The future belongs to the curious

As AI embeds itself into how we work, the most interesting thing it’s revealing has nothing to do with technology.

The other day, my eight-year-old son was firing off what felt like his seventeenth question in a single minute. I stopped him and said, “Never lose your curiosity, it will get you far in life.” He shrugged and kept asking questions.

That exchange, while seemingly forgettable, got my wheels turning against the backdrop of a conversation that surrounds us daily: the rise of AI. As answers become abundant, curiosity becomes increasingly scarce, and increasingly valuable.

Maybe that’s why the AI conversation has caught my attention in a different way. Influencing behavior is my day job—I humbly admit I’m better at influencing companies than my own children. Much of my work leading the Experience Design practice at Monigle focuses on helping organizations close the gap between who they are today and who they want to become. Through this vantagepoint I’m most interested in how the technology has influenced human behavior, and how we as leaders can augment that behavior, when efficiency is no longer a constraint.

When generative AI entered the mainstream, I expected an explosion of wild ideas. I thought about a book I love to read to my kids: If I Built a School, by Chris Van Dusen, where imagination outruns convention at every turn. I imagined millions of people with access to a thought partner that could help them test rough ideas and move beyond the limits of their expertise. At the same time, the skeptical side of me suspected many people would use the technology to produce larger volumes of mediocre work.

So far, both predictions have been right.

What AI reflects

Every week I witness people accomplish things that would have been out of reach a few years, or even days, ago. In the right hands, an idea can move to execution in minutes and become incredible in hours. Yet much of what gets produced feels strangely familiar. More presentations, more frameworks, more polished deliverables—mostly without much original thinking.

This gap isn’t unique to AI, as access has never been the source of differentiation. What AI has done is make average thinking dramatically easier to produce and, because it reflects our existing patterns of thought so convincingly, dramatically easier to mistake for excellence. The more I watch this unfold, the more I think AI’s defining characteristic is reflection.

AI mirrors the person using it with remarkable accuracy. Bring it efficiency, and it returns efficiency. But bring it curiosity, and the technology becomes a conversation. Two people can start with the same prompt, use the same model, and have access to the same information.

One walks away with a faster version of what they already believed. The other discovers something they had not considered. The difference isn’t the tool; it’s the orientation.

What we choose to reward

That is the part we’re not talking about enough. We keep describing AI as a technology that will transform humanity, but I think its first job is simply to expose it. In many ways, AI isn’t changing how we think nearly as much as it’s making our existing ways of thinking impossible to ignore.

That realization has changed how I think about leadership. Most discussions about AI center on adoption: which tools to deploy, which workflows to redesign. I’m becoming more interested in what organizations reward.

For decades, we’ve rewarded speed and polished execution because they were difficult to achieve. As AI makes those qualities increasingly abundant, we as leaders have a responsibility to elevate different behaviors alongside them: thoughtful exploration, intellectual humility, and the willingness to fall in love with the problem before settling on an answer.

So recently I’ve been asking myself: Am I creating an environment where efficiency-minded people learn to dig deeper and explore unanswered questions? Where highly creative thinkers develop the discipline to move ideas into action? Where skeptics have a reason to lean in instead of opting out? If AI reveals human instincts, our responsibility as leaders is to build a culture of curiosity in which we amplify each individual well beyond their natural inclinations.

When I picture the future, I think about my son. By the time he enters the workforce, he will have access to technology far more capable than anything we use today. What will set him apart will not be his access to answers. It will be his willingness to shrug and keep asking questions after everyone else thinks they have one.