BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS

Has relying on tech affected the way

we learn?
1 Warmer

a. Discuss the questions.

1. For what daily tasks and activities do you rely on technology?

2. What examples do you predict to find in the article of tech making us more stupid?

3. How do you think our use of technology has affected how we learn and remember new things?

4. Do you think there should be limits to what technology can be used for? Give examples to support
your opinion.

5. Do you think the consequences of our tech habits are overall more positive or negative?

2 Find the information

a. Skim the article to find different words or ideas that support the title of the article.

3 Key words

a. Read the definitions and find key words in the article that match them. The paragraph number
is given in brackets to help you.
Check your answers and your understanding of how the words are used by using the same
word to complete the example sentence immediately after each definition.
Then read the complete article to see how each of the key words is used in context.

1. gradually reduce the strength or importance of something (subtitle)

His popularity was gradually by rumours that spread through

the office.

2. something that makes it more difficult for someone to do something or more difficult for something

to happen (paragraph 2)

The rising cost of fuel was an to the success of their

logistics business.

3. a way of saving time or effort in doing something, often a method that produces a result that is not
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good enough (paragraph 2)

We had a presentation the next day, so we thought we could reuse old slides as a

, but our plan backfired.

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4. remember ideas or information (paragraph 2)

The test showed that the group of students only 30% of the

information they had read the previous week.

5. a time when an important change takes place in a situation, especially one that makes it better

(two words, paragraph 5)

The invention of Intel’s Pentium M microchip was an in tech history.

6. hard, boring work (two words, paragraph 5)

My first year as an intern, I had to do all the and received none of

the credit.

7. avoid accepting or dealing with something that you should do (paragraph 5)

The warehouse team barely disaster after a severe snowstorm hit

the area.

8. learn something thoroughly so that you know it or can do it very well (paragraph 7)

Even after a year of using the new design software, Phoebe felt like she had still not

it.

9. a period of time between two events (paragraph 8)

It is important to step away from your desk and stretch at regular

throughout the day.

10. a set of rules for solving problems or doing calculations, especially rules that a computer uses
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(paragraph 8)

There is some concern that might increase discrimination if they are

not correctly and inclusively programmed.

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11. add something to something else to make it bigger or more satisfactory (two words, paragraph 9)

They wanted to their product offer by making the bags available in

three more colours.

12. a situation that involves a lot of risk or serious consequences (two words, paragraph 9)

They have scheduled a meeting to examine our tax compliance.

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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS
Has relying on tech made us more stupid?
LEANING TOO HEAVILY ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN ERODE OUR TOLERANCE FOR THE REPETITIVE
ACTIONS THAT HELP US ACTUALLY LEARN
DAVE LEE
1 I was driving home from Palo Alto to San Francisco,
a journey I’d done dozens upon dozens of times
before. Only this time, I faced a problem: a phone
without power; a journey without GPS. I missed my
exit and became hopelessly lost in streets less than
a mile from my home. How embarrassing: I claim to
love this city, and yet in that moment I felt I barely
knew it. Suddenly deprived of my tech, I was unable
to find my way, because I had never needed to
actually learn it.
2 I’m not arguing against the use of GPS. But I bring
it up to demonstrate that efficient technology can
be an impediment to learning. Only through effort
and repetition, without shortcuts, can we truly retain
useful knowledge.
3 Much has been written about GPT-3, one of the
world’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems.
It can do things that would have been considered
science fiction just a few years ago, such as
generate realistic-sounding articles, or translate
between languages it has never seen before. It does
so by learning from a vast amount of text, and then
making predictions based on that data.
4 (It also wrote that last paragraph, using just the
prompt “much has been written about GPT-3”. I’d
like to think I would never stoop to using that writing
cliché, “like science fiction”.)
5 This kind of AI-generated text is creating waves
in academia. It’s an inflection point from which we
should be careful in how we proceed. A recent Vice
article detailed how a community of students was
using GPT-3 (and other similar AI text programs) to
do the grunt work in writing essays, filling in context
and saving time. Because the AI-generated text was
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“unique”, it allowed students to evade anti-plagiarism
detection software. “I just use AI to handle the
things I don’t want to do or find meaningless,” said
one student.
Dave Lee, 22 November, 2022.
© The Financial Times.
All rights reserved.
Articles republished from the Financial Times.
Published by Macmillan Education Ltd. © Macmillan Education Limited, 2023.
6 Is the student cheating? You could argue convincingly
in either direction. It’s maybe simpler to ask whether
the student is cheating themselves, to which the
answer is surely yes. Those things students don’t
want to do are what underpin retention. Writing,
rethinking, retaining, over and over.
7 Practice makes perfect. We’ve all heard of the
“10,000 hours rule” – the amount of intensive practice
supposedly needed to master something – but we
have many ways to make the same point: repetition
means remembering. Remembering means learning
and mastering.
8 Hermann Ebbinghaus, a psychologist who
studied the benefits of repetition, illustrated this
with his “forgetting curve” – demonstrating how
knowledge escapes over time if not consciously
remembered – and “spaced learning”, repetition
over regular intervals. His work has influenced how
we learn for more than a century. It’s the difference
between becoming an expert and merely passing
a test. Does a student deserve an “A” grade if the
algorithm does the legwork? He or she becomes
no more aware of the subject than I was of my
direction home.
9 Besides, experts in the capabilities of today’s AI warn
against it in a blunter sense. Nathan Baschez, creator
of Lex. Page, a word processing system that can be
used to summon GPT-3 to bulk out your sentences,
told me it should be used with great caution in “high
stakes” environments like journalism or academia.
10 “GPT-3 can just make up facts that aren’t true and
say other things that are nonsense,” he said. But it’ll
only get better. It’s always learning. Are we?
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4 Understanding the article

