Let me begin this week’s column with an aside. I just finished guiding this year’s Oxbridge applicants through their UCAS personal statements, and the experience left me with a clearer sense of what students can do long before application time to boost their chances of getting into their dream universities.

Consider entering one of the many writing competitions out there. (https://www.dragonknightleague.org/children-writing-contests/)  Most are free and easy to enter (just write and press “send”). Students who already have an idea of their future major can write stories and essays related to those fields. Take for example a 16 year-old who wants to be a heart surgeon. She could enter a fiction-writing contest, do research by reading memoirs of famous heart surgeons, and create characters and plots based on her findings. Win or lose, she’ll emerge with a deeper understanding of her future career. And when she applies to university, the story can act as proof of her genuine commitment to the field.

I inspire contestants by showing them how I would respond to topics posed by competition organizers. In the piece below, for example – my mock submission to The New York Times’ “Growing Up With A.I.” challenge  – I demonstrate how a personal anecdote can offer a fresh take on an issue that has almost been discussed to death. By seeing my approach, students gain confidence to craft their own unique angles.

Given topic (word limit is 450 words) (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/learning/growing-up-with-ai-a-multimedia-challenge-for-teenagers-and-educators.html )

• What’s it like to think, create, teach and learn at a time when artificial intelligence is transforming our world?

 

My mock submission (344 words)

 

Even though Olivia de Havilland was already an established actress by the time she took on the role of Melanie in “Gone with the Wind,” she came to appreciate the hidden depths of acting in the presence of her co-star Vivien Leigh.

While de Havilland had to gaze at her hair and costume in the mirror before filming as a way to get inside her character, Leigh had absolutely no need of such preparations. The film crew would announce they were ready to shoot, and Leigh, who had the habit of playing the game Battleship in-between takes, would, according to de Havilland, “get up from the game, go straight into the scene, and play it brilliantly. She was just a marvel.”

I underwent my own Vivien Leigh moments while writing my master’s thesis at Oxford, guided by a professor who not only held a doctorate from the same university but also graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. Whenever his phone rang during our one-on-one discussions, he would answer it, handle whatever practical matter that come up, hang up, and then dive straight back into the point he had been making, which often involved resuming a convoluted argument about an arcane school of thought mid-sentence (I was studying philosophy). His seemingly magical ability to steer his thoughts at will captivated me by revealing the limitless potential of the human mind. This is a subject that has continued to captivate me today, even though I have long ceased to care about the contents of my thesis.

Because Oxford was so transformative for me, now that AI tutors are upon us, I can’t help but measure their ability to replace humans by whether they can grant users the level of learning Leigh and my Oxford professor were capable of giving. Note that neither had any idea they were “teaching.” By simply living their brilliance, they became “a marvel” in the eyes of their students. AI grants us unlimited access to information, but can learning from a tool that requires prompting ever be as illuminating as witnessing human mastery in action?

 

---

多謝支持《追光者》，GoFundMe：
https://www.gofundme.com/f/pulse-hk-pulse-hk-crowdfunding-a-new-platform
Thank you for your support 🪔

🌟加入YouTube頻道會員支持《追新聞》運作🌟
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5l18oylJ8o7ihugk4F-3nw/join