[Lim Woong] When competence becomes cheap

Last spring, I sat through a presentation by some of my graduate students and felt something I had not felt in twenty years of teaching: the quiet panic of being surpassed.

Their slides were better than mine.

The analysis looked like professional work.

My students had not yet achieved mastery.

But they were wielding AI tools in ways that made them look like experts.

We are in the middle of one of those periodic crises in which an entire society must renegotiate the meaning of expertise.

We have ...