Curiosity is a Skill
When you were four, everything was a question. Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly? Why can’t I eat cake for breakfast every day? You weren’t trying to be difficult (well, maybe a little). You were learning. Relentlessly. You didn’t just accept an answer. You pulled the thread. You asked why until the grown-ups begged for mercy.
That’s exactly how we should treat AI.
Most people use AI like it’s a glorified search engine: punch in a question, take the first answer, copy-paste, done. That’s not how this works. Or rather, that’s not how this should work. AI isn’t a vending machine. It’s more like a conversation partner who never sleeps and has read the internet.
So here’s the rule: when AI gives you an answer, don’t just nod politely and move on. Be four. Ask why. Ask how. Ask what if. Ask again.
Because the magic doesn’t come from the first response. It comes from the next question. And the one after that. You don’t get brilliance by typing and walking away. You get it by staying in the loop, poking the edges, challenging assumptions. You get it by being curious.
That’s the shift we’re living through. The old model of search was a transaction. One shot, one answer. Now? It’s an interaction. A co-creative loop. A feedback dance between human and machine.
And that has big implications for the future of work.
The Employee Experience Is Now a Conversation
In the workplace, AI is moving from back-office automation to front-line creativity. It’s drafting emails, building presentations, brainstorming campaigns, troubleshooting code, writing reports. But to get real value out of it, employees have to talk to it. Not just use it.
That means the employee experience isn’t just about tools. It’s about how we use them. Are we treating AI like a teammate or like a magic 8-ball? Are we accepting answers or shaping them?
Good interaction design used to mean clickable buttons and nice color schemes. Now it means designing for curiosity. For follow-up. For exploration. Leaders need to ask: are we training people to ask better questions, or just to use better software?
Being curious isn’t just cute anymore. It’s a competitive advantage. The people who get the most out of AI aren’t the ones who know the most. They’re the ones who ask the most. They experiment. They dig. They refine.
In other words, they treat AI like a four-year-old treats a grown-up: as a source of infinite potential, but also something to be questioned at every turn.
This changes hiring. It changes training. It changes leadership. You don’t just want experts who can recite facts. You want explorers who can navigate ambiguity. Because that’s what AI is: a fuzzy, probabilistic, very convincing parrot with a lot of ideas but no certainty.
It needs your questions to get better.
A Final Thought (Before You Ask Why)
This isn’t about dumbing things down. It’s about waking up a part of ourselves we often mute in professional settings: the part that’s willing to look silly, to ask the “dumb” questions (which are really only dumb if we never ask them), to keep pushing, to not take the first answer as gospel.
AI is only as good as your willingness to interrogate it. And the workplace of the future—scratch that, the workplace of now—belongs to those who treat technology not as an oracle, but as a partner.
So go ahead. Ask why. Ask again. Be annoying. Be relentless.
Be four.
