Good Questions
Alright,
Bear with me: "What is a good question?" This is my favorite good question to ask. I like to ask it at parties, when meeting new people, at bars, etc.
I encourage you to try asking it to some of your friends or new acquaintances. You might find some good or surprising answers.
My high school speech coach was the one who first asked me this question and shared his answer to it. I've adopted his answer as my own ever since then. "A good question makes one stop and think."
I think about that concept a lot when I want to ask a good question. E.g. during an all hands meeting, during an interview, during a date. I love getting that response of someone saying "good question." That's the kind of dopamine hit I live for.
I bring it up because I think it helps when working with AI. If the invention of fire was the harnessing of energy (heat) to do things (at first cooking, protection, then energy, motors, electricity and so on), then LLMs are the harnessing of reasoning. Everything built on top of them (e.g. Agents, and whatever may come next) is harnessing reasoning as well.
How do we do that? Good questions.
A lot of the stuff in the early days was about prompt strategies, then it was agents, and now it's graphs (agents working together, collaborating, criticizing each other). Sure, there are other things you should keep in mind that help you get better results.
But we should never forget to stop and think. Make sure we're asking the right questions for the right problems.