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The GPT Gaze: How AI is Turning Our Students to Stone

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By Muhammad Bilal Iftikhar Khan


We face a grave and gathering threat, one that too many of us either fail to see or, worse, choose to ignore. This is an assault on our intellectual roots and our very perception of reality. If our government and intellectual leaders do not confront this, the structuralist approach to knowledge embedded in modern technology will devastate our future generations.

My sixteen years in electronic media taught me the precise mechanics of influence and perception building, the art of forging realities from crafted narratives. Whether you call it propaganda or information warfare, this threat is fundamentally anti-foundational. Create a perception that serves your purpose, and people will inevitably follow the reality you have constructed.

In Greek mythology, Medusa was a beautiful woman whose gaze could turn men to stone. Knowledge and language hold the same paralyzing power. Thinkers like Derrida and Foucault introduced deconstruction to uncover the real meanings behind our concepts. Yet, we humans cling to the illusion that words have fixed meanings, a fatal vulnerability that propagandists and information warriors are all too eager to exploit.

I left the media industry in 2022. Today, I teach at a leading university in Lahore and am pursuing a PhD in International Relations. I consider myself privileged to have studied under luminaries like Dr. Usman Askari, a veritable wizard of IR Theory; Dr. Shoaib, a guru of Security Studies; and Dr. Fatima Sajjad, an authority on colonialism and its enduring effects. The insights I have gained from them have been more profound than anything I learned in my sixteen years as a current affairs journalist.

Now, to the heart of the crisis. In the classroom, I witness a disturbing and near total dependency on Artificial Intelligence for assignments and exams. No matter how much effort and time I invest in them, students overwhelmingly prefer the shortcut. They no longer make notes or read books. The prevailing trend is to outsource their thinking to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, with about 95 percent relying on GPT alone.

The consequence is that their education is no longer shaped by their teachers, but by the algorithms of these AI models. They bypass the essential labor of research, and I have observed a profound decline in their ability to retain information. Research conducted in the United States confirms this, those who copy from AI do not remember what they have written, while those who work manually, engaging their own mental sweat, achieve true retention. I can state with certainty that this reckless use of AI is systematically dismantling our students' cognitive capabilities.

Furthermore, these AI models are built on a foundation of knowledge that is not aligned with our national interests. As Foucault wisely observed, no knowledge is neutral. It is always constructed for a specific purpose, for specific audience, to achieve specific outcomes.

Grading papers has become a disheartening ordeal. I routinely encounter answers that directly contradict what I have taught. For instance, a majority of my Pakistani students now describe the CPEC as a "debt trap", not because they have critically analyzed the data, but because GPT told them so. Similarly, many now believe the Kashmir issue originated from a "Pashtun tribal advancement," a narrative straight from the playbook of Western AI models.

We must remember that the same forces that created the Indian National Congress and vehemently opposed the Partition of India cannot be expected to generate knowledge sympathetic to a Pakistani worldview. Similarly, intellectual frameworks like the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis, coupled with assertions of universal values and cultural superiority, have never genuinely engaged with indigenous perspectives and experiences. To expect neutrality from knowledge systems born from such a foundation is a profound error. By becoming dependent on these Western models, we are not merely using a tool, we are programming an entire generation to think like the West. The result is the strengthening of a new coloniality, where Western intellectual hegemony dictates our perceptions and ultimately shapes our future.

I issue an urgent appeal to our government and academia to act decisively. We must break free from this colonial mindset. With every passing moment, this slavery to West-centric knowledge drains our intellectual vitality. If we continue on this path, we will face an ideological crisis that erases our identity and our values, reducing us to a generation of intellectual zombies, forever echoing a reality that is not our own.

 


About the Author

Strategic Analysis Group is an online forum of Pakistani journalists, who are contributing to provide a better understanding of strategic and international developments. It is done with objectivity without sensationalism that is prevalent in our so…

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