Your Brain Is Easily Fooled
Grammar: Passive Voice
A Business English English lesson exploring technology.
What's in this lesson
A Business English ESL lesson on technology, practising passive voice. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Your Brain Is Easily Fooled
Here is a test. A radiologist scans 10,000 images a year. An AI system scans 10,000 images in 45 seconds. When the AI flags a result as clear, the radiologist agrees without looking. Sounds efficient. It could also be argued that it sounds alarming. Researchers at MIT and the University of Cambridge have been studying exactly this moment — the pause, the glance, the nod — and what they found should be noted by anyone who works alongside an algorithm: automation bias, the tendency to defer to a machine's recommendation without questioning it, may be attributed to something far more fundamental than laziness. It is built into the brain.
Vocabulary
- be taken with a pinch of salt
- cut corners
- flag up
- pass the buck
Grammar: Passive Voice
- Modal passive
- This could be argued to be a design flaw. — softens a claim, no named speaker
- Impersonal passive
- It should be noted that oversight remains limited. — formal, detached attribution
Discussion questions
- Would you rather an AI explain its decision about you in a report, or a human decide with no explanation at all?
- Imagine you could press a button that made every decision in your working day automatically. Would you press it?
- What would you do if you discovered an important decision about your career had been made entirely by a machine?
Your Brain Is Easily Fooled
Grammar: Passive Voice
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
Sign up to access full lesson plans
Start with a free trial — 5 lesson generations included
Get Started Free