More than 60% of Google searches in America now end without a single click, says Anne-Laure Le Cunff in The New York Times. We type a question, skim an AI-generated summary and leave. ChatGPT, Claude and the others work the same way, collapsing the old habit of wandering through links into instant gratification. This is obviously a troubling development for anyone who publishes anything online, but really it’s bad news for everyone. What these quick-answer AI tools are doing is “undermining curiosity” – and in the process, paradoxically, “threatening our ability to understand the world”.

This isn’t just airy fairy moaning. I’m a neuroscientist, and the research shows that curiosity is a biological mechanism for learning that requires a “specific condition”: a space between asking a question and discovering the answer. People waiting for the answer to an intriguing question, researchers have found, remember unrelated information far better; brain scans show reward circuits firing and the hippocampus primed for memory. Curiosity effectively “opens a window”, and while it’s open the whole brain learns more readily. An AI answer in three seconds slams that window shut: no adjacent article, no tangent, no connection between two unrelated ideas. Such “incidental learning” drives genuine breakthroughs. When physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson heard a stubborn hiss coming from their antenna in 1964, they could have written it off as equipment noise. Instead, they looked into it and ended up discovering the afterglow of the Big Bang. The danger with AI isn’t that people will stop asking questions; it’s that “questions will become endpoints”. Build a world that delivers only what is asked for, and we lose “the capacity to discover what we didn’t know to ask”.

Advertisement

Beyond the Chindwin
Second World War Tour in Burma with Dr Robert Lyman
3-14 February 2027

Follow in the footsteps of General Slim’s Fourteenth Army as they return to Burma in WWII. This journey, incorporating expert local guides and private film screenings, honours the men that fought and explores how WWII led to where Myanmar is today. Our tour explores the build-up to war in Burma, the retreat of the British in 1942, and then, in particular detail, the return of Slim in 1945. Sampan has been based in Yangon since 2013. We have been working with Dr Lyman since 2020. We hope you can join us.

Contact Bertie for more details: [email protected].

THE BARN This 17th-century threshing barn in the Montgomeryshire village of Guilsfield has been converted into a smart three-bedroom home, says The Guardian. The open-plan living and dining space has vaulted ceilings, a log burner and floor-to-ceiling windows framing panoramic views across the Powys hills. Upstairs are three bedrooms, all en suite, and a fourth bedroom is in a detached annexe, currently arranged as a gym and yoga space. Outside, the four acres of grounds contain a terrace, lawned gardens and two paddocks. Welshpool station is five miles away, with trains to Birmingham in 1hr 30mins. £850,000.

As you know, you only see about a third of what The Knowledge has to offer each day. And our paid subscribers have enjoyed some real bangers this week, including:

🤳 The Rich Kids of Tehran
☢️ Anthropic’s extremely terrifying job listings
🤖 A clothes-folding robot
🗝️ How Russians are avoiding de facto conscription
🤬 The utter bastards funding the atrocities in Sudan
🪞Giant space mirrors to brighten up the night
🍻 It’s baby boomers, not Gen Zs, cutting back on booze
🧻 The members’ club where you can get a “life loo”
🦸‍♂️ A lovely anecdote about Harrison Ford in the pub
👯 Cara Delevingne’s Playboy cover shoot
🤣 Your Party has split, again
🍞 Hand-cutting the perfect slice of bread

To enjoy all these, and go back to receiving the full newsletter every day, please just click below. It’ll be the best thing you do this weekend.

Let us know what you thought of today’s issue by replying to this email
To find out about advertising and partnerships, click here
Been forwarded this newsletter? Try it for free
Enjoying The Knowledge? Click to share