a. Choose the best way to complete each sentence according to the article. Underline the
information that you used to support your answer in the text.

1. Deprived of his GPS, the author …

a. realised he had never had to learn his way home.

b. decided to take a shortcut home.

2. Efficient technology …

a. can help us learn more easily.

b. can prevent us from learning.

3. The paragraph about GPT-3 was written …

a. after doing a lot of research online.

b. by artificial intelligence.

4. Students are cheating …

a. themselves by using AI to write their papers.

b. and committing plagiarism with AI.

5. In order to remember something, we need to …

a. be prepared to forget it.

b. repeat it many times.

6. The Forgetting Curve is about forgetting things that …

a. are not remembered and repeated at regular intervals.

b. we have not mastered yet because we don’t have time.

7. GPT-3 needs to be used with caution because …

a. you can unknowingly commit plagiarism.

b. not everything it says is true.
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5 Business language

a. Find expressions in the text using the definitions below. The paragraph number has
been given.

1. depend on (two words, subtitle)

2. behave in the same bad way that someone else is behaving or do something bad in order to get
what you want (two words, paragraph 4)

3. cause problems, usually by making suggestions or criticisms

(two words, paragraph 5)

4. used for saying that repeating an activity or doing it regularly makes you very good at it
(three words, paragraph 7)

5. do the tiring or boring work that you have to do as part of a job, for example collecting information
from different places or (four words,
paragraph 5; three words, paragraph 8)

b. Discuss the questions.

1. Do you think we lean too heavily on technology?

2. Who has been creating waves in the tech or business world recently?

3. Do you believe “practice makes perfect” is true? What is an example that shows this expression?

4. Are there people in your team or company that do the legwork without receiving credit
or recognition?

5. Have you ever stooped to doing something you later regretted?

6 Discussion questions

a. Discuss these questions.

1. Do you think we ‘outsource our thinking’ to technology too much?

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2. Should AI be off limits when it comes to studies and work? Who should set these limits?

3. How can we encourage younger people to become better at learning and wean themselves
off technology?

4. After reading about how we learn, do you think tedious repetition is the correct way to teach?

5. Do you agree with the author that leaning too heavily on technology is making people stupid?
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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS

7 Wider business theme – AI and job automation

a. Look at the table below and answer the questions.

SHARE OF TASKS THAT ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO AUTOMATION

Production
High (70% – 100%) Food service
Transportation
Administrative
Maintenance
Construction
Agriculture
Medium (30% – 70%) Personal care
Protective
Health support
Sales
Facilities care
Health practitioners
Legal
Computer
Science
Management
Low (0% – 30%)
Education
Social service
Engineering
Arts / Entertainment
Business

(According to REPORT Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How machines are affecting people and places by Mark Muro,
Robert Maxim, and Jacob Whiton, 24 January, 2019)

1. Does any of the information in the table surprise you? Why?

2. How is your sector ranked? Why do you think it is (not) susceptible to automation?

3. Which areas or tasks in your future job do you expect to be automated?

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4. How can you prepare for such a future? What new skills might the workforce / your sector need
to develop in order not to be made redundant?

5. What new opportunities might automation present in these different sectors?

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b. Prepare a short presentation to convince your local government, industries, or organisations

to invest in training to prepare workers for the future. Address the points below. Do more
research to provide more evidence and support for your ideas.

• Explain how your job will be affected by automation.

