Curiosity is a "superpower" linked to low anxiety, success at work, and a host of other pro-social behaviors.

The "knowledge gap" between posing a question and finding answers is where true learning occurs.

AI assistant design must better align with cognitive processes such as cultivating curiosity.

It’s hard to overstate how important the cultivation of curiosity is to our well-being. People who regularly make efforts to cultivate their curiosity “muscle” tend to be smarter, more creative, and more successful than their less curious cohorts. They tend to be more satisfied and successful in their careers. Curiosity also has been correlated with lower anxiety, emotional stability, self-esteem, persistence, conscientiousness, and openness to new experience (Fleischhauer et al., 2009; Spielberger & Starr, 1994). Philosophers ranging from Aristotle to Nietzsche have exhorted people through the ages to cultivate the virtue of curiosity. Indeed, recently one writer even called it a “kind of superpower” (Epstein, 2019).

So it is worrying that the design and use of AI assistants are arguably destroying our digital opportunities to cultivate curiosity. A predominant psychology theory of how curiosity works says that we are hard-wired to seek information because of “knowledge gaps” between what we know and what we want to find out, and that cognitive process is connected to the brain’s reward system. Neuroscience studies have shown that waiting for........

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