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What We Lose When “Ask AI” Becomes A Regular Thing

What We Lose When “Ask AI” Becomes A Regular Thing

Last updated on: September 3, 2026 at 4:50 pm by John Beckett

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What We Lose When “Ask AI” Becomes A Regular Thing 2026-09-03T16:50:04-06:00 John Beckett

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It’s been 50 years, but something my 9th grade history teacher liked to say has stayed with me, and it feels particularly relevant now.

“It’s not what you know, it’s if you know where to find it.”

His point – that he would elaborate on in some detail – was that there are far more facts than anyone can remember, particularly when it comes to the “names and dates” approach to history that was popular throughout most of the 20th century. He emphasized learning historical concepts, causes, and results.

Mainly, he emphasized learning good research methods.

And he emphasized using good sources.

Books and newspapers were considered the best sources. Encyclopedias were not, even though he thought Encyclopedia Brittanica was usually good. Academic journals were good, although we had to go to the public library or the UT-Chattanooga library to get them. The only magazines we were allowed to reference were TIME, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report.

[I miss magazines. I could rarely afford them when I was young and I really enjoyed them when I was an adult with my own money. And then the internet killed them. There are a few left and I buy one occasionally, just because I can. There’s something special about holding a magazine and flipping through it that no amount of scrolling and clicking can ever duplicate.]

Learning research methods

“It’s not what you know, it’s if you know where to find it.”

I was never the most efficient researcher. I would locate a source, find what I needed, and copy the quotes and information needed for footnotes. And before I could move on, something else would catch my attention and I’d start reading it. And then something else and something else before I finally went back to my paper and the specific sources to support it.

I never needed an endless string of hyperlinks to fall down a rabbit hole.

But I learned how to find the information I needed.

I also learned an lifetime’s worth of historical, cultural, and scientific trivia. There are very few subjects where I’m completely ignorant. Whether that’s relevant here or if that’s just me is another matter…

Google vs. the Readers’ Guide

In many ways, internet search engines aren’t that different from the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. You need to know where to start. You need to be able to separate reliable sources from unreliable sources. Once you find a reliable source, you have to be able to read it, understand it, and interpret it in the context of your question. What are the relevant concepts, causes, and results? What are the implications? How does something that happened in 1864 or in 1942 impact what was happening in 1976… and what is happening in 2026… and what is likely to happen in years to come?

For all the complications the internet has brought, having the vast majority of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips is a good thing. We just have to figure out how to make good use of it.

LLMs are fundamentally different from search engines

I have previously said that the current version of artificial intelligence is just a search engine on steroids. I still think it’s a long way from anything that could reasonably be described as “intelligence.” The idea that AI might be conscious or approaching consciousness demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what consciousness is.

But ChatGPT and other LLMs are fundamentally different from Google Search in a way I think is critically important.

With LLMs, all you have to do is ask a question.

You need no context to get started. You don’t have to pick a search result. You don’t have to sift through a website to find the information you’re looking for. You just ask a question and the answer is provided.

The machine does the analysis for you.

The machine does the thinking for you.

Part of my job as a Druid and a priest is to be a resource for people who are new to Paganism. I charge for consulting, but if somebody has a simple question I can answer without a lot of research I do my best to answer.

But I worry about people who ask questions that could have been answered with Google. If they expect someone else to spoon-feed Pagan religion and spirituality to them, what are they going to do with what they learn? Are they going to contemplate it, meditate on it, and figure out how to incorporate it into their lives?

My two decades of public Pagan service – online and in person – says probably not.

And I don’t think people who are asking questions of ChatGPT are very different.

Learning to find the answer vs. being given an answer

All those library research papers I wrote in high school? They weren’t just teaching me what I needed to know. They were training me to think critically.

Could I have escaped the religion of my childhood if I hadn’t learned that?

I asked religious questions and I was given answers. But the preacher’s answers didn’t make sense. And so I searched, and read, and learned. I weighed the evidence and came up with my own conclusions.

It took me a long time to accept those conclusions, but I did.

Could I have done that if I hadn’t done the work myself?

I like to think I could, but I suspect not.

AI for good and for ill

AI – even as it exists now – has some advantages. My employer uses it for data analysis. It does in minutes what would take a statistician days to do, with greater accuracy. And it doesn’t get upset when we ask it to tweak the analysis a dozen times.

I want nothing to do with AI created “art.” And not just in a Luddite “you’re taking work away from real human artists” way. Real human-created art has a soul. AI slop does not. And even if an AI flyer looks clean and neat, it’s still slop – it’s still something clearly identifiable as AI-generated. You can create it yourself in a few minutes and at least it tells your audience that you’re a real person.

Whether the legitimate uses of AI are worth the economic and environmental costs is another matter, and one that isn’t getting enough consideration. Still, there are things AI does well.

But I’m concerned about what we lose when “ask ChatGPT” becomes the go-to approach for questions of all varieties.

Especially when it becomes the go-to approach for people who haven’t finished their formal education.

“It’s not what you know, it’s if you know where to find it”

I learned to search libraries, books, and magazines. I learned to find a source and then to interrogate that source. I learned to separate facts from opinions, and then to use those facts to form my own opinions.

And that’s a lot different from posing questions to a black box.

The AI genie is not going back in the bottle. We – all of society, not just the tech bros who don’t understand that just because you can doesn’t mean you should – have to figure out how to put guardrails around it.

And one of the first guardrails needs to be making sure that “ask ChatGPT” doesn’t keep kids – and the rest of us – from learning how to ask good questions, find good answers, and then figure out what it all means.

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