It's time to ask people again. No tokens, no meter running.

Something strange has happened to the way we ask questions.

We now think before we ask. Is this worth a message? Will I hit the limit? Should I start a new chat to save tokens? Which plan am I on, and what is this one costing me?

We have started to ration our curiosity.

A question used to cost nothing. You asked a friend, a neighbour, someone who had already done the thing you were afraid of. You could ask something silly, then ask it again in other words, and nobody charged you for it.

I think the time has come to go back to that.

Not instead of AI. I use it every day, and it is very good at what is written down somewhere. But it has never rented a flat, quit a job or sat in that waiting room. It can tell you what people usually say. It cannot tell you what happened to them, what they really paid, or what they would do differently.

And when you ask a person, there is no meter running. No tokens, no plan, no fear that the next question is the expensive one. A silly question costs the same as a good one: nothing.

That is why we rebuilt Booking Minds.

It started as something else. We worked hard on it, it did not become what we hoped, and we closed it. What we kept is the one thing that felt true: people are curious about each other, and most of us have questions we do not know where to take.

So now there is Ask. You ask anything, and people who know answer. Nobody sees who asked or who answered: everyone is a number, and it is a different number on every question. So you can also ask the things you would never ask with your name on them. We know the account behind every number, so the rules hold for everyone. It is free, and we never ask you for money.

There is also a map of real people, for when you would rather talk to someone with their name on.

I will be honest about what you give up. A person takes longer than a machine. People can be wrong too, so for health, law or money, ask a professional as well. And Ask is new, so it starts empty. It only works if people are willing to answer what they know.

But I would like to see what happens when asking is free again.

What is the question you have been saving your tokens for?

Bledar Hysa, founder of Booking Minds. When to ask a person, and when an AI is enough.