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I am on this beach in Maine.
Atlantic Ocean, the tide is just going out.
So this part of the beach is nice and flat and clean.
We can see the waves coming in.
Now you can see the few boats in the distance.
Very, very tranquil, peaceful, wonderful scene.
You’ve got the gulls doing what gulls do.
Living for fish.
I must recommend this wonderful book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
which I suggest you should read.
I think it’s one of the finest books to read, to understand,
especially the concept of excellence in life.
I read it.
I read it many times.
The first time I read it when I was in school.
And it teaches the concept of excellence.
In that context, I would also recommend that you read all the books of Ayn Rand.
A-Y-N-R-A-N-D.
It also focuses on the concept of excellence, of taking pride in your work,
of building a legacy that you can be confident and proud about,
leaving behind some traces.
Unlike traces in the sand, which wash off every time the tide comes in.
But these are more long-lasting than that.
Now, all of that comes from one very, very important thing in life,
which is to actually do some work.
Not just the pretense of work.
To actually do some work.
The reason I’m saying that is because,
I was speaking to another very dear friend of mine who’s studying,
he’s doing his engineering in one of the Ivy League colleges here,
universities in America.
And he was telling me that,
I mean, he said it jokingly,
but obviously he understands the seriousness of that.
So he was telling me that,
people are submitting assignments using ChatGPT.
The whole thing.
And so he said,
professors have now a way of detecting where ChatGPT has been used and catching it.
But he says now they have come up with a tool where they do what is called humanizing ChatGPT.
So you don’t get the usual flat kind of writing.
That’s what I’m saying.
So you don’t get the usual flat kind of writing.
That’s what I’m saying.
You find with ChatGPT,
you get something which sort of sounds half a human.
And then of course,
we know how this technology develops and how it will,
it is capable of,
you know,
constantly improving and so on and so forth.
Simultaneously,
and so on.
This is,
I mean,
I think Allah guides and helps in ways we cannot imagine.
So,
while I was listening to this friend of mine saying these things,
I also got a message from another friend of mine who’s also doing engineering,
who sent me a New York Times article.
And lo and behold,
to my great delight,
I discovered that New York Times not only published the article,
but New York Times gives that article for you free.
So the firewall,
doesn’t affect it.
And I’m going to ask him to put it,
put that article into the description of this,
of this reminder.
And that article talked about an actual case,
complete case history of this person who,
the chatbot convinced him that he was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.
And,
um,
you know,
resulted in him,
in him,
um,
sort of actually falling into mental illness.
And good news is for in his case was that he managed to get out of it as well.
So he was able to break that,
which may not be obviously the case with everyone who falls into that kind of a trap.
So you have this case of these people like that,
uh,
also happening because of chatbot.
Another thing which happened again recently,
and all of these things,
I,
you know,
they happened together,
uh,
which in,
which is a message in itself is,
um,
two people wrote letters,
uh,
in which I was mentioned.
And very interestingly,
both the letters,
although these are two different people writing these two letters,
and,
uh,
they’re trying to make it seem as if they are two independent letters,
but they have both used chatdpt,
uh,
very clearly visible from the tone of the letter and so on.
And to the extent that the words they have used are the same,
the exact same words in both the letters.
Now,
so of course it is,
you know,
easy to laugh at this and say,
what kind of stupidity is this?
And it is stupid.
But I’m not talking about that.
I’m saying you’re getting in this cases of students in colleges who seem to be getting,
uh,
most of their work done using chatdpt or Gemini or one of the,
uh,
chatbots,
one of the LLM models.
Now,
I’m not against,
uh,
AI or,
uh,
LLM models and so on.
Although I never absolutely do not ever use chatdpt.
Um,
I don’t even use it for research,
but,
uh,
in some cases I use,
uh,
some other things,
um,
some other LLM models,
which I think are better for some research.
But my writing is always,
always,
always is me.
I never ever use any AI for a very good reason.
And that is that,
Alhamdulillah,
I am confident about my writing and I take pride in my writing.
And I take pride in the fact that I,
uh,
I want my writing to be my signature.
