There was this story about a school where the mathematics teacher decided to help his students cheat in an exam. The teacher believed that if he introduced the formulae, the learners would recall what they had been taught and complete the answer. If you are like me, you will remember a moment in an exam room when you could clearly visualise the page where the question was taken from, but all you could remember were the final steps. Yet what you needed was the first step, which you could not recall. The teacher, therefore, did the first few steps and wrote “continue from there.”
When the learners got the leakage, they quickly copied the teacher’s answer up to the point where he wrote continue from there. They cared for one another and made sure every classmate received the same help. At the marking, all the learners had the same answer to that question, including the phrase continue from there.
The teacher assumed that the learners only needed a jump start. In truth, they were helpless. Did those children need that kind of help? I do not think so. I believe there is nothing wrong with not being an A student. We were created differently to serve different purposes. If each person worked well within their abilities, I believe this world would function in a better way.
A doctor who qualifies through cheating is likely to misdiagnose and cause harm. In the same way, a driver who obtained a driving licence through shortcuts is likely to make costly mistakes because they never gained the experience required.
When machines choose for us
Life is becoming more complicated with instant experts who depend on textbook knowledge produced quickly with the help of AI. Think about the Human Resource process and how much is going wrong. You may have a candidate who has mastered AI prompts and can craft a very polished CV. On the other hand, the HR team is using AI systems to screen these CVs, and the system ends up shortlisting the AI-written CV. At the same time, there is a highly skilled and intelligent person who does not know how to craft a CV using AI and invests so many hours, but still cannot satisfy the artificial intelligence system.
Here, a machine selects a machine-made CV and leaves out the right candidate. In other words, it is purely a machine affair with the HR and Candidate never interacting in the real sense. The organization may end up with an average candidate simply because of how life is unfolding. In the end, both the skilled candidate and the organization lose.
We are different, and it is okay
I believe we need something more to help us understand our capacities and link people with what they are cut out for. I saw screenshots of a newspaper article that many people claimed had been published by lazy editors. I have not considered it a major issue. After years of writing, editing, and publishing, there is always that one nasty error that no one notices until you have already done mass production.
I was bothered by how people attacked the editors and the newspaper for using AI and forgetting to erase the prompt. To me, that is a minor issue. I am not encouraging laziness. I am simply saying that these things happen and that we shouldn’t split hairs about it. But as the screenshots circulated in several WhatsApp groups where I belong, they reminded me of “the continue from there” story. AI seems to be solving time-consuming tasks, but the chances of finding ourselves in the “continue from there” situation are increasing.
We must acknowledge that the uptake of generative AI is still a recent development, and we are all catching up at different speeds. I encourage people to learn how to use it, understand its possibilities, recognise its limitations, and know their role in its use. The early adopters need to be patient with those who are just coming in. We all started somewhere. As the dust settles, the hard worker will still be rewarded.
I also suspect that some of the people who responded to the issue used AI to craft their responses. Of course they were smarter not to leave the prompts in the post.
We need a reset
I think the bigger problem is the desire to sound smarter than we are. How can a world that wants to take shortcuts reset itself into a system that helps us appreciate our abilities and feel comfortable to pursue what we are without wanting to be someone else? I believe even with tools that make our work easier, the hard workers still will carry the day, but we first need an attitude change.
Without this reset, we are heading into trouble. We will assign roles to the wrong people. We will continue to “continue from there”.