528 years ago or 192,852 days ago today.

If you made $5,000 a day, every day, weekends included. Or $152,000 a month, Or $1.82 million a year for all this period of time. You would still be 35.7 million dollars short of a billion. That's 14 and a half times the lifetime income of the average household in the United States.

Yet, the population is rarely in favor of a tax on the ultra-rich. There are only 630 billionaires in the US. The odds of joining their ranks is 1 : 520,634. At the very least, we can say that the odds are not in our favor. In the US, the poor sees themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

We tolerate unfair treatment at work because we think it's temporary. We live with the stress of no health insurance because eventually we will make it big. We take two or three jobs because the end will justify the means.

What happens if things don't change? If your condition doesn't improve at work. If you never get health insurance. If you lose your job. Then what happens?

If you are a bank, the government hands you money so you can continue to operate. If you are an individual, you are on your own.

We are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires. We are at the butt-end of a system that will celebrate us, but never reward us.

In 2032, a camera will point at an exit door in a small clinic, waiting for a patient to come out. The camera will be held by a friend of this self appointed news anchor on TikTok. He will stream it live to his followers who will be watching from all over the place. Some will be in bed. Some will on the toilet seat. Some will be in class ignoring the teacher in the distance.

The notable thing about this moment is that millions will watch, but it will be mostly ignored. Behind the clinic's door would be the first patient to receive a prescription from a renowned doctor in the field of mental health. When the patient exits through the door, the anchor will ask him, "What does it feel like to be the first to receive this prescription?" All over the world, distracted teens will listen eagerly for the answer. Though they might not stick to the end. Some will swipe the video and move on to the next.

The patient will answer, "I don't know... weird I guess?"

But then the anchor will continue talking to his invisible audience, never mentioning the patient again. Turning it into a soliloquy as he walks away.

The patient will walk to the next building where he will present his prescription to a lady behind the counter. She will hand him a box to place his phone, watch, glasses, and any electronic device. Then, he will receive a small cup of water and a red pill to swallow immediately. She will then escort him to a furnished room with a window overlooking a lake. For the next few weeks, he would have to come back to this room, put away all his electronic devices, and spend some time alone.

The purpose of this exercise is not to have time alone, but to have time to think. Every day, we get less and less time to ourselves for thinking.

Standing in line means putting on headphones and watching a video. Driving means listening to a podcast. Running means listening to music or another podcast. Going to the bathroom means catching up on twitter. Boredom means watching endless streams on TikTok. There is not a single second left to think.

Eventually, the world will feel this crisis. And doctors will prescribe a note that will give us the luxury of spending a moment alone. This will be the only time we will have left to think.

This is one thing our generation will have to wrestle with. The world moves, people make decisions, we complain. But when it comes time solving the problem, we are stuck.

I've been thinking about Facebook, and all the political and social problem that came of it. It's easy to turn around and say that Zuckerberg is evil. Maybe he is planing for world domination, and getting people addicted to Facebook. But when he started building his social network, I'm pretty sure he didn't expect to be standing before congress explaining what the like button does. What's the solution? How do we fix social media?

With plastic killing animals and poisoning the environment, it's easy to shun anyone who isn't recycling. But then China refused to buy American plastic, we realize that all the plastic we were putting aside was just getting burned elsewhere. What's the solution? What do we do with the plastic?

We need cars for transportation. We need ships for trade. We need planes to travel. We need the oil to power them all. Along the way, each of those pollutes the air and steadily warms the planet. What's the solution for transportation, trade and travel?

We are in a pandemic now. We know that staying home, washing our hands often, and social distancing can help stop the spread of the virus. But how do you stay home when you can't afford food anymore. How do you keep a hygiene when you can't afford basic necessities. How do you stay home when you are getting evicted?

Blaming someone is the quick and easy way to make noise. But solutions are rarely offered. If you have a complex problem, the solution is often just as complex. If the solution can fit in a tweet, it probably didn't consider a thousand different real world scenarios.

Our generation has a big problem to wrestle with. We don't have tested solutions for most of our problems and we have a hard time admitting it.

As any application matures, we need two types of programmers to maintain it. If you stick to just the veteran programmer that has years of experience, don't be surprised when they start saying No to every single request. If you only hire people fresh out of college, don't be surprised when your code becomes unmanageable one month down the line. You need both to have success.

It's important to have someone with experience to curb the enthusiasms of adding new technology. I've once worked at a place where the manager had replaced the entire team. He then embraced Microsoft Silverlight as the power behind their website. Six months later, most people on his team had quit. He needed to hire new people to convert the Silverlight project with something more traditional.

If he had any senior developer in his team, they would fight tooth and nail to prevent this.

