Stop Treating AI Like a Prompt Machine

When I first started experimenting with AI a couple of years ago, I thought I was pretty good at it.

I had my go-to prompts saved, I played around with different tools, and I felt confident I was keeping up with the trend.

But here’s what I’ve learned since then: prompts aren’t the same as AI literacy.

Anyone can ask ChatGPT to draft an email. But here’s the real test, can you tell if that email will actually resonate with your audience?

Can you spot what’s missing? Can you take that output and apply it strategically inside your business goals?

Most people don’t realize this: AI is a garbage in, garbage out system. The quality of your input determines the quality of your output.

Memorizing 100 clever prompts won’t keep you relevant if you don’t know how to think strategically about the work itself.

The estimate out there is that 40% of jobs will be impacted by AI in the next decade. The people who thrive won’t be the ones typing the most creative prompts, they’ll be the ones who know how to combine AI with judgment, context, and strategy.

And because new tools are being released every week, you need something deeper than surface-level prompting. You need to understand the foundations of how AI works. Once you do, you won’t feel the pressure to chase every shiny new app, you’ll know how to evaluate what’s worth your time and what isn’t.

It’s not about knowing what to type into the box. It’s about knowing how to think before you even open the tool.

Here’s what shifted everything for me.

Early on, I treated AI like a magic slot machine: type something in, hope a good answer pops out, move on.

Now? I approach it differently. I ask: What am I actually trying to accomplish here? Who’s the audience? What’s the goal? What context will shape the output?

And when the tool gives me an answer, I don’t accept it at face value. I review it. I refine it. I push it further. Sometime I play the tools against each other to see what outcomes I can get. That’s the difference between just using AI and actually leveraging AI.

When we apply AI to our work, the conversation shouldn’t be, “Which prompt should we use?”

The real conversation is about workflows. Where are the bottlenecks? Which processes are draining the most time? Where can AI unlock leverage that actually moves the business forward?

Sometimes that looks like automating repetitive tasks. Sometimes it’s building a custom dashboard. Sometimes it’s retraining a team to approach problem-solving in an entirely new way.

The tool is never the strategy. The strategy comes first.

So the real question isn’t whether you can write a clever prompt. It’s this:

• Can you decide when AI is worth using and when it isn’t?

• Can you assess the quality of what it gives you?

• Can you integrate it into systems that move your business forward?

That’s the literacy that matters now. Because at the end of the day, prompts are just the entry point. Strategy is what creates results.