The answer is … 42!
Why Questions Matter More Than Ever in AI
“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”
Deep Thought, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
After 7.5 million years of calculating, Deep Thought finally revealed The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything: 42.
The only problem? Nobody — not even Deep Thought — remembered what the actual question was.
Today, we find ourselves in a strikingly similar position. In a world overflowing with AI tools, APIs, models, and plugins, the power lies not in getting the answers, but in asking the right questions.
Capability First. Then Clarity.
The pace of AI innovation is breathtaking. New feature drops. Fresh plug-ins. LinkedIn flooded with “the latest cool thing” (guilty as charged!).
Staying on top of this chaos is no longer optional — it’s a personal and business advantage. Each new release could shift a category, a workflow, a career.
Take OpenAI, for example. While they’re not the only players in the game, their accelerating release cadence alone is a visual timeline of exponential change — each update unlocking new possibilities.
But there’s a catch.
The more capabilities we gain, the easier it is to get distracted by the shiny and lose sight of where and why to use them. Without clarity of purpose, capability is just noise.
From Language Models to Personal Assistants
We’ve evolved beyond just choosing between LLMs. It’s now about what we do with them — from research and reasoning, to automation and creative co-piloting.
It’s no longer about just using ChatGPT, it’s what we ask of it that matters
ChatGPT GPTs let us customise ChatGPT with our knowledge.
→ Ask: What IP are we sitting on that deserves to be unleashed?Claude Artefacts allow us to prototype full product experiences.
→ Ask: What should we build, and who is it for?Gemini Deep Research condenses hours of research into minutes.
→ Ask: What unique insights are we chasing, and what sources matter most?
These aren’t toys. They’re tools — and the smartest businesses are already putting them to work.
From Asset Creation to Production-Ready Pipelines
Two years ago, AI-generated media was more meme than masterpiece. Today, it’s studio-grade.
So many media creation tools, but what roles do they play in our workflows?
Google Veo2 and RunwayML enables video editing, green-screening, and text-to-video that’s good enough for client campaigns.
→ Ask: What could we concept, test, and produce faster with generative video?Stability AI and Pika Labs are unlocking real-time animation and 3D generation.
→ Ask: How might we prototype experiences in motion, not just on slides?Suno.ai and Udio are pushing generative music from ambient filler to full-fledged production.
→ Ask: What role could original sound and voice play in our brand presence?
Don’t just test these tools — ship with them!
From Agents to Autonomous Workflows
If 2023 was about prompting, 2025 is about letting go. Agents are no longer science fiction.
Agents like Manus are here today, but what will you ask them to do?
Manus can generate board decks and business strategies in minutes.
→ Ask: How could we incorporate this into decision-making cycles?Convergence AI executes complex web-based workflows autonomously.
→ Ask: What repetitive, browser-based work could we finally delegate to an AI?OpenAI Operator is making it possible to deploy AI agents that run on schedules, react to triggers, and chain tools together.
→ Ask: Where can consistent execution outperform clever improvisation?
The game is shifting from individual tasks to end-to-end outcomes.
From App Development to Vibe Coding
The traditional app dev stack—code editors, staging servers, sprints—is giving way to something faster, freer, and more fluid.
Welcome to vibe coding — where intuition, iteration, and automation power creation.
Build any app, any time … what will you build?
Firebase Studio offers an AI-powered, cloud-based environment to design, build, and deploy full-stack apps using natural language prompts.
→ Ask: How can we prototype and publish faster by skipping boilerplate setup?Cursor is a developer-first, AI-native code editor that not only autocompletes and explains code, but also lets you query entire projects in natural language.
→ Ask: What if our IDE could think alongside us — not just execute?Relume turns rough ideas into live websites in minutes, combining AI-assisted wireframing, copywriting, and responsive web design.
→ Ask: What ideas are sitting in our backlog that we could bring to life this week, not next quarter?
The tools now match the tempo of creativity. And vibe coding isn’t a gimmick — it’s a new production model.
So… What Is Your 42?
We’re entering a new era of AI fluency — not just knowing what a tool can do, but knowing when to use it, why, and to what end.
It’s no longer about having all the answers. It’s about becoming masterful in asking the right questions.
What problem are you really solving?
Where are you wasting effort or under-leveraging assets?
What’s you unfair advantage — and how do we amplify it with AI?
The future belongs to those who ask better questions.
Because as Deep Thought taught us — answers are meaningless without a question worth answering.
Hire Time Under Tension
We work with agencies, companies and brands to elevate Customer & Employee experiences with generative AI. Our advisory team help you to understand what is possible, and how it relates to your business. We provide training for you and your team to get the most of generative AI apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Our design & technology team build bespoke gen AI tools to meet your needs. You can reach us here: www.timeundertension.ai/contact
A handful of Gen AI news
Here are five of the most interesting things we have seen and read in the last week;
On one hand, more than 50,000 creatives have signed the Statement on AI Training, which launched late last year and warns that use of creative work to train AI models is harmful …
… whilst on the other hand James Cameron has a very different take, suggesting that “we’re all models” and that we should be focussing more on copyright of model outputs rather than their training data (skip to 31 minutes for this part).
Google released Firebase AI Studio, an agent for automating app creation - give it a go, it’s as easy as “prompt for an app”.
OpenAI launched the revamped OpenAI Academy, an online resource hub to support AI literacy and it’s all free. Check it out here.
On the topic of OpenAI, ChatGPT has had a little big update to it’s memory, where ChatGPT will now remember and recall things from your past conversations with it (we sense some awkward client demos ahead!)
Thanks for reading!
