Curious case of AI
In 2025, AI is inescapable. It floods our social feeds with fake men smiling next to fake wooden sculptures. Siri misinterprets texts, offering awkward, inaccurate summaries. Even a simple Google search now brings you an AI-generated summary, neatly packaged so you never have to engage with the original sources.
Let me be clear: I’m not a Luddite. I recognize the potential of LLMs and machine learning. When used well, technology can enhance and expand how we connect with the world in which we live, not shrink it.
But that’s not always what’s happening.
Some uses of AI are deeply unsettling. In a 2024 Oliver Wyman survey, 1 in 3 people said they’d be open to generative AI–based therapy. While I believe in making mental health support more accessible, we should be very cautious about replacing real human connection in spaces as sensitive and complex as therapy.
This brings me to a deeper concern: in a world where answers are just a click away, what happens to our curiosity?
Curiosity is often treated like a “soft skill” - something relegated to kids and cats. But in truth, curiosity requires courage. It demands vulnerability. To be curious is to leave space for uncertainty, to say “I wonder…” without needing immediate closure. It takes real critical thinking to ask “Why?” when you don’t know where the question might lead.
There’s even neuroscience to back this up. When you satisfy your curiosity, your brain releases dopamine! (a reward response likely tied to our evolutionary need to learn and adapt) Some researchers even believe curiosity helps calm the anxiety we feel in the face of the unknown.
Curiosity doesn’t always lead to big breakthroughs. Sometimes it just means finding out where a weird idiom came from. But it also drives personal experiments like:
If I research my blind date beforehand, will I feel more confident?
If I cut out gluten, will I feel better?
If I move to Spain, how will I grow?
These are experiments only you can run. AI can’t live them for you. It can dole out answers, but it can’t satisfy your curiosity. That comes from experience, from wondering and wandering, from asking a question and being open to the messy, uncertain path that follows.
You’re not smarter just because you can find information quickly via AI. Real intelligence is human. It’s our ability to wonder, to explore, and to imagine beyond what the algorithm can predict.
