by ZEENA BANY HAMDAN
In an era when AI delivers the answer before the question is even asked, the sanctity of wonder is slipping away, and soon the act of asking might vanish entirely.
As long as I can recall, I used to roam as a child with curiosity dripping from my mind; it used to be a thrill to unravel things as I slowly reached their core. Now, the world answers before the question has even bloomed. We are witnessing the gradual erosion of curiosity, and yet people remain inert in the face of this dire problem.
Nowadays, with the omnipresence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), people are constantly fed ready-made information, dissuading any need for independent thinking. The serendipity once found in plunging into books or clicking on obscure hyperlinks in Wikipedia pages or blogs is dissolving. This absence emerged after people stopped researching for their essays, school papers, or simple knowledge for mere convenience and time-saving, which causes a lack of nuance. While it is time-saving, researching something can also educate you on the topic and introduce you to new information about miscellaneous aspects—information you will not find by solely reading summaries or AI overviews. AI in search engines should be disregarded, as most of the information it generates is speculative at best and entirely erroneous at worst.
This dilemma is also evident in education, as students these days tend to care solely about their academic evaluation. Grades have outrivaled curiosity as thinkers are being raised to cease to think for the sake of wonder, only for the sake of passing. In the past, learning for university students was all about devouring knowledge, not just for exams, but also for the sake of curiosity and intellectual interest. Whereas the hunger for knowledge nowadays has dulled; students focus on searching quickly for keywords, underlining what will be in the exam, and ignoring what does not provide a grade.
A recent study conducted by the MIT Media Lab, covered by Time magazine, found that students who utilized AI to write their essays showed the lowest brain activity because they did not go through the meticulous process of thinking and questioning; they skipped over the effort and struggle that gradually constructs understanding. Those same students had more trouble retaining information from their essays and recalling it later. The idle process of copying and pasting without putting in real thought and engagement strips away the joyous uncertainty of wonder, which leads to a decrease in emotional investment when the answer is delivered before curiosity has even sprouted. In fact, this instant gratification is gradually prevailing over a multidimensional understanding of things; it reinforces the seeking of immediate interpretations and shallow thinking, rather than embracing ambiguity and complexity. As a result, students’ potential begins to freeze; they get used to avoiding thought, and over time, this reliance on AI will negatively impact their ability to question, reason, and analyze. If students stop using their cognitive abilities and neglect critical thinking, they risk becoming intellectually subservient.
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