In the wake of the ChatGPT x tariffs brouhaha (plus taxing penguins and seals), all I can say is, I have little respect for people who use shortcuts and pretend they’re some genius for coming out with all these numbers.

We do use a lot of AI in our company but AI needs a lot of intervention from humans who train it. We reporters and editors, most of the time, have to correct the AI-generated data. AI relies on large datasets and predictive patterns to be able to do its thing but it doesn’t really do the thinking for the humans. It cannot generate the context so I had to scrap 90% of the summaries generated by our AI.

It cannot interpolate and extrapolate correctly if there are missing data—and we have a lot of missing data in the Philippines.

I tried it before.

More than a decade ago, I went straight to what was then the National Statistical Coordination Board when I was sifting through the national accounts data for a macroeconomic analytical piece I was working on. I also went to Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, just to try my luck and see if they have the data I was searching for. I went through ledgers upon ledgers of numbers to piece together a narrative that I needed. This was data analytics pre-AI. I had to give up because if I interpolated or extrapolated, there were weird/wild outliers and they were a lot of them—which made them less of outliers. This then made the whole thing incorrect or inconclusive. To think I already had the guidance of my siblings who know their econometrics (and my sister’s main job before was in econometrics)…

AI wouldn’t know whether the parameters you fed it was right or wrong, just like what White House did with the tariffs.

And as explained by those who redid the calculations, there was no accounting for elasticity (see blog entry the other day).

Anyway, I have yet to schedule my Data analytics course (which includes machine learning etc). I can’t seem to fit them in my calendar. It seems like I’m fully booked until June.

Yesterday was exhausting.

I cleaned my widows, stairs, roof, and rain gutters with my power washer. It took me hours.

I had the wrong settings in the video above but I corrected it so I was able to blast off the black bits on the cat balcony. I was able to reach the girls’ window but not from this angle.

I also repaired the doorknob in my daughters’ room that fell apart. My door knobs are not cheap, you know.

Never rely on a man for things that you can do yourself.