Spot the mountain lion in seconds

By Arooba Younas The surge in the use of Artificial Intelligence by businesses, corporations, and organisations has been illustrated by the latest McKinsey Global Survey on the state of AI. Accordingly, 88 per cent of organisations reported the regular use of AI in at least one business function, a 10 per cent increase from the results of the survey conducted in the preceding year. Indicative of business leaders’ desire to boost productivity and reduce operational costs, companies adopted AI to achieve greater efficiency. The reverberations of AI integration are felt in the splintering of the organisational pyramid, driven by the expansion of what a single individual can accomplish. However, flattening hierarchies is not tantamount to flattening skill hierarchies or democratisation of expertise. Research has shown that Generative AI (GenAI) has the greatest impact on the level of expertise required to perform jobs, resulting in an accelerated learning curve for entry-level workers. Whilst shortening the learning curve and the time it takes novices to gain competence at new tasks, the limits of GenAI in upskilling workers have been revealed in an experiment conducted by researchers from Harvard Business School’s Data Design Institute and Stanford University, involving 78 employees from IG Group, a UK-based fintech company. Dividing the employees into three groups of occupational insiders (professional writers), adjacent outsiders (marketing specialists), and distant outsiders (technologists), the experiment attempted to gauge whether marketing specialists and technologists could match the performance of professional writers in conceptualising and drafting articles for IG Group’s website while receiving GenAI assistance. The results revealed that AI levelled the playing field at the conceptualisation stage. However, when the nature of the task shifted to executing the ideas by putting them in writing, a prominent expertise gap emerged. Both with and without GenAI’s help, the writers produced the best work, with marketers coming close and technologists lagging behind regardless of AI use. The divergence in performance, despite AI support, is a portrayal of the “GenAI Wall”, depicting the point at which GenAI does not sufficiently reduce the expertise gap between occupational insiders and outsiders. This is indicative of GenAI’s limit in how far it can carry workers outside their domain expertise. Without foundational knowledge, it becomes difficult for outsiders to distinguish between effective and flawed suggestions generated by GenAI. As a result, they may rely on its outputs without applying the necessary refinement, critical judgement and contextual understanding. Nonetheless, the experiment has implications for business organisations, particularly for leaders who overestimate the abilities of AI. It can only hasten the competency of individuals who are adjacent to a domain, and not conjure expertise out of thin air. In this regard, work structure, which is already undergoing change, can be rethought along the lines of expertise. A more fluid work environment can be created, where, in lieu of strict job roles, boundaries can blur by converging adjacent specialists. However, the experiment is not an advocacy for hiring fewer novices. Studies have shown a reduction in entry-level role postings, falling by 32 per cent in 2025 compared to 2019-2022. This suggests a myopic conclusion drawn from GenAI’s putative capabilities, for it is beginners who, when assimilated into the company’s culture and learn through practice, become experts. By thwarting the pipeline of learners by letting AI take over early-career work, which actually led to the making of experts, today’s efficiency may be sacrificed for impoverished talent tomorrow. The latter has been represented by the AI boomerang effect – recent AI-related layoffs, which are now being quietly reversed – as reports indicated employers regretting layoff decisions. This is because of AI hallucinations as well as its inadequacy to replace the required context or institutional knowledge, which human employees possessed. Although the IG Group experiment was conducted in a Western context, its implications can be generalised across the world, particularly as the allure of AI has diffused across continents. However, the embracing of AI in the Global South, whether in businesses or other sectors, has to be accompanied by digital literacy, localised governance, and a research ecosystem. This is significant lest the adoption of AI brings with it downsides in the form of overdependence and a putative magic bullet solution to solving complex issues ranging from bad governance to climate-related disasters. Additionally, GenAI’s exposure to the labour market has caused faster materialisation of disruptions rather than productivity gains due to a higher risk of job losses, as AI-driven automation can close clerical and administrative positions, which have historically served as pathways to decent work. Conclusively, GenAI has brought the promise of enabling individuals to bridge their capability gaps. However, AI cannot replace expertise or be an all-encompassing fix because it relies on pattern recognition rather than understanding real-world context. Thus, the future of work is where humans can learn to effectively partner with AI, grounded in human judgement, and not replacing it.   Arooba Younas is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Lahore. She can be reached at info@casslhr.com.  

I have been suffering from this mental illness for so many years, and I don’t know what to do. Sixty-five percent of my life has been spent suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. My mother is Mahrukh Butt, and she is with me here in Lahore. I don’t know when these sufferings will end. It has crossed the limits, you know. I am in Lahore, Pakistan right now. The day before yesterday I was so unwell. I was in Lahore at my home, and I heard voices for more than five hours, and I was getting a severe headache, and I was going through hell, and I still am. I don’t know what to do. The sufferings have no intention of stopping. We are born into this world with no fault of our own, and there is only misery in this life. I hear voices almost every day for hours, and as you know, I have been having compulsions for more than fifteen years now, and that is not a joke. They tell me that if I don’t do the compulsions, then something bad will happen to me. I want to go to Karachi with my friend Alina Mehmood, who is six years older than me and used to come to our house in Islamabad when my father was alive, when we used to have parties at our house in Khudadad Heights. The party used to start at ten at night and go on till four in the morning, and the music was playing, and everything was rocking. I will go to Karachi by plane, and that will cost over forty thousand rupees, and I will go to Dolmen Mall and also to Liberty Books, though it is very expensive. The music in the background reminds me of London and Bangkok. My relative Hassan Raza Sherazi has gone to England, and I will go straight to Islamabad when he comes back, as a matter of fact. The thing I love to do is travel by plane. I love going to Thailand, and also writing books and articles. We went to New York City twice, to my father’s friend’s house in the suburb of Millburn. I love to write articles for Pakistani newspapers, although I get no money for doing so, as a matter of fact. A few months ago, I was in my bedroom here in Lahore, and I was waiting for the aliens to come and abduct me, but no one came. They had to take me to their planet or to the moon, although the American government is actually covering up aliens and these sorts of conspiracy theories, and they do not want the public to know the reality and the truth behind aliens. But I know that they exist. I am in Lahore, Pakistan right now. I spent twenty-five days in Islamabad, Pakistan, and now I have shifted into my house in Cantt. I really want to go to Karachi, Pakistan, as I need a break.