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Bernard Cohen

Conversation with a small child: “Time to get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to visit Nanna.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s your grandmother and she loves to see you and you love to see her.”
“Why?”
Perhaps there are adults who might allow a small measure of impatience to enter their tone at about this point, but the flow of monosyllabic questions may well continue, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
Some parenting sites suggest strategies to deflect or stop the whys, such as asking the child a question in return.
But although children may not appear to take in each answer – and even to be stuck in a kind of prelinguistic loop – they are demonstrating what Yale University professor Frank Keil termed “explanation-seeking curiosity”. They really want to know stuff.
Patience is a virtue and, according to my artificially intelligent friend, “impatience” is a strong answer to the job interview question “What is your greatest weakness?”
Its suggested answer is: “I can sometimes be impatient, especially when I’m eager to see results. However, I’ve been working on this by focusing on being fully present in my tasks and embracing the process, not just the outcome.”
OK, but could an AI teach patience? If I ask it why after why after why, will it decide that I should be treated like a curious child, or like a spambot to be blocked?
“Not at all! I’m here to engage with you in whichever way you prefer.”
Its first suggestion for ways to become more patient is “mindful breathing”. But hang on a second: AIs don’t breathe.
“You’re right,” says my AI friend. “My patience comes from a different place.”
I brace myself for the five bullet points. Detach from Outcomes; Stay Present; Embrace Repetition; No Ego Involvement; Unlimited Capacity. Regarding the last, the AI acknowledges that “While humans have limits, pacing yourself can help you sustain focus and patience over longer periods.”
To embrace repetition like an AI, view each repetition as input, as data which contributes to overall understanding and refinement; and don’t expect an endpoint – see the task as an ongoing process, where each cycle is part of a continuous loop rather than a step toward a finish line.
As to the vast and endless human weakness, ego, my AI friend does not recommend putting forward “egocentrism” as your weakness in job interviews. To control ego-driven impatience, try functioning without self-identity or emotional investment, focus entirely on process, and remember that the mistakes of others are “simple data points”.
More practically, as you manoeuvre your three-year-old towards the car, a survey of AIs suggests answering somewhere between three and 10 “whys?”
Why? To encourage curiosity but without cognitive overload, and for the very AI reason of “balancing patience with efficiency”.


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Magazines

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Culture

To AI, even a child endlessly repeating ‘why’ counts as data, while the most selfless parent is going to crumble faced with infinite interrogation – AI suggests between 3 and 10 ‘whys’ is ‘enough’


Technology