• Explain what new skills people in your field will need to learn and how they can be developed.

• Describe new opportunities for individuals and organisations that should be embraced.

Possible useful language:

• According to the report, it is likely that … jobs will be automated.

• Since tasks such as … can easily be executed by robots/computers/algorithms, …

• The workforce for tasks like … will always be humans given the fact that …

• It is important to develop training programmes for workers in the … sector to …

• If we …, we can ensure a bright future for all.

Advanced

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 BUSINESS NEWS LESSONS
Has relying on tech affected the way
we learn?
Level: Advanced (C1–C2)
Time: Approximately 90 minutes (plus extra
time for research and presentation)
Business topics: Tech, learning, AI,
job automation
Business language: expressions
Activities: key words, understanding the text,
business language, discussion, presentation
about technology and job automation
Groups: Whole class, one-to-one, pair work
or small groups
Overview: This article shares examples of
how relying on technology makes us worse at
learning and remembering things.
1. Warmer
a. Put students into pairs or small groups and ask
them to discuss the questions. Elicit ideas from each
group. If you would like to extend this activity, ask
students to create a mind map of vocabulary related
to technology. Encourage them to include not only
nouns, but verb + noun collocations, noun phrases
and so on.
2. Find the information
a. Emphasise that students need to skim the article
quickly. Giving them a time limit of a minute might be
helpful. Then ask them to provide the example(s) they
found even if they feel unsure about their answers.
Key:
Advanced
3. Key words
a. Ask students to complete the task individually and
then compare their answers in small groups before
eliciting examples from the whole class. You can
also ask half the students to complete 1 to 6 and the
other half to complete 7 to 12 and then work together
to check and share their answers. If students need
support, encourage them to complete the activity
methodically by first reading the definition and
example sentence, identifying the part of speech, and
then scanning the paragraph for that part of speech.
As an extension you can encourage students to use
an online dictionary to learn what other words can be
used with the words in the task.
Key:
1. erode; eroded
2. impediment
3. shortcut
4. retain; retained
5. inflection point
6. grunt work
7. evade; evaded
8. master; mastered
9. interval; intervals
10. algorithm; algorithms
11. bulk out; bulk out
12. high stakes; high-stakes
4. Understanding the article
a. Ask students to scan the article for the information
in each statement. Then to examine the answer
options. Ask students to compare their answers before
checking with the whole class.
Key:
1. a (Suddenly deprived of my tech, I was unable
to find my way, because I had never needed to
actually learn it.)
2. b (efficient technology can be an impediment to

getting lost without GPS, artificial intelligence learning. Only through effort and repetition, without
doing the work, AI generated text, not practising, shortcuts, can we truly retain useful knowledge.)
no repetition, no spaced learning, algorithm does 3. b (It also wrote that last paragraph, using just the
the work prompt “much has been written about GPT-3”.)
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4. a (It’s maybe simpler to ask whether the student
is cheating themselves, to which the answer is
surely yes.)
5. b (repetition means remembering)
6. a (demonstrating how knowledge escapes
over time if not consciously remembered – and
“spaced learning”, repetition over regular
intervals)
7. b (“GPT-3 can just make up facts that aren’t true
and say other things that are nonsense.”)
5. Business language
a. Ask students to find the expressions in the text and
compare their answers with a classmate before
checking with the whole class. Check understanding
by asking the class to come up with their own very
simple definition for each expression.
Then ask students to look at the table individually
before working in pairs or small groups to discuss
the questions. Set a time limit and ask one person
from each group to summarise their discussion in
five sentences.
b. In the same groups, ask students to work together
to brainstorm the different points that they might
include in the presentation. You can decide to either
let students present individually or in groups of three,
where each student covers a point.
Encourage students to use the phrases provided
to structure their presentations. Also encourage
them to choose a few words from the Key Words
and Business Language sections to include in
their presentations.

Key:
1. lean (heavily) on
2. stoop to
3. create waves
4. practice makes perfect
5. do the grunt work / do the legwork

b. Allow students to discuss in small groups or with

the whole class. Keep corrections focused on the
target expressions.

6. Discussion questions

a. Put the students in pairs or small groups and ask

them to discuss the questions. When students have
covered all the questions, bring the whole class
back together so that they can share their answers
and any interesting information that arose from
their discussions.

7. Wider business theme – AI and job

automation
Advanced

a. First ask students what they understand by job

automation and ask them to give you a few examples,
e.g., people using a ride-hailing app like Uber instead
of calling someone who used to be in charge of
sending and managing cabs. Technology now does
their job – the role is automated.
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