This post is not about AI, but it is related to it. This post is actually about something more important than AI: context. During my journey learning about AI, I started to understand the deeper meaning of context. And then I realized: this is everywhere. Every living being lives by context. There is no living cell that exists without context.
Let’s start with stem cells
A stem cell in a body is a cell that has the capacity to turn into any other type of cell in the body. There are many studies on stem cells with the hope that one day they can be used in regenerative medicine. Making the dream come true that every part of the body can be regenerated would be one of the greatest innovations in human history.
And here, the power lies in the capacity of the stem cell – in the potential of this cell that it can become any type of specialized cell in the body. The power of the stem cell lies in its ability to specialize. Scientists want to control this differentiation, and to reach this goal, they need to understand which mechanisms trigger the differentiation of a cell into a specific specialized cell. This is context.
Geopolitics
Despite the high number of conflicts worldwide, politicians still have a strong interest in providing explanations to the citizens of a country, because approval is crucial to achieving goals in politics. Therefore, a conflict will be justified with certain reasons. If the reasons are not clear or believable, there is a risk that citizens express their dissatisfaction with their leaders. And of course, we know very well that for the same conflict, the reasons provided by each side are totally different. This is also context.
Workplace
Whether it is about a structural reorganization of the company, decisions about a project, promoting certain employees, layoffs, or providing budgets to some groups while ignoring others – all of these changes must be accompanied by strong reasons and explanations. No company can afford – at least not for a long time – to make decisions or implement changes without providing explanations to the workforce. Employees need to understand exactly what is happening in a company and why. And companies do their best to do this, or at least to create this feeling. This is also context.
Now the last part: AI
If you ask an AI to provide you with a picture of a dog, there is almost a 0% probability that this picture is exactly the one you wanted. Imagine AI as a universe. A universe is already quite big, but now this AI universe has far more than three dimensions. It may have hundreds of thousands of dimensions. The AI does not know where to start, so it will probably choose something more or less randomly for you.
You need to give the AI as much context as possible so it can give you the best answer. The best AI model, trained on the most curated data in the world, will be of no help if context is not provided. Therefore, context is one of the most important topics right now when using AIs.
It is already clear that a great prompt can help provide context to the AI, or that uploading documents helps the AI know where to search. This is already very helpful for the AI to know where in its multidimensional universe it should look for information. This is almost a work of engineering. Imagine three competing consultants all providing the same documentation to the same AI model and asking for a beautiful presentation for their potential customer, who needs help with some business problem. The AI will create different presentations of the same good or bad quality. The great consultant, engineer, software developer, designer, or researcher will give the AI as much context as possible to produce an output of the highest quality.
Customers are probably already doing this. They are asking powerful AI models for answers and then wondering what extra value a service provider can offer besides just asking an AI for answers. The skill is: context.
Juan Carlos
Sources
- Pictures from www.pixabay.com
Related posts
- https://juancarlosps.com/2025/09/10/how-ai-is-affecting-writting/
- https://juancarlosps.com/2025/09/17/how-ai-is-affecting-science/
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