Home Learn Class 9
Classes 4–12 · Digital literacy and AI

What is AI actually good at — and what should you never give it?

There is a simple rule that predicts almost every AI success and failure: <b>it is strong at words and weak at numbers and consequences.</b> Sort any task by that and you will be right most of the time.

Strong: anything made of language

Summarising something long. Rewriting something in simpler words. Translating. Finding every mention of a word across hundreds of pages. Suggesting ten titles when you only need one.

These are safe to hand over almost entirely, because the work is language and a mistake is cheap to spot and cheap to fix.

Weak: arithmetic and real-world truth

It predicts what a number looks like rather than working it out, so it should not add up your column of figures. Use a calculator or a spreadsheet.

It cannot verify facts about the world unless it can go and look, so names, dates, citations and statistics all need checking.

Never: anything where somebody must answer for it

Deciding who gets a scholarship. Diagnosing an illness. Approving a payment. Signing that something is correct.

This is not a capability question that a better model will one day solve. Being accountable is something only a person can be, and no version number changes that.

Twelve jobs, sorted

Summarise a long articlelet it do this alone
Translate a paragraphlet it do this alone
Find every mention of one word in 400 emailslet it do this alone
Draft an emailit drafts, you check
Write a results noticeit drafts, you check
Add up a column of numbersdon't — use a calculator
Diagnose a rashdon't — ask a doctor
Decide who gets the scholarshipdon't — a person must answer for it

Notice the shape: the safe pile is all reading and writing. The forbidden pile is all consequences.

Practice

Should you let AI check your long division?
Show the answer
No.
It predicts digits rather than calculating them. And the division is the bit the exam is testing.
Is summarising a chapter you already read safe?
Show the answer
Yes.
Pure language work, and you already know enough to notice if it goes wrong.
Your essay contains an AI-written quotation that turns out to be invented. Whose problem?
Show the answer
Yours.
Your name is at the top of the page. This rule does not change after school; it just gets more expensive.

Sort them yourself

In our free course you sort twelve real jobs into three piles and then find out which ones the guide would move, and why.

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Common questions

Will AI take my future job?
The honest answer is that it does the reading and the drafting, and people do the deciding and the answering-for-it. The people who lose work are usually not replaced by AI — they are replaced by a colleague who uses it well.
Is using AI for homework cheating?
That depends entirely on your school's rule, and you should ask rather than assume. Using it to understand something is very different from using it to produce something you then pretend you wrote.

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