And maybe prompt engineering isn’t the invention of the AI age at all. It may be a return to something Confucius already intuited: that the form of a question is not overlooked but carries within it the power to direct thought, constrain possibility, and prescribe a certain horizon of answers.

All this raises a provocative question: when we spend hours refining prompts, correcting outputs, and coaxing ChatGPT to deliver our ideal responses, does that make us the teachers of value? Specifically our moral values?

Confucius believed that language does not merely reflect society but manifests it. Words commit us to courses of action; misnaming distorts not only what we say but also what we do. This is why people in his time, and often in China still, are careful with speech in a way that contrasts with Western free expression.

about Confucius: he often adjusted his answers depending on who was asking