The Art of the Question
When discussing AI with education policy makers and education leaders during a visit to New Brunswick, I proposed The Art of the Question. What did I really mean? This question surfaced during a workshop. I sought to elevate the Generative AI discourse, beyond a simple discussion on prompt engineering.
Instead, I highlighted how the Age of Generative AI demands a Socratic transition in education, moving from just knowing the answer to an ability to formulate the question. Such a proposed transition requires new pedagogical models. I suggested dialogic pedagogies[1] to support learners and teachers in developing skills for meaningful human: machine interaction, reliant on the Art of Questioning.
Although my talk in New Brunswick focused on education, The Art of the Question extends far beyond the classroom. Generative AI and machine intelligence are becoming ubiquitous in the workplace, creating challenges and opportunities that demand deeper questioning. As we increasingly collaborate with co-agents and co-intelligence in professional life, critical questioning aptitude becomes essential, whether the technology moves beyond prompt engineering or not.
Moreover, AI’s growing societal impact calls for more profound reasoning about what it means to be human in a world of human: machine co-intelligence, a world in which machine capability easily surpasses our own, unless we become the questioning agents who actively shape humanity’s place in this new reality.
The Art of the Question: Necessitating New Pedagogical Models
Education assessment and exams remain focused on knowing the answer rather than developing the ability to formulate the question. In most education systems, knowing the answer demonstrates a level of knowledge acquisition and mastery. These systems’ objectives and measurements focus on the correct answer as a knowledge indicator and benchmark.
Whether formative, summative or high stakes, mainstream assessment modes and models are often instruments associated with instructional pedagogies, and in many cases, rote learning.
The instructional pedagogical model promotes gathering and memorizing of knowledge. It tends to overlook the development of metacognitive and self-regulation skills that encourage reflection, develop learning strategies, nurture understanding of how learning happens and promote learner agency. The teacher’s imparted knowledge, the textbook or curriculum resources are unquestionable. The objective? Getting the answer right. Those who achieve the highest number of correct answers, fare the best and receive the highest merit, leaving behind learners who have more questions than answers and seek discovery in learning.
But what about the ability to Ask the Question? Isn’t asking the question a demonstration of curiosity and engagement that ultimately lead to knowledge acquisition and application?
Humans possess an innate ability to ask questions. We are curious creatures who seek discovery, a characteristic most observable in small children. When discovering the world, they never cease asking: “Why?”. What happens to this curiosity and their continuous questioning, their way of figuring things out? It soon evaporates when they enter kindergarten or school.
In these learning environments, the focus shifts from questioning to knowing the answer and too often, questioning is discouraged. The answer becomes the yardstick, the holy grail in education. We strive for ‘knowing, knowing more and more, and priding ourselves on what we know’. The ‘how’ is put aside as education systems emphasize measuring and benchmarking knowledge. They ignore children’s innate curiosity and questioning abilities – essential skills for problem-solving, tackling challenges and gaining the insights and know-how to navigate their world.
Rebecca Winthrop’s and Jenny Anderson’s book: The Disengaged Teen[2], reinforces this perspective, exploring how rigid education systems result in teenage disengagement. The book highlights how “the discovering learner” - one who actively engages in learning, through questioning and connecting ideas - becomes the agent of her learning and education. The authors discuss that discovering learners fare better than high achievers, who excel in the test. They urge education systems to prioritize and implement this discovering learner model.
Although this article cannot explore their work in greater depth, Winthrop and Anderson convincingly argue how curiosity and discovery - second nature to small children - must become the bedrock for effective and engaging teenage education. Current educational approaches unfortunately have eroded these critical elements of engaged learning and agency.
Socrates[3] , the ancient Greek philosopher did not resort to writing but is said to have engaged in dialogic reasoning with his students. His philosophical dialogues, recorded and represented by Plato, started with a question. His engagement with students relied on question and answer. Scrutinizing the answer Socrates would soon throw a new gauntlet, i.e. another question, inviting reasoning, connecting ideas and dialogue. His approach gave rise to the term Socratic method.
An ancient Greek philosopher’s method is now often quoted in models for education using dialogic pedagogies[4], re-emerging in our contemporary era of AI and humanity’s highest technological achievements to date.
