When we chat about AI skills it's easy to get stuck on the tech skills needed (and yes we have a prompting guide as that skill is important). On the other side people often chat about empathy and other “human” skills as being the most important in the future.
But we think an attitude (or culture) of experimentation is actually the most important skill for success in the AI future.
An ChatGPT generated image for this blog
What does experimentation mean?
There is no longer a blueprint for learning and implementing these AI tools. And by the time one is made, everything is moving fast and it's out of date. So people (and companies) need to have an attitude of lifelong learning and just trying things out.
To ensure this works there are few elements:
- Genuine curiosity
- Critical thinking
- Happy to fail
Experimentation (According to ChatGPT)
Genuine Curiosity
We're seeing people who actually want to try things out and think “ooh could ChatGPT do that?” and give it a go. Or who are very interested in whether different tools get better results.
Things change so much that being curious is needed to start even vaguely on top of things.
Critical Thinking
Now I'm going to counteract this - you need to be curious but sensible.
You need to know how to query the results (and need some critical thinking about data privacy, ethical use and when to use AI rather than when you need to do it yourself).
At Taught by Humans we love AI, we use the generative AI tools a lot, but we know to verify the output and not to use it for everything (especially human related things).
Happy to Fail
A lot of people have one bad result and never use a tool again. With AI you need to try and test and refine. Sometimes you'll try to do something and it'll not be good enough. Other times it'll feel easy.
Being able to fail and just keep going, use it as a learning experience.
So next time you find yourself thinking, “Can I do that in [insert AI tool here]?” or “How should I use this?” - just give it a go.
Treat it like an experiment. Don’t worry if it goes badly. That’s part of the process.
Every AI user started by just playing around.