Are You Fading Out or Powering Up?

All the skills we refused to learn as kids are coming back to bite us in the butt.

Did you pay attention when you were growing up?

• Learn to write, your literature teacher said.
• Communication is key, Mom said.
• Use your imagination, your art teacher said.
• Observe the world around you and learn from it, Dad said.

You were probably like, this stuff is like the Pythagoras Theorem. It’s great in class but when will I ever need this in the real world?!

And then AI walked through the door.

In my last 10 months of trial and error learning the intricacies of prompts, my ironic discovery has been that those who mastered the old skills will thrive in this new world.

I started playing with Google’s Gemini (back when it was still called Bard) almost a year ago – testing it to see what it was capable of. Back then Google got me interested by promising. – among other things – a “brainstorming partner.” So I waited.

Then Gemini Advanced arrived this year and I took it for a spin.

Listen.

AI will not make you smarter. It won’t suddenly boost a lazy brain into an…