D

What time is it? It's such a basic question and provokes me to take a look at time in the context of both humans and artificial intelligence. Simply put, AI operates inside the now, the perpetual present. Yet humans construct meaning across time. This "temporal

divide" creates a key distinction, if not a conflict, that's worthy of a deeper look.

Typically, we evaluate artificial intelligence by capability, which includes things like speed, accuracy, fluency, and even scale. But my take is that this perspective misses

something that is both critical and deeply human. Humans build meaning through

continuity, and this includes memory, revision, anticipation, and the lived accumulation

of experience. AI does not.

For us, meaning is shaped across duration. We don't form understanding from isolated frames. We learn from many moments that inform and reshape each other. The reliability of our beliefs depends on that slow integration. It's how understanding matures

into something stable, or perhaps better said, human.

AI collapses time into immediacy. Each output stands alone without reference to what came before and without responsibility toward what may follow. This is why AI can be so

persuasive, as it produces coherence (连贯性) without the weight of history behind it.

A recent study that examined reasoning tasks illustrates this rather clearly. AI assistance led participants to perform slightly better, but to feel dramatically more improved than they actually were. This illusion emerges because instant coherence (tech) feels like internal mastery (human). Anyone who has used AI to summarise a concept has felt this. It happens when you read a smooth, confident explanation and suddenly believe you now "understand" it without any of the internal struggle that produces true understanding. The mind confuses the appearance of cognition with the acquisition of cognition. And the key distinction is that AI shortens the distance between exposure and

confidence, not between exposure and wisdom.

I think this matters because humans may begin adapting to the temporal logic of machines. If present-tense coherence becomes more rewarding than the slower accumulation of meaning, we could begin to trade our temporal cognition for the immediacy AI offers. The risk is not replacement, but more of a dissociation from the very structure of meaning-making that defines the human mind.

The real question, as I have relentlessly asked, is not whether AI will think like we do. The question is whether we will continue to think like ourselves. To defend the narrative arc is far from a poetic gesture. It's an essential cognitive practice. For me, it means tolerating slower understanding when speed is seductive. It means returning to the longer thread of experience when instant fluency tempts us. It means remembering that

wisdom requires the friction of time. And that's something we all should consider.

Meaning is temporal. Story is temporal. Identity is temporal. AI does not live there.

We do.

1. What does the "temporal divide" in paragraph 1 refer to?

A. A distinction in evaluating AI's competences.

• 1. A gap between present living and past reflection.
  2. A difference in how humans and AI make meaning.
  3. A divide in time management between humans and AI.

1. As for the result of the study examining reasoning skills, the author feels _______.
   1. worried B. surprised C. doubtful D. sympathetic
2. How does the author mainly develop the passage?
   1. By raising questions and solving them one by one.
   2. By citing studies and evaluating their limitations.
   3. By presenting a study and drawing a conclusion.
   4. By introducing a concept and making contrasts.
3. What can we learn from the passage?
   1. Exposure+Confidence=Mastery
   2. Coherence+Immediacy=Logic
   3. Duration+Friction=Wisdom
   4. Speed+Fluency=Insight