Arthur C. Brooks

But it turns out it didn't, because there's one thing that Coco the Gorilla never did, not once.

She never asked a single question.

The essence of being fully alive as a human is not answering questions.

A computer can do that.

It's asking questions.

That's what it means to be fully alive, is to be a curious person about the big questions that actually don't even have answers.

Exactly right.

Which are these big questions.

And here's the thing.

It's a meaning question if you can't Google it.

If you can Google a question, that just means it's a mechanical thing with a complicated answer.

And that's what ChatGPT does.

That's the reason that AI will never make us happier, is because all it does is the same thing that Coco the gorilla did, except better, which is answering basic questions like, what do you want for lunch?

Explain what you mean by that.

This is funny because when I do research, you know, back in the old days, economists would talk about markets and all that.

Then they'd go walk around factories and talk to workers.

So that's the right way to do research.

Look at the data and do the analysis and be a wonk, but then go talk to the humans.

And so this is what I do.

I start doing a lot of interviews of people and listen to the words that come out of their mouths.