Comment: When I went to law school, many moons ago, I remember feeling as though my brain physically hurt. There were moments sitting in the Vic library, surrounded by towering piles of cases and textbooks, when I wondered whether I was smart enough to untangle what was in front of me. Legal problems seemed deliberately constructed to resist easy answers. When I thought I had grasped the principle, a new case would complicate it. And when it seemed the answer was obvious, a lecturer would ask a question that turned the issue upside down.
And yet, it was exhilarating.
There was a thrill in finally understanding something difficult, in feeling my mind stretch, in realising that learning was not about memorising information but about making connections, testing assumptions and learning to think differently.
I have been thinking about that feeling recently because I suspect it matters more now than ever before.
My thesis is simple: the people who will thrive in the future are not necessarily the people who know everything. Perhaps they never were. The people who will thrive are the people who stay curious.
Curiosity is becoming a professional advantage, if not the professional advantage.
For generations, education and professional success were often linked to possessing knowledge. If you knew more facts, had read more books, or retained more information than the person next to you, you had the edge. But we now live in a world where information has become astonishingly accessible. Artificial intelligence can summarise reports, answer technical questions, draft documents, explain concepts and retrieve information in seconds. Search engines place vast libraries of knowledge at our fingertips. We carry more information in our pockets than entire universities once held.
And yet something interesting is happening.
The easier it becomes to obtain answers, the more valuable it becomes to ask good questions. If you prompt AI poorly, your answer is likely to be poor. And if you don’t have curiosity, you probably won’t understand the right prompts in any case.
Having answers handed to us is not the same thing as being curious. It is not the same as wondering, exploring, challenging assumptions, reading widely, making unexpected connections or experiencing the excitement of an ‘aha’ moment.
In fact, one of the risks of artificial intelligence is not that machines become smarter than humans, but that humans become intellectually passive. We could become more efficient but less thoughtful, more informed but less interested, more productive but less imaginative.
There is a difference between consuming information and being intellectually engaged in the world around us. Curiosity requires effort. It means going beyond the immediate answer. It means following an idea further than you strictly need to. It means asking ‘why?’ even after AI seemingly has spat out the answer and everyone else has moved on.
Curious people are often really inconvenient people. They ask another question in meetings. They read articles outside their field. They disappear down rabbit holes. They make connections between subjects that do not obviously belong together. It can be very frustrating for others who think an issue has been solved. But they are also often the people who innovate, adapt and lead.
One of the things I increasingly notice in highly capable people is not simply intelligence, but fascination. They remain interested in things. They retain a sense of intellectual energy. They still light up when discussing a new idea, a book, a podcast, a historical event, a scientific breakthrough or a problem they are trying to solve. They invigorate those around them.
Some of the most interesting conversations I hear are not narrowly specialised. They jump from geopolitics to architecture, from behavioural psychology to podcasts, from literature to technology to history. Curious people tend to build surprisingly broad mental landscapes. They collect ideas. Over time, those ideas can connect in useful and sometimes original ways.
This is one reason travel can be so stimulating. It forces curiosity upon us. Suddenly we notice how another country designs public spaces, organises transport, eats dinner later, educates children differently or remembers history in their own way. The brain wakes up because it is encountering novelty.
Similar things can happen through books, podcasts, conversations and lifelong learning. Curiosity keeps the mind flexible.
There is also something deeply human about it.
Children are naturally curious. Anyone who has spent time with a young child knows they ask endless questions that test parental patience. Why is the sky blue? Why do cats purr? Why do people speak different languages? Why do leaves fall? Why can’t I stay up until midnight?
Somewhere along the way, many of us stop asking questions. Perhaps work becomes busy. Perhaps expertise becomes a shield. Perhaps we fear looking uninformed. Perhaps algorithms start feeding us only what we already agree with or already know.
But losing curiosity is dangerous.
A society without curiosity becomes brittle. Workplaces without curiosity become stagnant. Leaders without curiosity become ideological and rigid. Individuals without curiosity become bored and boring.
Curiosity, by contrast, is linked to empathy, creativity and resilience. Curious people are often better listeners because they genuinely want to understand other perspectives. They are better problem-solvers because they can imagine alternatives. They cope better with change because learning energises rather than threatens them.
And importantly, curiosity makes life more interesting.
The world is astonishingly rich when you pay attention to it. There are stories everywhere. There’s extraordinary history hidden in ordinary places, scientific discoveries reshaping what we know, people living lives completely different from our own. And there’s art, music, ideas and cultures that can shift the way we see things.
You do not need to become an academic polymath to benefit from curiosity.
Sometimes curiosity simply means refusing to become mentally lazy. Read something outside your normal interests. Listen to a podcast that challenges your assumptions, learn a skill badly before you learn it well, ask another question, wonder how something works, follow an idea further. Stay interested.
This matters enormously for young people entering a world shaped by AI. There is understandable anxiety about which jobs will survive, which skills will matter and how work itself may change. But one thing seems increasingly clear to me: human value will increasingly lie not just in knowing things, but in interpreting, questioning, synthesising and imagining.
AI may generate information. Humans still need to generate meaning.
The future may belong less to people who simply possess knowledge and more to people who know how to think with it creatively and critically. That is where curiosity becomes powerful. Curiosity pushes us beyond the obvious answer. It fuels innovation, empathy and adaptability. It keeps us mentally alive. And frankly, the world is far too interesting not to be curious about it.
