In the last week, my husband and I have asked questions that ChatGPT answered. 

I asked if red-light therapy could cure giant-cell vasculitis; I asked how much $100 in 1965 was equivalent to now, and I asked how long alpha-gal sugar saliva takes to enter the bloodstream. 

My husband asked how many gallons of jet fuel a Boeing 737 aircraft uses to cross the U.S. He asked what the population of Iran is. 

After watching the amazing documentary film, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” we heard the film’s director, Pavel Talankin, had his Oscar stolen, so we both asked if that was true. 

Joel, of course, asked if the Chinese are running a prototype molten salt reactor. Joel also asked how many miles to the gallon a Chevy Suburban gets compared with a Prius hybrid.

 Because these are not your questions, you’re probably not that interested in the answers we got, but I feel compelled to share just a few. 

I wanted to know about the $100 because I waitressed at the World’s Fair in 1965 in Flushing, N.Y., and made that hundred dollars a day just by running drinks and dancing on tables. An added fact I can’t help but include: We wore black net stockings and miniskirts, and God only knows what-all on top. But I’m sure excess cleavage was involved. I weighed 195 at the time, so I can only thank the same God that there are probably no photos.) 

An added, added fact: We were catty-corner to the Vatican Pavilion, and we had to close down the day the Pope came. All I remember was that I was frustrated that I was losing my $100. Today I wouldn’t care about the money. I would be bowing to this Pope, compared with frowning at Pope Paul VI back then. But that was then and this is now. And now the $100 from 1965 is equivalent to $1,063.88.

The answer to the Chevy Suburban versus the Prius; The Chevy gets an average of 17 miles to the gallon, and the hybrid plug-in Prius gets 127.

And Pavel Talankin, the courageous teacher and filmmaker, did have his Oscar stolen in Los Angeles, but it was returned.

Now for the point of this whole column.

In a New York Times opinion piece,on July 8, titled “Are we losing the ability to discover what we didn’t know to ask?” neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff argues that instant AI answers, such as those from ChatGPT, undermine curiosity and critical exploration by eliminating the productive “gap” between querying and discovering information. But the gist is what totally freaked me out; I’ll try to cherry-pick info so you’ll freak out too.

You probably already know this: Our answers, when we use ChatGPT, come in three seconds. I’ll repeat: Three seconds!

The article asks if there is something wrong with getting a reliable answer so quickly. And the answer is, alarmingly, yes. 

It said, “By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity, and, paradoxically, threatening our ability to understand the world.”

“Curiosity,” it continued, “is not just an individual’s desire to find out discrete facts, it’s also a feature of our biology designed to help us learn more broadly. And it requires a specific condition: A gap between what you want to know and what you find out.”

Researchers found that waiting for an answer activates reward centers in the brain and readies the hippocampus to help create memories. In other words, curiosity puts the entire brain into a mode of hyperreceptivity, not just for the thing you want to know, but for everything that might be related to it.

Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board. But the window remains open only as long as the question remains unanswered.

Some of the most important discoveries have come by accident. To name a few: penicillin, X-rays, vulcanized rubber, Viagra, microwave ovens, Teflon, superglue. There are more you can learn about from — oops — ChatGPT.

The article goes on to say, ”If we build a world that delivers only what is asked for, we will lose the capacity to discover what we didn’t know to ask.” 

Now my question to myself is, Will I stop using ChatGPTt and Claude and all of the rest of the immediate-gratification guys, and slow down and keep my window of curiosity open?

Well, you saw what I just did.

Did you ever see a window slam shut so fast?