By Nahrizul Adib Kadri
Last Thursday morning, I was sitting alone with a cup of kopi-C-kosong at the Engineering Tower, when a thought came quietly. There is one future skill that everyone needs to master:
The ability to ask the right question.
The idea came just before my 9 am class. I had been thinking about how we now use generative AI in classrooms, for everything from problem-based learning, flipped learning, and even in writing essay assignments. It reminded me of a World Economic Forum report that said 65 percent of jobs in the future have not yet been created. That statistic used to sound like science fiction. Now it feels like a warning.
In a world where machines can generate, translate, and even imitate, the real skill will no longer be about producing quick answers. It will be about asking meaningful questions.
AI, after all, only knows what we ask of it. A good question is like a map. It guides, filters, connects. A weak question gets you noise, while a thoughtful one brings clarity. The better you are at asking, the better the answers you uncover.
That, to me, is what separates users from thinkers. Anyone can click “generate.” But to prompt meaningfully, to connect ideas, to see patterns others miss, requires curiosity and care.
Rumi wrote, “What you seek is seeking you.” The older I get, the more I think he was talking about questions. The right question has its own magnetism. It pulls the right answer toward it. But you have to ask it first, and you have to mean it.
In my classes, I often tell students that curiosity is a form of courage. It means being willing to look foolish for a moment so that you can understand for a lifetime. Too many of us stay quiet out of fear of asking the wrong thing, when in truth, the only wrong question is the one never asked.
When I first started teaching, I thought good answers were the goal. Now I know that good questions are the real milestones. They show that a student is thinking, connecting, wondering. When someone asks, “What if?” or “Why not?” or even “How do you know?”, I know something is moving.
And this is where AI becomes interesting. Generative tools can summarise and simplify, but they still depend on our curiosity to guide them. Without it, they are like powerful engines idling without direction. The human role is not to out-calculate the machine but to out-question it.
Coldplay once sang, “Questions of science, science and progress do not speak as loud as my heart.” I like that line from ‘The Scientist’ because it reminds me that knowledge, at its best, is not cold logic. It begins with wonder. The scientist, the artist, the teacher, all of them start with a question that matters to them. The data and diagrams come later.
I think back to my own school days, when the brave ones in class were not necessarily the top students, but those who dared to raise their hands and ask “Why?” Sometimes the teacher had an answer. Sometimes they didn’t. But the question always lingered, pushing us to look deeper.
The more I teach, the more I see that learning is not about collecting facts. It is about developing a relationship with not knowing. To ask a good question is to admit that you do not yet understand, and to be comfortable with that space.
There is a line in Rumi’s writing where he says, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” That might be the best advice for our AI age. We have plenty of cleverness now. What we need is more genuine wonder.
So how do we nurture that?
I don’t know, to be honest. But what I do know is that slowing down really helps. Curiosity grows in stillness. Because it needs time to notice details, to form connections, to wonder why something is the way it is.
And perhaps the other way is to treat questions not as challenges but as bridges. When we ask with sincerity, we are not testing others; we are inviting them in. A good question carries respect. It should say, “I value your perspective. Help me see what I can’t.”
If AI is to be our companion in the years ahead, then this human art of questioning will matter even more. The machine can process, but only we can wonder. The machine can simulate empathy, but only we can feel it. The machine can predict patterns, but only we can decide which ones are worth following.
In a world full of quick answers, the rarest skill will be to pause, to think, and to ask with sincerity.
Because only then will we have the real answers.
Ir Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, and the Principal of Ibnu Sina and Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College, Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at nahrizuladib@um.edu.my