Năm 1440, tại Mainz

Đề thi văn tốt nghiệp phổ thông 2026 gây xôn xao Steve Jobs. Không thấy ai bàn câu đầu tiên: “Năm 1440, tại một xưởng cơ khí nhỏ nằm lọt thỏm giữa thành phố Mainz nước Đức, Johannes Gutenberg phát minh ra máy in” là hư cấu, năm 1440, Gutenberg đang ở Strasbourg.

People were applauding the exam paper for its up to date AI discussion. Somehow I read the first line, and I knew something was off. Too precise, too smooth, too suspicious: a small workshop, tucked away in Mainz, almost 600 years ago. The Wikipedia article, read past its first line and down to its sources, says: in 1440 he was in Strasbourg; only in 1448 did he move back to Mainz. Only one could be correct.

If I was a teacher, and some student wrote “In 1440…”, I would underline it immediately: sources? Then if they cited sources, I would check the sources, and underline them: rhetorical, not historical.

The extracts have not been fact checked, and it should not be down to me to do that. How do they expect examinees to write about working with AI, while they have not been working with AI themselves? If the setters used AI, they could fact check the text, just like me, in a minute.

Perhaps it is the habit of the literature ones, who thought they could write their way out of everything: write “Năm 1440, tại một xưởng cơ khí nhỏ…” and get away with it, because it feels so right. Or “Hamlet có lẽ đã tan biến vào hư không ngay sau khi tấm màn nhung của nhà hát Globe khép lại”. The Globe was an open-air theatre; it had no velvet curtain to close. The velvet curtain is a writer’s trick, a detail to invoke the sense of ending. Those tricks are about to get trampled over: here come AIs that can write smoother, faster, even more accurate. A sentence that sounds that smooth is now a sign for checking, not a sign of craft.

(Updated 19 June) The official answer guide says young people should “biết kiểm chứng, phản biện thông tin do AI cung cấp”. Nobody applied it to the extract; the same guide makes students quote the velvet curtain as evidence. They don’t practise what they preach. And the irony is in the text itself: “dân chúng không có quyền tiếp cận văn bản gốc”, when the sources of the text are themselves dubious.