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.