Ideas have a life of their own; they are nourished and grow every time we share them. Keeping a thought to oneself is not the same as testing it against someone else’s perspective. Every question or comment from a third party makes our thinking more robust. What happens, then, when we ‘tell’ our idea to an AI that has access to a vast amount of information and the ability to organise it to suit our needs?
A well-formulated question accounts for 99% of the answer. The common mistake is to use AI as a simple search engine, accepting the first answer it generates. Now, if we don’t want answers, a very simple way to get more out of our interactions is to ask it to draft questions for us.
A personal example: towards the end of last year, my wife was studying a specialisation in Healthcare Architecture. Despite her expert knowledge of the subject, she faced the challenge of how to structure her ideas for her final essay. Being a brilliant person, she has always complained about not knowing how to express her ideas. Instead of asking the AI to write the text, we asked it to generate a questionnaire of twelve key questions to develop the topic.
My wife then set about answering in simple language and pouring her knowledge into each response; the process flowed naturally. After a technology-assisted style review to polish the writing, the result was top marks. She didn’t need the AI to replace her intellect, but rather to organise her expertise.
The art of asking: The ‘Prompt’
The standard format of a ‘prompt’ begins by asking the AI to ‘behave’ in a certain way. It can take on the role of an ‘architect specialising in healthcare’ or a ‘telecommunications expert’. We must then describe the context in which we are asking the question and the format and conditions under which we expect our response, as in this case a list of questions to help clarify my ideas.
In a reflective exercise, I asked the AI, in the role of an expert in integrated communications, to analyse this article and suggest questions for the conclusion. One of them was revealing: Which projects would flourish if we allowed AI to function as a mirror of our intuitions?
Intuition is a very human phenomenon, sometimes difficult to explain. That “pang” we feel but cannot put into words may find in AI an ideal interlocutor to be explored and translated into words.
Conclusion: From the quick answer to the powerful question
In a world saturated with information, true wealth lies in knowing how to ask questions. AI does not replace our ability to think; it expands it. It is a tireless partner that returns our own ideas to us, amplified and organised.
When we use technology as a tool for clarity rather than an intellectual shortcut, we discover that our ideas have more depth than we imagined. The challenge of this era is not to master the tool, but to learn to converse with it in order to think better. Ultimately, the right question will always be the source of the best answer.
