There is an understandable hype around Artificial Intelligence (AI), and you can see it everywhere in society.
Companies have rushed to adopt it in their services, schools have been haphazard in figuring out new policies on restraining students from overusing AI, and universities have rushed to develop courses and pitch themselves with the AI brand to entice students and investors.
Just recently, the University of Hong Kong (For full disclosure, this is the university I’m studying at) has announced a new “Artificial Intelligence Literacy” class that is “designed to empower all HKU undergraduate students with essential AI knowledge and skills.” The new course is part of a broader directive by the university to equip students with the knowledge of AI, as they integrate into the workplace that sees knowing ChatGPT or DeepSeek as more important than learning Photoshop or Microsoft Excel.
Accompanying the hype is an overzealous fondness towards AI. No, I am not talking about people romantically attracted to chatbots and AI products; I am talking about people in academia and business who are speaking of AI in more than glowing terms. If you have heard them speak, AI is the one single thing that is going to transform the world, we have to follow that trend that everyone is following (Even if the trend is leading to a cliff). They’re the visionaries who see it and demand everyone appreciate their “genius.”
On the other hand, workers and everyone who is not sitting in the ivory tower are worried about how AI is going to impact their jobs. For example, greedy businesses could use AI to substitute their work, cutting costs by firing lots of people. This could lead to rising unemployment, given that the job market has been persistently unstable over the past few years.
With all the hype and fear surrounding AI, there is a crucial misunderstanding with the technology that both people who champion and despise it are missing out on: It’s just a freaking tool!
I have often compared AI to a hammer: When it comes to specific tasks, like breaking stuff up or driving nails into a piece of wood, you can use it and enjoy the intended benefits. However, it cannot be used in other circumstances, like fixing brain cancer or tying your shoes, because it is not what it is intended to be used for!
We use hammers all the time in areas like carpentry and construction, but nobody who works in the industry fears they might lose their jobs because of a hammer! The difference with AI is that, because the technology is so new and powerful, we confuse ourselves by identifying it as the master tool to solve all problems.
One clear example is demonstrated recently with Duolingo, the language learning app. The company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, had to walk back from suggesting the company is shifting towards an "AI-first" approach after a dramatic user backlash. In a public climbdown, von Ahn wrote this to clarify his stance.
“To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before),” he wrote. “I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run.”
He added, “No one is expected to navigate this shift alone. We’re developing workshops and advisory councils, and carving out dedicated experimentation time to help all our teams learn and adapt.”
The clarification is a 180-degree turn from the company’s position a week ago, when it declared it would “gradually stop using contractors to do work AI can handle,” evaluate AI fluency in workers’ annual reviews, and only add new employees “if a team cannot automate more of their work.”
If done well, AI doesn’t need to eliminate jobs and replace workers, it can help divert workers’ priorities into something that can be more adeptly handled by humans than machines. Like the ATM and the internet, it doesn’t replace the work done by bank tellers or bookstore owners, it provides them with new opportunities that they can work with to boost their business.
However, one particular field that people need to tread extremely carefully is in education. Don’t get me wrong, learning about AI in schools is helpful to students in the long term. However, classes that over-rely on this technology to teach students can do more harm than good. For example, some teachers might allow AI to be fully used in class to help create pieces of writing or teach traditional idioms for an assignment or exam. Students could pretend that they have learned something from it, but in most likelihood, they have immediately forgotten what they were taught right after the prompt was copied and pasted.
When not done well, letting students learn through AI is like teaching them how to ace an exam by giving them the answer sheet. Sure, they can learn SOMETHING from it, but don’t expect them to learn as much as they could have through personal experience and trial by error.
If you know AI is just a tool, you would have more reasonable expectations of knowing how to use it, and have better knowledge of how it could benefit your life and job.
Thank you for this insight to AI—when people don’t understand something, they tend to imagine the worst.