Economy of Questions

As AI collapses the cost of producing plausible answers, the scarce, valuable thing becomes the ability to discover and frame questions worth answering. That skill is distinct from domain knowledge or technical production: it is judgment about which puzzles are fundamental, which comparisons illuminate, and which hypotheses survive evidence. — If true, hiring, funding, teaching, and credentialing will shift toward selection and judgment skills, reshaping universities, research priorities, and the labor market for knowledge workers.