I want my writing to be something that,
that,
that I have done,
uh,
not something that some machine has done,
which I’m trying to,
um,
even if I don’t try to,
uh,
pretend that I did it,
but just to,
uh,
just to take it and copy paste it is something I think is beneath my dignity.
And it’s an insult to my intelligence and my,
uh,
talent and capability.
Final point before I,
uh,
close the roof to why I’m saying all this is a joke.
Uh,
quite a interesting joke.
Somebody said,
uh,
it’s,
you’d better take care of your health because doctors are using chat GPT to get their degrees.
Uh,
that is a very significant and point in point,
which I think is really worth thinking about.
Take care of your health because doctors are using,
using chat GPT.
I know I’m not talking about take care of your health.
It take care of your health anyway,
irrespective of what doctors are using and not using,
but take care of your,
but the fact of,
of the fact that doctors are using this chat GPT to get their degrees.
And we certainly know that,
uh,
it’s a very,
uh,
uh,
I don’t know if doctors actually using it,
but maybe they are,
uh,
with engineers.
Yes,
they are using,
I have,
uh,
statements from people in engineering colleges in America.
Uh,
so one can assume the same thing is happening as well in the world.
Um,
to say that people are using chat GPT to submit assignments and so on and so forth.
And either they are the LLM model creators are creating,
uh,
tools to prevent them from being caught out.
Question is this,
the question is when you go to a college,
what are you going there to do?
So ask yourself this question.
When you go to a college,
what are you going there to do?
And remember,
no matter what you do,
the fees is the same.
You’re paying the fee.
You are,
uh,
spending that time,
the three years,
four years,
whatever you are,
you know,
expanding energy and so forth.
All of that you’re doing.
None of that changes one bit.
Yet if you use an LLM model,
fuse,
uh,
chat,
GBT or Gemini or complexity or whatever you want to call it.
If you use that to,
to submit your assignments and so on,
what have you learned?
Right?
Two very important things.
What have you learned?
Nothing.
You’ve learned how to try to deceive the system.
Is that worth learning?
Is that your legacy?
Is that something that you want to be known for?
Somebody who deceived their way to get a degree.
Yeah.
Is that the epitaph on your headstone?
Is that something that you want to be remembered for?
That you are a cheat,
that you got this degree by cheating?
Number one.
Number two,
therefore what have you actually learned?
Well,
that’s a dumb question.
That’s what have you learned?
Nothing.
Because obviously if you had,
uh,
if you got the chance,
the chatbot to write your reports and your assignments,
you learn nothing.
And best you learn how to deceive.
Number three,
and that’s very important,
is you are sabotaging yourself because one of the greatest benefits,
one of the greatest rewards,
not even benefits,
one of the greatest rewards of going to university is the feeling of,
of,
of,
and of achievement.
The feeling of achievement that I have achieved this.
I have worked for this degree.
I earned this degree.
All the,
uh,
you know,
the,
the,
the,
the midnight oil I burned and when I was in business school,
we were on this course,
the executive,
executive MBA course from the Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad.
It was called the MEP, Management Excellence Course.
We used to study with the whole course was, it had, it was the fee was the same as the
two-year MBA program.
The fee was the same, the syllabus was the same.
So we were studying the same things that the regular MBA candidates were studying and we
did this course.
But we did the course in, you know, half the time, one, two-thirds of the time.
So the result obviously was that we had to work our butts off.
We had to study like hell.
We worked very, very, very hard.
And among the things we did.
It was, we, I mean, night outs was like the standard.
I don’t think I ever slept in that entire period.
I don’t think I slept for more than four hours in 24 hours on any day.
The course itself was so intense that we had to do this course.
There were no holidays, no festival holidays, no weekend obviously, no vacation, nothing.
There was a one week.
Break in the middle of the course where everyone went home.
That was the purpose of it.
But I couldn’t go because I had no money.
To attend the course, I had sold my car, used that money and the rest of it I borrowed from
my company, which loaned me that money.
They didn’t sponsor me.
I asked them for sponsorship.
They did not give it.
And they loaned me the money.
They cut my pay for all the months that I would study in this course.
They didn’t pay me my salary for that.
