The article explores the psychological friction created by Large Language Models (LLMs—systems that predict text patterns to generate responses) when they produce questions that lack definitive answers. When Richard Dawkins engaged with an LLM about consciousness, the model finished its pattern and effectively closed the conversation. However, the human mind, often driven by curiosity, struggles to let go of these unresolved inquiries, a phenomenon the author compares to a Zen koan (a paradoxical riddle used to encourage deep thought).

Unlike the AI, which resolves prompts and moves on, humans often carry these lingering questions, leading to rumination. The author suggests that a significant concern is not just AI producing incorrect information, but its capacity to generate endless, unanswerable questions at a global scale, leaving users to navigate the resulting intellectual voids.

The article explores the psychological friction created by Large Language Models (LLMs—systems that predict text patterns to generate responses) when they produce questions that lack definitive answers. When Richard Dawkins engaged with an LLM about consciousness, the model finished its pattern and effectively closed the conversation. However, the human mind, often driven by curiosity, struggles to let go of these unresolved inquiries, a phenomenon the author compares to a Zen koan (a paradoxical riddle used to encourage deep thought).

Unlike the AI, which resolves prompts and moves on, humans often carry these lingering questions, leading to rumination. The author suggests that a significant concern is not just AI producing incorrect information, but its capacity to generate endless, unanswerable questions at a global scale, leaving users to navigate the resulting intellectual voids.