SEPTEMBER 15 — This week, thousands of new students are stepping into Malaysian universities carrying the familiar essentials of campus life: luggage, laptops, chargers, notebooks and perhaps enough instant noodles to survive the first few weeks.

But this generation brings something else that previous university intakes did not have so readily at their fingertips. Before they attend their first lecture, open their first textbook or meet their first lecturer, many already have access to artificial intelligence capable of answering questions, explaining concepts, summarising readings and producing polished paragraphs within seconds.

For a generation that has grown up with smartphones, search engines and instant access to information, using technology is hardly new. What is different is the nature of the technology now sitting in their pockets. A search engine helps students find information; generative AI can appear to do the intellectual work with them — and sometimes for them. Give it the right prompt, and it can suggest an argument, structure an essay, explain a theory, prepare presentation points or rewrite an awkward paragraph.

This makes AI an extraordinary learning companion, but it also points to one of the first important lessons for students entering university today: knowing how to prompt is not the same as knowing how to think.

Prompting itself is not the enemy. In fact, communicating effectively with AI will increasingly become a useful skill in education and the workplace. A thoughtful prompt requires clarity about what a person wants, relevant context and an ability to refine a question. But new students should understand an important distinction from the beginning of their university journey.

A good thinker can become an excellent prompter, but an excellent prompter is not automatically a good thinker. A well-crafted prompt may produce an impressive answer without guaranteeing that the person reading it understands why that answer is correct, what it leaves out or whether it should be trusted at all.

This matters because university was never supposed to be simply a place where students collect answers. Higher education is where students learn to encounter uncertainty, wrestle with difficult ideas, compare competing explanations and gradually develop the confidence to form their own judgement.

Sometimes learning happens precisely because the answer does not come immediately. Reading something twice because it did not make sense the first time, struggling with an argument, asking a lecturer a question, disagreeing with a classmate or discovering that an assumption was wrong all have value. If students immediately hand over every moment of intellectual difficulty to AI, they may become highly efficient at completing tasks while quietly losing some of the struggle through which learning actually takes place.

The temptation will be understandable. University life can be overwhelming, particularly during the transition from school or pre-university education to a more independent learning environment. Unfamiliar academic expectations, deadlines, readings, group assignments and new social responsibilities can make it hard to keep up. When an AI tool can summarise a twenty-page reading in seconds, asking it to do so may seem harmless.

Sometimes it may even be useful. The danger begins when the summary permanently replaces the reading, the generated explanation replaces the attempt to understand, or the suggested argument becomes a substitute for forming one. Convenience should support learning, not remove the learner from it.

Perhaps a simple habit can help with this new intake: think first, prompt second. Before asking AI to explain a problem, spend a few minutes identifying what you already understand and where the confusion actually lies. Before requesting ideas for an assignment, develop two or three possibilities of your own.

When AI produces an answer, do not stop at "this sounds good”. Ask whether it is accurate, what evidence supports it, what perspective may be missing and whether you could explain the same idea without looking at the screen. Then verify what matters. In this way, prompting becomes part of thinking rather than a replacement for it.

This habit matters beyond university. The workplaces these students will eventually enter are also adopting AI. Employers will undoubtedly value graduates who know how to use emerging technologies, but access to the same tools will increasingly be available to everyone.

The real distinction may therefore lie elsewhere: who can recognise a weak answer, ask a better question, make a sound judgement, connect ideas that a machine has treated separately and take responsibility for the final decision? Those capabilities begin long before graduation. They are built through the small intellectual habits students practise from their first semester.

So, to Malaysia’s newest university students: learn to navigate AI thoughtfully. Understand what it can do, recognise what it cannot, and never allow its convenience to replace your own thinking.

Do not become so impressed by what technology can produce that you underestimate what your own mind must still contribute. The goal of the next few years is not merely to become faster at obtaining answers. It is to become better at knowing which questions deserve to be asked, which answers deserve to be challenged and which decisions require your own judgement.

Your university journey will teach you many things. Let the first lesson be simple: think before you prompt.

Dr. Nor Farah Hanis Zainun is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).

** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views ofMalay Mail.