After working for years on a project, I try very hard not to change any code. If it works, don't fix it. If it is not easy to add a new feature, I ask, is adding this feature worth it? This is where having new programmers help. They are not attached to the project as you are. They don't have feeling over the code you wrote. They are OK with making changes to core principles. This helps projects move forward despite us old geezers holding them back.

Bureaucracy is a bad word. No one uses it in a positive sentence. But Bureaucracy is something that appears into any organization that grows large enough. It can become a huge pain point that prevents any work from getting done. But it can also be the reason any work is getting done.

Have you ever wondered how some organization look so bad and wasteful, yet they manage to survive in the worst of economies? The answer is bureaucracy.

Let's consider this question. How do you bring a whale home? I don't mean it figuratively. How do you get out of the house and come back with a full-grown adult killer whale? The simple answer is it is impossible. No one man can do this feat. Yet, that's exactly what they did to have Orcas at SeaWorld.

It all starts with filing for a permit. This single filing triggers a thousand different jobs each triggering other sets of paperwork to file. Eventually, maybe years later, a ship is set to sea to capture a whale. Once the whale is captured, other permits needs to be obtained to navigate through different seas and transport the mammal.

No one man can bring a whale home. But gather enough people, glue them together with bureaucracy, and you got yourself a whale at your doorstep.

Every time a new video surfaces the same conversation happens. A black man is killed, and we have questions. It almost feels normal at this point, but I am still enrage. We get to debate. We get to decide what to do with the situation. We get to have a say. But the victim is dead.

It's as if we have to sacrifice a life just to have a discussion. Stop this madness. Don't shoot another black man again. Don't shoot another black woman again. Don't fucking shoot us again. Let's have the debate first.

Do you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a programmer? You have to answer this question now and live with the consequences for the rest of your life.

One thing that we fail to admit, is that an 18-year-old is too young. He can't to understand the consequences of this decision. Most students are courting student debts, when they are just coming out of middle school. We won't let a 14-year-old go out on her own, but we are OK with making her take massive decisions and putting herself into debt.

You can't blame the parents either. If your parents never went to college, why are they expected to understand the massive undertaking college is?

At some point we ask ourselves: Should we go to college? Now that I am over 30, I can say with confidence that I don't regret dropping out of college. I've avoided massive debt. Many of my colleagues regret their computer science degree. It's not the degree is not useful, it sure is, for someone who wants to work as an academic.

When we make the decision to go to college, we usually want to please our parents, or follow what the crowd is doing. But we rarely consider it as an investment. College is an investment and should be treated as such. You wouldn't put your money in a company going bankrupt, would you? Then you shouldn't invest in an education that doesn't have a clear return on your investment.

When they learned programming using punch cards, students didn't think their skill will go obsolete. Punch cards are the punch line of jokes today. But they were the bleeding edge of technology at some point.

Not only that the method has gone obsolete, the modern computer paradigm makes that sort of programming meaningless. I experienced this when my then employer interviewed a candidate who had worked in the 70s at IBM. He was a computer science graduate with a top GPA and a minor in electronic engineering. He was so knowledgeable. He even knew the meaning of the color of each cable on the motherboard. The only problem was, he was interviewing for a front-end position.

Front-end work still involves programming, but it's a different sort of programming. He got the job, he worked for a couple of months, then he left. It was hard to map the knowledge from one domain into another, even if related.

A friend of mine who had a degree in medical billing and coding, found herself obsolete at her job. After working for three years at a startup, the company grew and they purchased new medical billing software. In a month, they trained the entire staff, and there was nothing left for her to do. All the work was automated and it didn't take long for her employer to kick her out of the company. It was as if her four years degree was no longer worth the money.

The prestigious degree of one generation, becomes irrelevant in the next.

The web is filled with motivational speakers who urge you not to work for someone else. The only way to achieve true wealth is to get out there and make a name for yourself. You have to have hunger, and hustle until you make something you can be proud off. Usually these people will throw in a few names like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and a few other names we are familiar with.

These names are supposed to exemplify people who followed nontraditional paths and became wealthy. It is true, if you put your self out there, you might just strike fortune just like those famous names. But, for every Bill Gates, there is Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella. For every Steve Jobs, there is a Tim Cook. There is a Sundar Pichai, a Lisa Su and many more name of successful people. What these people have in common is that they are not company founders. They are employees. Yet, they hold the same prestigious titles.

There isn't one path to riches. Starting your own thing will most likely result in failure. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something we dismissed. It could turn into years of struggle, and failure, and most likely, never becoming rich.

Instead, think of your time as investment. How much time does it take to achieve a certain financial success through self employment versus a regular job. If financial success is the goal, the shortest time is always better option. Remember, a job can be less stressful than starting your own company. And it can pay just as well. See the names of people I listed above, they chose the career path.