Steve King is formerly taught AI at Middlesex University Dubai, and spent 25 years launching technology across the Gulf before that. He refuses to call students cheating. His argument: they're under pressure to get the highest results and they use the best tool available, which is the system working exactly as designed. The same misdiagnosis, he says, is happening in offices right now.
"AI Won't Take Your Job. Your Manager Will"
Asked how to stop students misusing AI, he told a room full of academics to make it mandatory and approve everything. Three days later the UAE approved a mandatory AI curriculum for every public and private school. In this conversation he also explains what three weeks of total AI immersion did to him, why he now runs a 9pm test on himself, and why he insists his students say please and thank you in every prompt.
In this episode:
- Why banning AI in education was never the option
- Techies, practitioners and philosophers, and why the third group predicts behaviour best
- Why AI succeeds as a boss and fails as an assistant
- The 9pm test for problematic use
- What a "legacy human operator" is, and why manners in your prompts matter
- Why bolting AI onto your existing processes is wasting your time
Steve King was an Assistant Professor at Middlesex University Dubai who built a third year AI module inside an advertising programme and co-authored a 2023 paper on generative AI in education.
Brew Bytes. Real stories, from the people actually building it.
🎙️ Guests: Steve King
🎙️ Host: Nadeem Ibrahim
🌐 www.brewbytes.io