Lead:
Bassim Salamah Al-Qulayti writes in Al-Jazirah that artificial intelligence tools now allow students to complete homework instantly, but at the cost of learning itself—the process of thinking, attempting, failing, and discovering error. Meanwhile, Abbas Qasim Al-Milahi examines a parallel question of digital loss: who inherits one's encrypted phones, cloud accounts, voice messages, and family photographs after death, and whether digital memory will remain trapped behind passwords unknown to heirs. Both pieces signal anxiety about technology's role in eroding human experience—one in real time, one after death.
Voices & Positions:
In Al-Jazirah, Bassim Salamah Al-Qulayti argues that artificial intelligence shortcuts rob students of cognitive struggle. School aims not merely to deliver correct answers but to teach the path to them—thinking, trial, error correction, and genuine understanding. Replacing this process with instant AI responses leaves students with completed assignments but absent minds.
In Al-Jazirah, Abbas Qasim Al-Milahi contends that digital inheritance has become an urgent family matter, not philosophical luxury. Saudis now live substantial portions of their lives inside phones and cloud accounts; when they die, those archives—photographs, voice recordings, personal data—may vanish behind forgotten passwords or be erased by distant technology companies. The question is no longer theoretical.
In Al-Jazirah, Salih Al-Shadi challenges a false conflation between Saudi Arabia's sacred sites and restrictions on citizens' cultural expression. The kingdom is not a theocracy controlling private life detail by detail, he writes; it is a sovereign state with institutions, proud of its faith and history, but distinct from a guardian micromanaging how citizens live. Arts and entertainment do not violate the holiness of place.
Tension & Convergence:
All three writers share concern that modern systems—digital or institutional—can efface human agency and memory. Al-Qulayti and Al-Milahi both lament loss: one of intellectual struggle, one of access to personal history. Al-Shadi diverges sharply, rejecting the premise that cultural practice necessarily desecrates sacred ground; he insists on separating reverence for place from permission for human flourishing.
Editorial Takeaway:
The dominant voice today is one of anxiety about invisibility—whether the human mind fades behind automation, whether digital lives disappear after death, or whether cultural identity dissolves under conflated notions of sanctity and control.