The Future of the Job Is Learning to Ask Questions

I am a technical communicator who wants to bring his work to the next level of impact on human life; is that ambitious? It is.

Generated by DALL-E with prompt “What’s human?”

An unstructured flow of thinking: that’s this article. Just to let you know.

Some time ago, I wrote I Love the Technical Writing Niche, Yet, Let’s Go Beyond. It’s time to follow up on this intention.

There’s a foundational approach that makes technical communication possible: asking questions. Since technical communicators are not experts in all subject matters, they must ask and learn.

Then, there’s another crucial aspect of technical communication: it’s a bridge of meaning between machines and humans. Automation and machines are nearly the same: the former is the desired effect of the latest. So, you need to understand automation to get the essence of a device.

Yet, it’s not possible to automate asking questions. That’s my assumption.

Asking a question is a creative intention of linking the dots between two or more facets of your knowledge.

Since creativity cannot be automated, asking questions cannot be automated due to the spark of creativity that is its essence.

So, here we are! The next niche I want to address is asking questions. Better: The art of asking questions.

Why?

Beyond technical writing, artificial intelligence (AI) will impact almost any job since AI automates an increasing number of answers every day. That means that we can split the professional world into two categories:

1. Professionals who give answers.
2. Professionals who ask questions.

It’s just a matter of time: Category #1 will progressively lose its job. Sooner or later, a combination of AI and other technologies will replace that category of workers — at least the ones who can only give average answers.

Here we are! My horizontal move from the niche of technical writing to the one of asking questions aims to impact the world of professionals who risk losing their job because they belong to category #1. That’s my impact on human life.

The most apparent agent in that journey is ChatGPT. Let me share the last part of its answer to the question, “What’s the future of the job considering the advent of artificial intelligence?”:

Overall, the impact of AI on jobs is complex and multifaceted. While it will undoubtedly lead to some job losses, it will also create new opportunities and change the nature of work in many industries. The key to success in this new era will be to remain adaptable and willing to learn new skills.

Do you see the point? On one side, there’s a high-value question; on the other, ChatGPT gives an average low-value answer. The weakness of ChatGPT is that it behaves like an answer hunter; it does not reason; it looks for similarities.

Thanks to thousands of years of philosophy, when a human thinker is in front of the question, “What’s the future of the job considering the advent of artificial intelligence?” the approach is:

1. Look for an already existing answer: that’s the same ChatGPT does.
2. Evaluate whether the existing answer is enough to satisfy the need for knowledge of the question: we already are here well beyond the capabilities of ChatGPT.
3. Transform the question into other related questions: who could ChatGPT decide some criteria to find related-not similar-questions?
4. Break down the question into simpler ones through linguistic and semantic analysis. This step of the human approach requires creativity, which ChatGPT lacks.
5. Apply the same approach to the simpler questions found in step 4.

Takeaway

The tag Asking Questions currently has only 129 stories and 118 writers in Medium.

Screenshot by the author

Questions’ askers! Let’s grow that niche since it’s the seed of the future of all knowledge workers!

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