I read an interesting article by Sune Selsbæk-Reitz, on a word he sort of invented for asking and believing what AI shares, Promptism. The article, The Earth Is Flat, defines this new word: “Promptism is the quiet belief that if I just ask my question clearly enough, I’ll get something true in return. Maybe even something wise.”
And the article describes how promptism is killing curiosity, and providing ‘truths’ that may not be truthful, and yet are being taken as so at face value without questioning.
From the article:
“The ritual is the same every time:
Ask the machine. Get the word.
Move on.
We don’t think of it as belief, because there’s no incense, no robes, no temple. But there’s authority. And there’s trust. And there’s something deeply seductive about being given something that feels final. Even when it isn’t. Even when the certainty is a performance.
Because the thing is: the more fluent the answer, the more invisible the framing becomes. And if we don’t pause to notice that… we’ll mistake fluency for truth, and coherence for proof.”
The article continues:
“But with ChatGPT or Gemini, the answer arrives fully dressed.
Paragraphs. Polished tone. No seams. No links. Just a voice that sounds sure of itself.
That’s not just convenience. It’s a design choice. And it’s flattening how we think. Because friction – the pause, the doubt, the need to look something up – isn’t a flaw in the process of knowing. It is the process. That little jolt of uncertainty that sends you looking deeper?
That’s what makes knowledge stick.
That’s how you learn.”
…“And the more we do this, the more we forget that knowledge was never meant to arrive fully formed.”
I’ve noticed how this has affected me. I don’t go two or three pages into Google anymore. I don’t find tangent, related, and interesting ideas and connections. I ask an LLM, I get an answer, or I refine my question and ask again. I seek an immediate answer, and I accept that answer.
No more new tabs, no clicking links, just a single conversation, and a sort of final answer. The internet is getting flatter. The depth of search shallower. Promptism is the new search… and I wonder what the consequences are, what the price is, in finding convenient ‘truths’ that we just accept, and don’t bother researching or questioning?
Thanks for responding Katy. With respect to your question, “When curiosity dies, what becomes of the curious?” I think the concern is that these quick answers, perceived as (small ‘t’) truths actually reduce curiosity. That’s my fear.
That’s true. It’s easy to write something pithy that ends up discouraging discussion rather than adding to it, I didn’t intend that. I suppose I was just expressing my anxiety about living in these long-since uncertain times.
On the contrary, I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts. And the reality is that these are uncertain times. I loved how Google allowed me to dig so much deeper than an encyclopedia, I’ve been a fan of utilizing technology as much as I can… and I wonder, I question, where AI is taking us? I’m equally excited and scared. Uncertain times indeed.
I went into software because I liked using my problems to learn new things and solve interesting problems. Now I feel quite disheartened by the way that LLM tech has influenced the way that programming is done. It doesn’t work very well (in my opinion) right now, but eventually — maybe through another approach than the transformer models with which we’ve become all too acquainted — it might.
When curiosity dies, what becomes of the curious?
Ah, writing late at night I put down “using my problems […] to solve interesting problems,” I’d meant “using my mind […] to solve interesting problems.”