Anger control tips

By Syed Hashim Abbas Bukhari  In the age-old debate about the pros and perils of Artificial Intelligence (AI), one of the main stances of the Luddites is the absence of emotions in AI thus making it ill equipped to handle situations requiring empathy and emotional intelligence. However, one could argue that this point of distinction between humans and AI is rapidly vanishing as we witness our younger generation increasingly suffering from the phenomenon of emotional desensitization. Let us take a walk through the realms of social media. When our country was fighting a war, the younger generation was engaged in its own meme war on social media, seemingly unaware of the seriousness and gravity of the situation. Whether the world was on the brink of World War 3, facing a new global pandemic or staring down the barrel of rocketing oil prices, the reaction of the younger generation showed alarming levels of emotional desensitization. Instead of intellectual debates, protests, or striving to find a solution, the younger generation indulges in creating memes designed to generate nothing more than likes, shares, and comments. According to researchers, emotional desensitization is a form of emotional numbing or habituation where a situation that triggered a strong feeling no longer affects you as intensely. This is becoming a rising area of concern for our elders who equate our response to these dire and serious situations as a lack of maturity and emotional sensitivity on our part. The argument presented over here is that owing to our access to endless streams of information our generation should be more emotionally evolved as compared to our predecessors. The reality, however, seems contrary to this belief, as our exposure to warfare, natural disasters, and other calamities increases, our levels of emotional sensitivity has seemingly taken a nosedive. The question that should be raised is whether we should be classified as emotionally desensitized or is it our generation just whistling past the graveyard. It is a basic human psychology that when we experience grief or trauma, which is too much to process, we use various coping mechanisms. For some of us it may be anger, humor, violence or isolation but we all have coping mechanisms enabling us to survive various emotionally charged experiences. A study of social behaviors reveals that with the passage of time we have changed our coping mechanisms. In the past humans used to display their emotional trauma or suffering through anger and sought comfort through social gatherings. In the case of our generation, social media has taken the place of social gatherings, and anger has been replaced with humor. Thus, the endless stream of memes, reels, and shorts on every emotionally charged event.  Our stance on mental health, gender equality, racism, climate change, and countless other previously ignored or snubbed issues prove us to be a more emotionally sensitive and mature generation. We are the generation that believe that actions speak louder than words. We may seem to be whistling past the various graveyards or making light of serious situations but we are the generation that is breaking down the glass ceiling, bringing down the walls of inequality, and trying to build a society that embodies the morals and values of justice, kindness, and integrity for all. With each new generation the prioritization of emotionally sensitive areas may change, the coping mechanisms may be adapted according to the changing environment, or ways to display emotions may evolve but the thing to understand is that we haven’t become emotionally disengaged or desensitized, we are only embracing our emotions in our own distinct way. As Hazrat Ali (AS) said: “Do not force your children to behave like you, for surely they have been created for a time which is different to your time.”

By Syeda Samar Zahra Zaidi When you ask an AI chatbot a question it does not know the answer to, an odd thing can happen: instead of hesitating or saying, “I am not sure!” it confidently delivers a tidy, well-structured, completely fabricated response—often with fake citations, fictional figures, and an authoritative tone. This phenomenon is known as the ‘hallucination trap ’, and it may be the most significant barrier between trust and artificial intelligence. I was introduced to the term “AI hallucination” for the first time in the workshop under the project titled “Digital Trust and Free Expression in the AI Era” at Department of Media and Development Communication, University of the Punjab, supported by the U.S. Mission to Pakistan in partnership with the Pakistan-U.S. Alumni Network (PUAN). I learned that a “hallucination” occurs when a language model produces information that sounds convincing but is factually incorrect or completely made up. Examples include inventing a legal case that never existed, citing a research paper that doesn’t exist or boldly misrepresenting a historical date. What is disturbing is not merely that AI can be wrong-humans make mistake too- but rather the way it presents that incorrect information with clearly, confidence and without a trace of doubt. Large language models are essentially highly complex pattern predictors trained to produce the most likely next word in a sequence. As a result, when a model has encountered a topic thousands of times in its training data, the predictors are typically accurate. However, when it comes across a gap, an unidentified fact or a question at the outer edge of its knowledge, it doesn’t shift into a hesitant mode. Instead, it continues doing exactly what it was trained to do: generate a logical, fluent piece of writing, producing a response that is structurally sound and grammatically correct but based on nothing. In human communication, confidence is generally perceived as a sign of strength which is important. We naturally prefer to trust a calm, reliable voice over a hesitant one. AI systems unintentionally exploit the tendency because their language remains confident whether they are right or wrong. The risks increase with the use of AI, as students may unintentionally include false information into their work and journalists have published articles citing artificially created sources and quotes, negatively affecting the credibility of their publications. Such inaccuracies influence what millions of people see, believe or share, thereby amplifying fabricated content. The reason AI does not simply say “I don’t know” is partly due to the way these systems are trained. Many models are designed to provide helpful, comprehensive-sounding answers and are rarely rewarded for expressing doubt during training. This means that a model that frequently acknowledges uncertainty may be judged as less helpful than one that consistently provides an answer, even when that confidence is occasionally misplaced. Such incorrectly aligned incentives arise when the training process gradually teaches the model that sounding confident is more valuable than being accuracy. Retrieval-augmented generation, which relies on responses in actual, verifiable records rather than internal memory alone, improved training techniques that explicitly account for uncertainty; and systems built to simply cite sources. So, users can independently verify claims are just a few of the ways developers are using to addresses this problem. While none of these solutions fully eliminate hallucination yet, taken together they represent a major shift from blind confidence toward earned trust. The most dangerous outcome is not an AI that makes mistakes but a culture of users who stop questioning because the system always sounds so sure of itself.   Therefore, until AI becomes more reliably aware of it own limitation, part of the responsibility falls on the people who use it: treating AI-generated output as a starting point rather than an endpoint, cross checking important facts against credible sources. In the end, the hallucination trap serves as a reminder that illusion is not the same as truth. As AI becomes increasingly common in education, digital media and everyday life, understanding why it occasionally lies with confidence is not only a technical curiosity but also a fundamental aspect of digital literacy. We must strengthen our ability to verify the information provided by AI as they become more persuasive. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Mission to Pakistan or USEFP. The writer, Syeda Samar Zahra Zaidi, is a student of Media and Development Communication at  University of the Punjab, Lahore and can be reached at samarzahra456@gmail.com.