“AI is useless. It can only give you answers” Pablo Picasso
In 1968, Pablo Picasso, never one to shy away from bold declarations, reportedly said: “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Picasso, an artist who thrived on ambiguity, emotion, and open interpretation, dismissed computers because they could not pose questions, express doubt, or provoke new ways of thinking—the lifeblood of creativity.
Fast-forward more than half a century, and computers have evolved into sophisticated, omnipresent tools. Artificial intelligence is increasingly woven into the fabric of our daily lives. But despite the remarkable advances, Picasso’s critique retains surprising relevance. One could argue that even today, AI is still best at answering well-defined questions, rather than asking them.
The Limits of Answers
Artificial intelligence excels when the rules are clear and the goals are defined. It can diagnose diseases from medical scans, beat grandmasters at chess and Go, and summarize thousands of pages of legal text in seconds. These are extraordinary feats.. But they are, at their core, responses to predefined problems.
AI, as it stands, lacks the curiosity, context, and consciousness to ask truly novel or transformative questions. It doesn’t wake up wondering, “What if?” It doesn’t speculate, doubt, or daydream. Instead, it works within the bounds of what it has been trained on. Its creativity is derivative—an echo of the data it has consumed, not the spark of something never before imagined.
The Art of the Question
Human creativity—what Picasso so fiercely defended—is often driven by the question rather than the answer. In art, science, and philosophy alike, breakthroughs begin not with data but with inquiry. What lies beyond the stars? What happens if we look at this problem from a different angle?
In my role as CEO of a young company, I begin each day not by seeking answers, but by posing questions: How might we evolve our technology to better serve our current customers? What opportunities are we overlooking with new markets?
These questions don’t have clear answers—but they drive progress.AI, for all its computational power, has not yet demonstrated this kind of generative, interrogative thinking. It doesn’t challenge its own premises or rebel against its training. It doesn’t suggest that perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere. And in that sense, it remains far from the kind of intelligence Picasso might have respected.
Despite all its progress, AI still doesn’t wonder why.
