Beyond the Fascination

Introduction

"Time and tide wait for no man". We hear this constantly, whether from the CEO of Nvidia or from artificial intelligence companies pushing the narrative that AI is the new norm - one we must either embrace or be left behind by.

• Everywhere we turn, people are offering advice on how to optimize AI in our daily work.
• However, while I feel a sense of excitement about these advancements, I also harbour some serious reservations.

The Illusion of the Infographic

The most immediate impact I see in daily life is the lightning-fast generation of AI videos and infographics.

• Yet, far from being excited by these excellent graphics, I find myself a bit old-fashioned; I am not a person who loves visuals for the sake of it.
• In fact, it often takes more time to digest an infographic because we have to decipher the sequence and figure out the core message.
• More critically, infographics risk omitting crucial details that we might easily dismiss.

We need to look beyond mere fascination and focus on actual substance.

• What truly shines in any work is never how the cover looks, but the originality of the ideas inside.
• Currently, AI-generated content is mostly abstract and generic. I once watched a speaker present a slide deck generated by AI; it was flashy and filled with nuanced vocabulary, but it completely missed how humans actually learn.
• We crave real, actionable takeaways.
• In the years to come, I hope attending an information-sharing session does not become like going to a modern cinema - where we no longer care about the actors' skills, so long as we can tolerate the storyline.

Furthermore, a much more dangerous issue is the hallucination of information.

• If you use AI to generate content, you must proofread it meticulously.
• You can provide the AI with perfectly accurate facts and flawless inputs, yet the final output can still be filled with glaring errors and fabrications.
• The tool simply cannot be trusted to preserve factual integrity on its own.

The Erosion of Critical Thinking

An even more dangerous trend I have noticed is how an overreliance on AI can erode critical thinking through a phenomenon known as "cognitive offloading".

• Whenever we face a difficult question, we immediately jump to an AI chatbot, robbing our brains of the opportunity to problem-solve.

With AI so readily available, children exposed to it in early education may misuse its convenience for homework.

• On the surface, they find the correct answers with ease, but they completely skip a vital developmental phase: struggling to think through a solution and persisting through frustration.
• These struggles are essential for developing stress-management skills in adult life.
• In the past, it was unheard of for a medical graduate to break down at home from work stress or want to quit their internship after a few tough shifts.
• It is a sobering observation that younger generations risk becoming more fragile because they are born into comfort and abundant resources, rather than growing through hardships where they must navigate hurdles and push through challenges.

The Surface of Research

As a healthcare professional, another trend I have noticed is the rise of self-taught sharing sessions focused on maximizing AI in research.

• People are utilizing AI to identify literature gaps, conduct reviews, and even draft manuscript discussions.
• While tools like NotebookLM are useful for synthesizing ideas, we must realize that we are skipping the actual hard work of deeply reading manuscripts to truly understand a topic.
• We are essentially skimming the surface and commenting on what "could" be the truth.

Even more frightening is the hallucination of consistency.

• We might feel we are creating new frameworks through AI analysis, but the tool's responses are never consistent.
• Today, an AI might grade your work at an 85; tomorrow, another AI agent might decide the work is not even grounded in reality.
• Their answers are often cherry-picked based on random search results.

AI can read generations of hard work and produce a summary, but it is merely feeding on the past.

• The only way to move forward in research is through innovation and the key opinions that ultimately shift the field.

Tools, Not Truths

AI is undoubtedly capable of solving many things, and there are moments when I look up information using these tools myself.

• I encourage everyone to put them to use, but we must treat them strictly as tools - like a technical expert whom we consult on how to perform a task.
• In daily life, we need to remain skeptical of the information AI feeds us, questioning it just as we would question a friend, rather than accepting it with blind faith.
• Interestingly, if you debunk an AI's point and argue back with a valid argument, it will quickly change its stance and agree with you.

Ultimately, AI is a tool to find information, but it is never the source of truth.

• It should not be your only connection to knowledge.
• There remains a profound human need to look beyond the virtual world and truly connect with diverse opinions and real human beings.