As Generative AI finds its way into education, discovery-based learning and assessment that leverages the power of the question across multi-modal experiences and environments, should be prioritized. Depth of questioning and deepening of enquiry interacting with Generative AI, need honing and scaffolding to augment critical thinking and avoid cognitive and skills atrophy[5] that would result from over-reliance on AI and non-critical questioning. It would erode human agency and the development of reasoning and critical thinking, vital for the AI era.
Schools, colleges, and universities must foster and equip learners with this critical skill that extends far beyond the classroom walls. Innate in the youngest learners, enquiring children, the art of questioning needs fostering and encouraging. This extends to professional environments. Here, employees increasingly collaborate with AI systems in transformed workplaces, augmented by technology. In these settings, the ability to ask incisive, thought-provoking questions is no longer solely an academic exercise, but becomes a fundamental professional competency that supports discovery, drives innovation and facilitates problem-solving through human: machine collaboration.
The Art of the Question: Beyond the Classroom to Professional Life
Our professional life and occupations are increasingly mediated by AI systems. As AI increases its foothold in education, its presence in the workplace is fast gaining ground. From process automation and task management, marketing strategies and campaign planning as well as content creation, AI has moved into research and the development of the life-sciences. Its potential and application in medical and clinical applications, augmenting diagnosis among others, is progressively influencing healthcare. The ever more rapidly evolving presence of AI technologies often outpaces leadership understanding and employee skillset.
The arrival of Generative AI in the workplace has triggered a new transformation that the workplace and its stakeholders are embracing at varying speeds. Whilst the early adopters and the AI champions claim rapid acceleration of its presence, the reality of that presence may prove somewhat different. Skillsets are often one of the main problems. Yet it cannot be denied that business and the workplace increasingly rely on new modes of interaction with the machine. The adoption of Generative AI, necessitates embarking on new modes of collaboration, engaging in a dialogue with a new form of inorganic intelligence, as a co-worker or co-agent. This relies on questioning (heavy use of prompt engineering), but with a deepening and critical lens, refining the question for tackling challenges and problem solving.
The evolution of AI’s presence in the workplace is evolving towards a deeper reliance and collaboration with this co-intelligence, creating new modes of collective intelligence that are believed to drive and enhance the workplace, its productivity and output. Whilst it is difficult, even for the experts, to predict this evolution, it is widely accepted that these models of co- and collective intelligence, will increasingly rely on the ability of humans to evolve with it and pivoting in their working life.
The career as we have known and have aspired to, is becoming a thing of the past. A career path, carving out career development and evolving into promotion, is becoming increasingly rare. It is set to morph into cycles of employment with times out of work, but evolving technologies and workplace or business challenges demanding new approaches and evolving skillsets. These employment cycles are equally set to be diminishing due to AI automation and presence in the workplace, making the relevant skillsets and Art of the Question even more important.
Those who thrive in these scenarios, are human agents with continuous learning and adapting skill sets that the workplace will demand of them, with self-directing learning skills. The Art of the Question and critical engagement in problem-solving, formulating and honing this skill will support their workplace endeavours. Rather than being subject to skill-erosion and cognitive decline as the machine outpaces humans, this will be critical for employees to become and remain fully-fledged human agents, critically harnessing the potential and the power of the machine for good.
Whilst the workplace is a strong focus in the Generative AI discourse and its drive, it is important to recognize that we are faced with questions that by far exceed the workplace. These concern societal challenges, world instability and uncertainty that is set to increase, climate change being a key cause and contributor. Generative AI’s impact on society and the world, will increasingly rely on our relationship with this artificial and inorganic intelligence necessitating honing our critical questioning skills.
The arrival of AGI[6] may be less or more imminent. After all, experts are very divided on this AI development. We may not be able to prepare ourselves sufficiently for this exponential AI development. Yet, engaging critically in the Art of the Question, supported by Generative AI (and AI) as it evolves, will be vital for us to prepare ourselves for the not yet understood manifestation and potential of this AI (r)evolution that will present new profound questions for humanity and the world. Ensuring the human in the loop as a critical agent, in the deployment of an inorganic intelligence that is set to outpace ours much further, and be fully independent will rely on our ability to ask the relevant questions to establish a meaningful and human-centric co-existence with this unknown artificial intelligence entity, that may or may not arrive sooner rather than later.