And they made me write a bond to say I would come back and work for three years thereafter
with the company.
Now, you’re not looking at was that a nice thing to do or not a nice thing.
Forget that.
I was committed enough to say I’m willing to do all of this without question.
I need the money.
This is the only way I’m going to get it.
So I took it.
I wrote.
I signed all those documents and I went for the course.
Now we used to do all nighters.
And we would.
There was a tea stall, a tea seller outside, just outside the gate of IIMA.
And he would sell tea and he would sell Maggi noodles.
Those of you.
I mean, Indians know what Maggi noodles are.
These are sort of, you know, quick done, quick do noodles.
They just open the packet, put it in the pan and you got it.
So we used to make the Maggi noodles.
So we used to eat the Maggi noodles and drink tea and then continue with our work all nighters.
And not just one day.
I mean, this was almost the norm.
Because one of the things about the IIMA was the case study method, which IIMA was pioneered
in India.
They took it from Harvard Business School.
Harvard Business School helped to set up as part of their collaboration to set up this
IIMA in India, which is the number one business school.
And so the one thing was case study.
Second thing was we had these snap tests.
So the only time you knew that you’re going to have an exam in this class on this day
was when the…
….
The professor walked in with a bunch of papers, which was the scoring sheets, in his arms.
So the moment you saw him walk in, you say, oh my God, this is going to be a test.
That’s all.
Otherwise you didn’t know that.
You didn’t know that he was going to test you.
So it meant, and the whole purpose of that was, that it meant that you had to be on top
of the subjects 24-7.
There were no days off.
You had to be on top of the subject.
The whole purpose was to be on top of the subjects 24-7.
the whole time and that’s what we did so we studied like hell and uh we did that now the
point is that and this was long before chad dp talked about 1985 the the whole uh experience
of uh of working hard of um you know uh sacrificing your your rest and sacrificing
your peace of mind and sacrificing your um um your your things that lead to happiness
on a side note i went for this course one month after i got married and i did not see my wife
or talk to her during the entire duration of the course not because i didn’t want to but because i
couldn’t afford to she had she went off to leeds to england to be with her parents
um because they didn’t allow family accommodation in the hostel in imamdabad and um i was in the
in the in the hostel in the college
these were the days before all the chat programs uh before you know um not just chat dpt but any
kind of chat so we didn’t have um facetime and we didn’t have whatsapp and all of that
so talking to somebody internationally
meant making an international telephone call from a landline uh awful connections you could
hardly hear the person and cost and cost a hell of a lot none of which i could afford so i could
not speak to her i didn’t see her for the duration of the course you have to make these sacrifices
to study to learn so my mba i got the hard way by actually learning by actually learning
concepts reflecting on them writing actually writing papers by experimenting in the field
and learning the truth of what i studied and in some cases learning that some of the stuff i
studied was rubbish but learning that from an experiential perspective right now this satisfaction
of having climbed the mountain this
satisfaction of working hard to achieve results you voluntarily deprive yourself of
that if you fall into this terrible thing of using chat gbd or any other LLM model
um to submit your subjects submit your reports and assignments and so on i was in a i won’t mention the
names and so on but i was in a country that i could go to l..o.l. not just l.o..l. have thoseще
rails, whoa..
dances u’re crazy Col centres I know if you know about it…
Am I wrong now?
the centre in airplane emotions business questions so one may think for sure End for two than another
country speaking at a University of Science and Technology and I was two
things struck me one was the whole place looked like it was on a fashion parade
every day and the clothing of people everyone in very fancy clothing very
very fancy handbags and the cafeteria was almost constantly busy so I think I
was thinking and I remember thinking to myself well when do they study because
they seem to be sitting around you know hanging out with their pal in the
cafeteria the whole time so when are they studying so after I
finished my lecture and so forth I was chatting with some other faculty and one
tells me they said to me you know there are students here and many of
them who pay the faculty members to write their theses
so I’m like oh my god they have all of these things for me I don’t know what to do with them
and I was thinking I remember thinking myself well when do they study because
And then of course I said, how do they defend it?
He said, well you know, probably the same guy who wrote the thesis is in the viva.
