How do I put this?

AI currently may know what it knows right now, but it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.

And, while blindspots like this may not exactly make it dumb, it does make it unfit to take the lead.

There’s still a need for an expert, laser-focused on achieving a result, to pull the strings and make sense of all the moving parts of a process.

This is why one of the most vital skills anybody can learn right now is AI prompting.

If I’ve been speaking Chinese to your ears up till now bear with me while I explain further.

AI prompting, whether in writing, coding, art, or anything else, requires solid knowledge of the fundamentals of a subject area.

Let’s look at marketing for example:

While ChatGPT may be able to give you all the components of a go-to-market strategy for your business, you still need to know what questions to ask and how to leverage all the information to arrive at a credible and unique strategy. To do this you need to call on industry knowledge, research, reading, and so on.

In other words,, while AI may be the sharpest machete you’ve ever come across, simply having it wouldn’t guarantee you a clean lawn unless you actually know how to cut grass.

On the flip side, if you do know your grass then armed with your new space-age machete you may very well become the greatest lawn-care expert on this side of the prime meridian.

So what does this all mean for you the reader? I asked you to be patient, so let me deliver some actionable nuggets for your trouble, so here goes:

We have entered the age of the expert. The great synthesizer, I call him.

Experts who know their stuff, preferably across multiple fields are going to be the most productive going forward.

I remember a TechCrunch article that explained how the age of the whizkid that saw the rise of people like Zuckerberg is over and that the next great wave of world-changing innovations belongs to those who hold multiple PhDs that enable them to draw from different schools of thought to synthesize practical solutions to complex world problems like climate change and world hunger.

I remember being a bit skeptical. I strongly believe that PhDs are overrated in most cases. But today I can say the article was right.

Welcome to a future based on whoever has the best idea and can think better.

Am I saying you should get a Ph.D.?

Nope!

I’m saying you should develop a solid grasp of the fundamentals of different fields in order to become a unique kind of expert. Students of my Freelance Without Borders Training program know a lot about this already.

Move on from being just a writer to becoming a writer with key insights about every facet of the marketing process from ideation to distribution.

Don’t just know how to draw comic book characters, learn the psychology behind colors and fonts to deliver mind-bending experiences on every page.

Don’t just be a nurse with a home pharmacy, learn marketing strategy and business development to chart a new path forward that only you could have seen.

These are all examples, but you get the gist.

Cross-disciplinary mastery like this will make you a master of AI prompting going forward, and a sought-after leader of this coming generation.

P.S. Okay, while I hope that was helpful, I know some people may want to talk more and offload some of their ideas. Drop a message in the comment section so that we can talk more.

I’ll talk about more nuggets as the week goes on.

P.P.S. The nerd in me couldn’t resist using the photo below featuring Star Wars Jedi and their light sabers.

According to Star Wars lore, light sabers can cut through anything but are extremely unwieldy so the average person would probably cut their fingers while using them.

However, in the hands of trained Jedi masters like those featured below, light sabers became the most fearsome weapons in the galaxy…Almost like how AI will be in the hands of an expert who knows how to ask it the right questions going forward.