The Art of the Question: Questioning for Society and an AI World
The Art of the Question can by no means be considered in isolation of education and the workplace as vehicles and environments for Generative AI and AI. AI is ubiquitous in our smartphones, social media, streaming services, online retail, marketing etc. Its ubiquity is already so enmeshed in daily life, and becoming increasingly so in less technologically advanced contexts.
The presence of AI in our daily life and the rapid progress of Generative AI, necessitates a third approach to the Art of the Question. That is, we must question the use of AI and its impact on society, the world and humanity itself. AI will help us solve fundamental challenges to our world, whilst creating new profound challenges and conundrums for humanity, impacting on climate, the workplace, cultural values and beliefs, as well as impacting our daily lives.
How can we equip ourselves with the profound societal transformation that AI is bringing and will exponentially bring? Can we ask ourselves the questions with the relevant depth of questioning how to address societal challenges? Have we got sufficient imagination and questioning aptitudes to explore and discover the exciting opportunities these technologies bring?
How can we make use of Generative AI to help us navigate both challenge and opportunity, truth and falsehood, geopolitics as well as citizenship? How can we leverage these technologies to ensure we question and address human-centricity and -agency in an evolving dialogue with the machine, keeping the human in the loop?
The power and negative potential of these technologies, their geopolitical influence and weaponization capabilities in which the distinction between truth and falsehood evades us, as well as humanity-induced environmental and climate issues we face, do throw down a gauntlet. It is one that demands ongoing questioning of ourselves as human beings that will live alongside machine intelligences that may exceed our own.
In short, what are the questions we should ask ourselves and how do we avoid atrophy in questioning?
Conclusion
The ability to ask ourselves these profound questions in dialogue with the machine to solve fundamental societal challenges, is perhaps more acute than ever. It will be required and need to develop throughout our lives from early childhood through school, to further and higher education, learning in and adapting to the workplace and life in our communities and fast-changing world. We by no means have the answers but need to start engaging with The Art of the Question to gain the relevant knowledge and skills to formulate them.
[1] Dialogic pedagogies emphasize the power of classroom dialogue and interaction for foster learning, thinking, reasoning and problem-solving, encouraging teachers and learners to engage in meaningful dialogue and joint exploration of ideas, turning dialogue into a co-learning experience. The term Oracy is also often used in this context.
[2] Anderson, J., Winthrop, R., (2025), The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, Crown Publishing Group, New York, ISBN-10: 059372707X
[3] Socrates, Athenian philosopher lived c. 470-399BC. He is often considered to be the founder of Western Philosophy. Not in favour of the written word, no texts remain but his thinking is known through posthumous writings of his students Plato and Xenophon in the form of dialogues, giving rise to the term ‘Socratic method’ or ‘Socratic dialogue’.
[4] Dialogic pedagogies emphasize the power of classroom dialogue and interaction for fostering learning, thinking, reasoning and problem-solving, encouraging teachers and learners to engage in meaningful dialogue and joint exploration of ideas, turning dialogue into a co-learning experience. The term Oracy is also often used in this context.
[5] Cognitive Erosion: Refers to the decline of mental functions such as memory, attention and executive functions. Skills Atrophy refers to a loss of skillset and knowledge due to disuse and practice.
Both are believed to be the likely result of the lack of friction in Generative AI. Unless the Art of the Question and the positioning of this powerful technology in education, the workplace and its impact on society is carefully considered, the risk of these occurring is significant.
[6] AGI or artificial general intelligence refers to a hypothetical form of intelligent machines or systems that possess the ability to understand and learn any intellectual task that a human can perform. Whilst still a field of theoretical research, AGI developers seek to create a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at tasks they currently excel in compared to the machine. This type of artificial intelligence is believed to be capable of performing a range of cognitive tasks comparable and even exceeding the performance of humans. The estimated arrival of this AI evolution is topic of expert debate and disagreement.