In the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), there is a story about the ultimate productivity hack.

It is the story of Badang. Before he became a legend, he was a slave, small and underfed, tasked with the backbreaking work of clearing the jungle. He was weak and tired.

Every night, he set a fish trap in the river to get extra food, but the next morning he found the trap empty, filled only with bones. He kept watch and eventually caught the thief: a terrifying water spirit known as Hantu Air.

Badang, fueled by desperation, wrestled the entity and tied its hair to a rock. The spirit was terrified and begged for its life. "Let me go," it said, "and I will grant you any wish."

Badang didn't wish for gold nor a princess. He wished for strength. He wanted the power to do his work effortlessly without getting tired. The spirit agreed, but on one condition: Badang had to eat the spirit's vomit.

Badang swallowed his disgust, ate the substance, and instantly transformed. He could uproot trees with one hand. He could throw massive boulders into the sea. He became the champion of the Sultan, doing the work of a thousand men single-handedly.

In 2026, we are all Badang. And generative AI is the vomit we just swallowed.

The vomit detail in the folklore is gross, but it is the most accurate metaphor for Large Language Models (LLMs). How does an AI model like GPT-4 or Gemini get so smart? It doesn't go to school. It ingests the internet.

These models scrape billions of websites, Reddit threads, fan-fiction forums, Wikipedia articles, and open-source code. It swallows the collective output of the human species, including our poetry, our hate speech, our math, and our memes. It eats the 'vomit' of human civilisation.

And just like Badang, by consuming this massive, messy, chaotic dataset, the model gains a superpower. It condenses the strength of millions of human minds into a single interface.

Before he met the spirit, Badang was limited by his biology. He could only chop one tree an hour. After the encounter, he cleared the entire forest by lunch. This is exactly how foundational models can help the modern worker.

• The Old Way: A junior coder writes 50 lines of code a day. They are limited by their memory and typing speed.

• The Badang Way: A coder using an AI agent (like GitHub Copilot or Cursor) writes 500 lines of code a day. They can even multitask while at it.

We are entering the era of the 'One-Person Unicorn.' Startups that used to need 50 employees can now be streamlined to just one person using AI agents to handle marketing, coding, and legal work. We have gained superhuman strength to do the work of an entire team without breaking a sweat.

In the legend, Badang’s strength attracted challengers. The King of Kalinga (India) sent his own champion strongman to test Badang. They competed in lifting rocks and wrestling. This mirrors the current AI arms race.

It is now no longer enough to just "be strong." Everyone has access to the Spirit now. If you are using GPT-4, and your rival is using GPT-5, you will lose.

The competition has shifted from "Human vs. Human" to "My AI vs. Your AI." We are just the handlers; the spirits are doing the wrestling.

Badang’s most famous feat was throwing a massive rock from a hill into the mouth of the Singapore River. That rock, known as the Singapore Stone, sat there for centuries. It was inscribed with ancient script that no one could fully decipher. This is the final, haunting parallel.

When we use generative AI, we produce massive amounts of content, including code, articles, and art, all at superhuman speed. We are throwing our 'Singapore Stones' all over the internet. But do we understand what is written on them?

Often, AI generates code that works, but we don't know how. It hallucinates facts that sound true but aren't. We are filling the world with powerful artifacts, inscribed with a language we sometimes struggle to decipher.

Badang became a hero, but he remained a servant to the Sultan. His strength was a tool, not his identity.

As we adopt these agentic AI tools, we must remember the lesson of the river. We have gained immense power, yes. But we got it by consuming the collective knowledge of the past.

We are strong only because we stand on the shoulders (and the data) of everyone who came before us. Use the strength wisely. Clear the forest, build the kingdom, but don't forget where the power came from.

In the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), there is a story about the ultimate productivity hack.

It is the story of Badang. Before he became a legend, he was a slave, small and underfed, tasked with the backbreaking work of clearing the jungle. He was weak and tired.

Every night, he set a fish trap in the river to get extra food, but the next morning he found the trap empty, filled only with bones. He kept watch and eventually caught the thief: a terrifying water spirit known as Hantu Air.

Badang, fueled by desperation, wrestled the entity and tied its hair to a rock. The spirit was terrified and begged for its life. "Let me go," it said, "and I will grant you any wish."

Badang didn't wish for gold nor a princess. He wished for strength. He wanted the power to do his work effortlessly without getting tired. The spirit agreed, but on one condition: Badang had to eat the spirit's vomit.

Badang swallowed his disgust, ate the substance, and instantly transformed. He could uproot trees with one hand. He could throw massive boulders into the sea. He became the champion of the Sultan, doing the work of a thousand men single-handedly.

In 2026, we are all Badang. And generative AI is the vomit we just swallowed.

The vomit detail in the folklore is gross, but it is the most accurate metaphor for Large Language Models (LLMs). How does an AI model like GPT-4 or Gemini get so smart? It doesn't go to school. It ingests the internet.

These models scrape billions of websites, Reddit threads, fan-fiction forums, Wikipedia articles, and open-source code. It swallows the collective output of the human species, including our poetry, our hate speech, our math, and our memes. It eats the 'vomit' of human civilisation.

And just like Badang, by consuming this massive, messy, chaotic dataset, the model gains a superpower. It condenses the strength of millions of human minds into a single interface.

Before he met the spirit, Badang was limited by his biology. He could only chop one tree an hour. After the encounter, he cleared the entire forest by lunch. This is exactly how foundational models can help the modern worker.

• The Old Way: A junior coder writes 50 lines of code a day. They are limited by their memory and typing speed.

• The Badang Way: A coder using an AI agent (like GitHub Copilot or Cursor) writes 500 lines of code a day. They can even multitask while at it.

We are entering the era of the 'One-Person Unicorn.' Startups that used to need 50 employees can now be streamlined to just one person using AI agents to handle marketing, coding, and legal work. We have gained superhuman strength to do the work of an entire team without breaking a sweat.

In the legend, Badang’s strength attracted challengers. The King of Kalinga (India) sent his own champion strongman to test Badang. They competed in lifting rocks and wrestling. This mirrors the current AI arms race.

It is now no longer enough to just "be strong." Everyone has access to the Spirit now. If you are using GPT-4, and your rival is using GPT-5, you will lose.

The competition has shifted from "Human vs. Human" to "My AI vs. Your AI." We are just the handlers; the spirits are doing the wrestling.

Badang’s most famous feat was throwing a massive rock from a hill into the mouth of the Singapore River. That rock, known as the Singapore Stone, sat there for centuries. It was inscribed with ancient script that no one could fully decipher. This is the final, haunting parallel.

When we use generative AI, we produce massive amounts of content, including code, articles, and art, all at superhuman speed. We are throwing our 'Singapore Stones' all over the internet. But do we understand what is written on them?

Often, AI generates code that works, but we don't know how. It hallucinates facts that sound true but aren't. We are filling the world with powerful artifacts, inscribed with a language we sometimes struggle to decipher.

Badang became a hero, but he remained a servant to the Sultan. His strength was a tool, not his identity.

As we adopt these agentic AI tools, we must remember the lesson of the river. We have gained immense power, yes. But we got it by consuming the collective knowledge of the past.

We are strong only because we stand on the shoulders (and the data) of everyone who came before us. Use the strength wisely. Clear the forest, build the kingdom, but don't forget where the power came from.