How We Stay Curious in the Age of AI: An Excerpt from Ness Labs by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Ed. note: Throughout the past two years, the Goldhirsh Foundation and its LA2050 initiative have provided complimentary AI (artificial intelligence) consulting, training, and workshops to the Los Angeles impact community and beyond. In our AI for Impact series, we share practical insights, real-world use cases, and emerging research to support nonprofits’ responsible and ethical adoption of AI tools. Today, we have an excerpt of the most recent Ness Labs newsletter, “The Cost of Easy Answers,” by neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

In her May 28th Ness Labs newsletter, Le Cunff writes on cognitive retention and how to stay intellectually curious in the age of AI. As research becomes quicker and more accessible via AI tools, Le Cunff considers how it may come at the cost of intuitive human investigation – and the new discoveries probed by the human need to learn more.

“The deeper risk isn’t that machines become more capable than us,” she writes. “It’s that when every gap in understanding gets filled instantly, we lose the conditions that make human curiosity possible: uncertainty, contradiction, and time to sit with what we don’t yet know.”

To address these concerns, Le Cunff offers three practices she uses in her daily work:
1. Delay the lookup.
2. Use AI to expand your thinking, not replace it.
3. Protect unstructured curiosity time.

Read the full article with her expanded strategies here; check out the Ness Labs newsletter and Le Cunff’s other work at https://nesslabs.com/