[Hwang Misun's Crisis Escape – Season6] The Problem Is Not AI, but the ...

In the AI era, the real gap comes from speed, understanding, and judgment

[Image credit: AI-generated by the author]

[By Hwang Misun, Columnist, Korea Lecturer News] These days, many people use AI in their daily work. They use it to write, search for information, create images, organize reports, and prepare presentations. Using AI is no longer a special skill. It is becoming part of everyday life.

But there is something interesting. Even when people use the same AI, the results are different.

Some people use AI to organize their work much faster. Others look at the answer AI gives them and still do not know what to do next. Some people take AI’s answer and turn it into their own thinking. Others simply copy and paste it.

That is why the real difference in the AI era is not simply whether someone uses AI or not. The more important difference comes from each person’s speed, understanding, and judgment.

We often think slow people are the problem. People who are slow at work, slow to learn new technology, or slow to make decisions can feel frustrating. But the real problem is not the slow person. The real problem is that there is no structure to coordinate different speeds.

Imagine several people walking together. Even if they are all going in the same direction, the flow becomes unstable if one person walks too fast, another walks slowly, and someone else suddenly stops. It is not because one person is bad. It is because their different speeds are not being coordinated.

The same thing happens in companies and organizations. People who are good at using AI can quickly prepare materials and organize ideas. But people who are not yet familiar with AI may not know what is important, even after seeing the same result. Then a speed gap appears inside the organization. One side moves too fast, while the other side struggles to keep up.

At this point, the important question is not, “Who is slow?”

The better question is, “How can we move together?”

This is also connected to the evacuation systems I study. In a hospital evacuation, ordinary pedestrians, wheelchair users, bedridden patients, and assistants all move together. They may be heading toward the same exit, but their movement speeds are different. If these differences are not coordinated, the flow begins to slow down in corridors or near exits.

Here, wheelchair users or bedridden patients are not the problem. The problem is a structure that moves everyone in the same way without considering different movement speeds. To reduce bottlenecks, the order and flow must be adjusted so that people with different speeds can move together.

[Image credit: AI-generated by the author]

The AI era is similar. Some people learn AI quickly, while others learn it slowly. Some people immediately understand AI-generated results, while others need more explanation. This difference is natural. The problem is not that the difference exists. The problem begins when we fail to coordinate it.

AI certainly makes us faster. But it does not make everyone faster in the same way. In fact, the faster AI becomes, the more clearly human differences appear. The gap becomes clearer between people who ask good questions and those who do not, between people who review answers and those who simply believe them, and between people who adapt AI results and those who stop at the first answer.

That is why AI education should not end with simple instructions such as “Click this button” or “Ask this kind of question.” People also need to learn how to read AI’s answers, what to trust, what to check again, and how to adapt the result to their own situation.

What we need in the AI era is not for everyone to run at the same speed. What we need is the ability to help people with different speeds move together. Fast people need to explain the direction clearly. Slower people need room to learn at their own pace. And organizations need to build structures that connect the two.

In the end, the problem is not AI. The problem is the difference between people. More precisely, the problem is the failure to coordinate those differences.

No matter how fast AI becomes, humans will not all understand at the same speed. Some people learn quickly. Some people learn slowly. Some people decide immediately. Others need more time. What matters is not blaming the difference, but designing a way to move together.

The problem is not slow people.

The problem is a structure that fails to coordinate different speeds

Columnist Profile

Hwang Misun is a disaster safety instructor who has conducted on-site safety education for citizens and students. Based on repeated observations of “stoppages” and “congestion” in real training environments, she interprets disasters not as individual failures but as structural and spatial problems. Her work analyzes everyday risk in hospitals, schools, public transportation, and performance venues through the lens of movement flow, bottlenecks, guidance systems, and exit functionality. She is currently conducting research on evacuation structures using microscopic pedestrian simulation.

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