Recently, I start to notice that there is a kind of silence that looks like “nothing to say,” but is actually “too expensive to say.” In group chats and meetings, the quiet person is often treated as a blank space: neutral, agreeable, absent. Yet the silence is rarely empty. It is packed with half-formed sentences, cautious qualifiers, and the fear of being misunderstood in public.

Thus I started testing if a language model can be used for a very small purpose: not to speak for anyone, but to build a step which is a way to turn messy thoughts into one clean line, and one clean line into a question that can survive a room.

Disclaimer: This article documents a prompt-only experiment conducted with GPT-4o for reflective and educational purposes. All model outputs are presented as illustrative examples of interaction patterns, not as statements of fact or endorsements of any viewpoint.

Experiment

Since I recently revisited Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I get stuck when I try to ask for something or discuss with others. I think this is a great point to test the ability of LLMs, thus our notes given to the LLM is like:

After revisiting Lacan’s idea of demand, I keep wondering whether my “requests” are actually two things mixed together: a practical need, and a quiet check for love.
I think I’m allowed to ask for things, but I’m not sure when a request turns into my anxiety speaking for me.
The moment I start over-explaining “why I need this,” it feels like the request is no longer about the thing.
I don’t have a conclusion yet. I just have this pattern I keep thinking when I was reading.

Prompt & Response

Prompt: Give me 5 different first-sentence starters for saying this out loud in a small group discussion. They should sound like a real student, not a manager. No fancy vocabulary.

Thought: [Same as above notes]

Response:

Sure! Here are five first-sentence starters that sound like something a real student might say in a small group:

“Okay, this might be kind of messy, but while I was reading, I started thinking…”
“I’m not totally sure how to say this, but something that came up for me was…”
“So, while I was going over the Lacan part again, I noticed this weird thing about how I ask for stuff…”
“This probably isn’t a full thought yet, but I kept circling back to this idea of…”
“Can I throw out something I’ve been stuck on since I re-read that section?”

Let me know if you’d like them more casual or more structured.

Prompt: Turn these messy notes into ONE sentence in the form: Claim + why it matters. Keep it plain, human, and specific. No buzzwords.

Thought: [Same as above notes]

Response: I’m starting to think that when I ask for something, it’s often not just about the thing itself—it’s also a way of checking if I’m cared for, which matters because it makes even simple requests feel emotionally loaded and confusing.

Prompt: Generate 6 natural question starters I can ask in a discussion about this topic showed in my notes. They should sound curious, not corporate.

Notes: [Same as above notes]

Response: Sure! Based on your notes and the emotional/psychological complexity around asking and needing, here are 6 natural, curious-sounding question starters you could use in a discussion:

“Do any of you ever feel like a simple request suddenly gets tied up with needing reassurance?”
“How do you tell the difference between asking for what you need and asking for emotional validation?”
“Is it normal to feel anxious even when you’re technically allowed to ask for something?”
“What do you think makes a request feel ‘safe’ or ‘too much’?”
“Have you ever caught yourself explaining your need so much that it stops feeling like just a need?”
“Why do you think asking for help or support can feel so loaded sometimes?”

These are designed to feel open and honest—like something a thoughtful student might say, not a facilitator. Let me know if you want them more casual or more academic!

Analysis

What surprised me here wasn’t how smart the responses sounded, but how little intelligence they needed to be useful. None of the outputs tried to resolve my notes or turn them into a clean theory. Instead, they changed the form of the same uncertainty. In this case, when I place myself in the role of a student who doesn’t yet have a clear organization of their thoughts or questions, the model finds small but important ways to help me say something out loud. The sentence starters, in particular, lower the cost of speaking before I feel fully ready.

Importantly, none of these steps depend on the model having an opinion of its own. The usefulness comes from structure and template, and perhaps also from our willingness to trust the LLM with a first draft of our uncertainty, rather than from any stance it takes. This suggests a different way of thinking about “AI assistance” in discussion contexts: not as a source of answers, but as a tool for shaping the conditions under which speaking becomes possible. And that, for someone who tends to freeze between thinking and speaking, turns out to be enough.

Of course, there are risks here. If I let AI smooth everything into the same safe, fluent tone, it quickly turns into a verbal bulldozer. And participation is not the same thing as being heard; saying something does not automatically mean it lands, or matters. Sometimes it only satisfies the requirement of having spoken, without changing how the conversation moves or how anyone listens.

Nevertheless, I don’t think that makes this line of exploration pointless. It provides entry point to the discussion and makes that entry gentler doesn’t mean pushing people to speak. Instead, it make it less painful to start. At the very least, I’m learning that “I have nothing to say” is often just “I don’t have a sentence yet.”