# Schools can teach students to ask questions AI cannot answer

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/schools-can-teach-students-to-ask-questions-ai-cannot-answer/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) · Aravind Srinivas is cofounder and CEO of Perplexity AI. · Held research roles at OpenAI and Google DeepMind before co-founding the AI search engine Perplexity in 2022.
- Host: [Joe Rogan](https://realalpha.app/people/joe-rogan/) · Host, The Joe Rogan Experience
- Show: The Joe Rogan Experience
- Episode: [Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/), Jul 1, 2026
- Moment: 1:20:33 to 1:25:05 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/schools-can-teach-students-to-ask-questions-ai-cannot-answer/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4833

## Quote

> “So instead of fighting AI, you just **give AI to everybody** and let them ask whatever questions they want”
> — [Aravind Srinivas](https://realalpha.app/builders/aravind-srinivas/) at [1:23:02](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4982) · The Joe Rogan Experience

## Takeaways

1. An MIT biology instructor let students use Perplexity in class and exams.
2. Rewarding questions can shift school from recall toward inquiry.
3. He says intellectual humility matters more than credentials for doing science.

## About this segment

Aravind Srinivas argues schools should reward questions, not memorized answers, and describes an MIT biology class that let students use AI in lectures and exams. The pilot offers one way to redesign learning around inquiry.

From “Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas”, Jul 1, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:20:37](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4837) yeah and um as long as we keep rewarding people for having answers instead of asking interesting questions it's it's going to be a difficult change like in schools you're always rewarded for being smart based on whether you have answers to, like, 20 different questions? Like, who cares? Like, all those 20 questions can be answered by AIs. Have you ever, like, flipped a script where you say, okay, like, I'm going to, the smartest person in the room is the one who has the most interesting questions.

[1:21:07](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4867) Okay, like, what kind of students can you cultivate based on that? Like, imagine if the room had no pressure to always know the answer, but the freedom to ask a lot of questions. Right, because sometimes when someone asks a question, it'll make you pause and go, I never even thought of that. But that's it. Like, that's the question. Yeah. And it takes a – I mean, so many people have so many different perspectives, which is – One of the more interesting things that I've experienced doing this podcast is I get to talk to so many different people and they vary so widely.

[1:21:44](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4904) There's so many different ways of looking at the world and so many different ways of engaging with the world and so many different things that people are fascinated with that they spent their entire life studying and pursuing. It's like you get this rich tapestry of the human experience that's just I would have never been exposed to this many people. Yeah. And in turn, I've been able to expose these people to all these other folks that are just listening and watching right now.

[1:22:09](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4929) And it's fucking incredible. And it's such a for me, it's like the perfect job. I've never had a job that more aligns with my own personality as much as this, because I've always been that kid. Like, shut the fuck up with all the questions. I've always been that kid. That's the system. Right. It's not it's not your fault. Right. Like, it's actually, the reason you're successful now is the exact thing that people told you to shut up about in the past, right?

[1:22:34](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4954) Yeah. You know, hey, you know, stop bothering my lecture, you know, asking all these unrelated questions. It's mainly a frustration of the teacher that they don't have the answers to you, right? Sure. And now that bottleneck is gone. We did this experiment with one instructor at MIT who taught the Introduction to Biology class where he came and told us that he's going to give perplexity to all the kids, all the students, and they would use it as part of the lectures.

[1:23:06](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=4986) So instead of fighting AI, you just give AI to everybody and let them ask whatever questions they want, and they can actually use it in the exams too. so so how do you even design questions for an exam uh in in such a world is maybe you just encourage people to pose a question that ai can't answer right now and that becomes your research project and you turn everybody into a scientist fundamentally like there's this belief that scientists have to go through a rigorous phd and like you have to get you know accredited by like an amazing university to be that sure but uh anyone who's curious can be a scientist the only thing that's required to be a good scientist is intellectual humility to understand that you could be wrong about things things that everyone takes for granted you could still question them and when you when you're presented with new evidence and new data

[1:24:01](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=5041) you're willing to change your mind and you're willing to operate with ambiguity and uncertainty about the world that's that's basically all the qualities you need to be a scientist and you can run your experiments you can gather data you can gather evidence and you can consult people you can bring in experts and talk to them and and as long as you're uncovering more and more about the world you are a scientist you don't need a phd to feel that you're you know allowed to be a scientist or not and i think that's the most important um quality we need uh to inculcate our kids the upcoming generation so that they all feel more liberated okay like finally i don't have to memorize this textbook or these lecture materials and like i don't have to feel bad if i get like 12 out of 20 okay who cares like ai is always going to get 20 out of 20 that's not what

[1:24:51](https://realalpha.app/v/fOLu-pWQssQ/?t=5091) you're meant to be like good at of course master the foundations the basics great but your job is to actually pose interesting questions yeah and the intellectual excuse me intellectual humility