Say “Maybe”: Uncertainty Coexists with Activation of Humans

Here we show that the activity of people are enhanced if those in the place, in the real space of conversation, share the word “Kamo” in Japanese which means an uncertain belief in one’s interpretation of an observed event or object, corresponding to “maybe.” Two approaches are taken here: (a) observe the length of each utterance in the conversation log of an innovation-oriented workshop with respect to the appearances of “Kamo” (b) the relevance between the number of users of each train station and the tendency that the gen-AI ChatGPT recollects sentences with “Kamo” relevant to the station. Correlations are observed in both approaches, which supports the correlation between the occurrence of “Kamo” and the enhancement of people’s activity. This implies that uncertainty calls for people’s interests, supported by theories about information seeking and the importance of chances as potential opportunities although this is controversial to the belief that human desires to reduce uncertainty for wellbeing and beneficial decision-making.