So not much, doesn’t take much to defend that. They pay them.
I said, what do they pay them? And he told me some astronomical numbers. He said, this is big money.
They pay them to get this thesis. So I said, fantastic. What a wonderful idea.
I wish I knew this. And I wish I had some professors
when I was doing my MBA who could, who were willing to take money
to give me a degree. But first of all, I wouldn’t do it if I had the money.
Secondly, I didn’t have the money. And thirdly, I had professors who would have kicked me in the teeth
if I even mentioned that I was going to offering them money to give me a degree.
And so I learned. Now the point I’m making here is,
whichever way you use, whether you get your degree using
chat, GPT or whichever model, or you get your degree
because you paid for it and there was some person there who was willing to take
money and write some stuff for you. The fact remains that you did
not actually learn that subject. Now, if you just want the degree,
you have to, you know, frame it and put it up on your wall. Well, maybe, maybe that works.
But if you are actually intending to work,
then it’s like getting a degree as a sailboat captain
and then you’re put into a sailboat and you are shoved off into the sea.
Then what happens? Then you drown. There’s no great mystery involved.
You drown. Because you don’t have the faintest idea how to sail a boat.
You have a degree which is worthless, which is not what the paper is written on.
And you have the degree because you are stupid enough to pay for it.
But you don’t know how to sail the boat. The exact same thing. If you are going to use
chat, GPT, submit assignments, the fact remains that you have not learned anything.
You don’t know that subject.
You are only able to submit your assignment because of the LLM you’re using.
Now, that is the most incredibly stupid thing that you could possibly do.
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s this requires much convincing for anyone who has any intelligence.
And if you don’t have intelligence, then obviously convincing doesn’t work.
But think about that. So you have spent the money in the college fees.
You spend the time and energy. You, you know.
But you have no satisfaction at the end of that. There’s no sense of achievement.
Now I can talk about I did my MBA in 1985. This is 2025.
Till today, when I think of my MBA, I’m not thinking about my degree.
My degree, frankly, has no great value apart from the fact that my institution is a very highly thought of institution.
And the institution has a lot of value.
It has a name. But at my age, in my consulting practice, nobody ever asked me for degrees.
They don’t care. They’re looking at my track record of what I have done with other clients.
And they talk to those clients and then they look to see what I can produce for them actually on the ground.
And if I’m adding value to them for which they are paying me.
They don’t care what degree I have or don’t have.
But I’m able to add value to them and I’m able to charge a fee which they are happy to pay because I know my stuff.
Because I know what I’m talking about.
Because I add value to them. Because I can actually help them.
But I could never do any of that if I had used ChatGPT or a…
compliant, dishonest professor or whatever to do my job for me.
So please, my dear friends, let me assure you.
Please do not sabotage your own future.
Don’t sabotage your own future by using ChatGPT or whatever to get you grades, to submit assignments.
Because you are cutting your own throat.
You are learning nothing. Your education is worth nothing.
Even though you paid for it. Even though you spent all the time in university.
And at the end of that, you cannot possibly have any sense of achievement because you know what you did.
You know what you did. You know you are a thief. And you know what you did.
Now why do you want to do that to yourself?
So please, stay far away.
From these things.
Be honest.
Go to the university to study.
To acquire skills.
Work hard.
Get those skills.
And then, you can stand tall and proud.
That you struggled.
You succeeded.
You achieved.
You earned your degree.
And today, you are able to actually do something worthwhile.
And help people.
And in the process,
make good money.
All because you stayed honest.
Honest to yourself.
Honest to Allah.
And honest to the community that will come to you.
All your clients, systems, and everybody else will come to you as you go forward.
I wish you all the best.
I wish you success.
I wish you honesty and integrity.
Which in my view, and to me, is the best.
And to me, is the number one value in life.
There is nothing.
There is no amount of money.
There is no power and authority.
There is absolutely nothing that compensates for honesty and integrity.
If you don’t have honesty and integrity, it does not matter what else you have.
And may Allah bless the noble Prophet.
And may Allah bless his family and companions.
May Allah bless you, O merciful ones.
And praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.