With AI, 'Figuring Out What Questions To Ask Will Be More Important Than Figuring Out The Answer'

Sam Altman
CEO of OpenAI, former president of Y Combinator

Like it or not, Artificial Intelligence is taking over, and there is no going back to what life once was without it.

The technology has now been embedded in various devices, and that the general public and others have become more attached to it due to its increasing prominence in consumer devices, especially in their phones and computers.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that created the arms race in the Large Language Models field following the introduction of ChatGPT, argues that knowing facts or where to find them is becoming less important than learning how to ask insightful questions.

As LLM-powered AI becomes smarter and more reliable, their knowledge will become so vast, that they can answer pretty much anything.

Sam Altman
Sam Altman.

In a podcast with psychologist Adam Grant on Wharton’s ReThinking podcast, Altman said that:

"There will be a kind of ability we still really value, but it will not be raw, intellectual horsepower to the same degree."

"Figuring out what questions to ask will be more important than figuring out the answer."

This is possible because LLMs can be used to help elementary schooler's homework, to aiding a nuclear physicists professor doing their job.

Here, Grant pointed out that understanding how to ask thought-provoking questions, especially when trying to add broader context or deepen understanding, is already a critical skill.

He said that people used to put a premium on how much knowledge you had collected in one's brain, and if they were a fact collector, that made them smart and respected. But with AI, it's much more valuable to be a connector of dots.

Whoever uses LLM AI chatbots, if they can properly synthesize and recognize patterns, and know what and how to ask a question, they will have an advantage.

Altman’s observation can be interpreted in two ways: asking people great questions or designing prompts for AI chatbots to get the answers they need—a practice known as prompt engineering.

"I can pretend that I’m going to be able to predict where AI’s going and the exact impact on the job market, but I’d be lying. I have no idea,” Cuban said. “But I do know that I am going to pay attention, and be agile, and be curious, and be able to adapt."

"I have certainly gotten the greatest professional joy from having to really creatively reason through a problem and figure out an answer that no one’s figured out before. What I expect to happen in reality is, there’s going to be a new way we work on the hard problems."

Sam Altman
Sam Altman with Donald Trump, during the announcement of Stargate.

Altman isn’t the only entrepreneur stressing the career value of soft skills.

Curiosity, adaptability, and mental agility are the top skills young people need to thrive in both the present and future job markets. Recruiters are also increasingly focused on adaptability in candidates, as employers seek workers who can adjust to new situations over time.

Altman predicts that while AI may eventually take over many administrative tasks in the workplace, human intellect won’t be fully replaced.

Instead, people will play a vital role in teaching AI systems critical thinking, enabling them to build stronger arguments and generate fresh ideas.

Read: Trump Announces 'Stargate,' The $500 Billion Project That Makes Investors Happy But Worries Elon Musk