The AI Skills Nobody is Teaching (And Everyone Needs) with AI Expert Ethan Mollick
6/16/202659 min
Be honest: AI makes you a little nervous.
Maybe you're afraid it'll take your job. Maybe you're overwhelmed by all the advice about prompts and agents and which chatbot to use. Or maybe you're just quietly hoping it'll all slow down.
Ethan Mollick says we're underestimating our own agency in the age of AI. Instead of worrying about what AI will do to us, we should focus on what we choose to do with it.
Ethan is a Wharton professor, the author of the bestseller Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, and the writer behind “One Useful Thing,” one of the most popular newsletters on AI, work, and education. He's spent twenty years studying how people actually use technology, and he's become the go-to voice for making sense of AI without the hype or the doom. And in his new book, Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, he explores what comes next as AI moves from a tool we prompt to a presence we live and work alongside.
In this conversation, Ethan shares the practical playbook most of us are missing and makes the case that our experience, taste, and point of view aren't things AI replaces. They're exactly what make us better at using it.
In this episode you'll learn:
➡️ Why young people are NOT "AI natives" (and why experience is the real AI advantage)
➡️ The $20 decision that instantly upgrades how you use AI
➡️ Why AI agrees with everything you say + the simple prompt that fixes it
➡️ How to make AI write in YOUR voice instead of sounding like everyone else
➡️ The "jagged frontier": what AI is surprisingly bad at (and why that's your opportunity)
➡️ Why taste may become the most valuable skill of the AI era
➡️ How much agency we really have over where AI takes us
Ethan believes that the future of AI isn't something that will just happen to us… It's something we get to build together.
This… is A Bit of Optimism.
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To pre-order Ethan’s new book, Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, head to: https://co-existence.ai/
Want to hear more from Ethan? Check out his Substack “One Useful Thing”: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/
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Chapters
Chapters
- 00:00:00 Why are AI Experts Are Either Doomers or Zealots?
- 00:02:05 From Video Games to AI: Ethan's Unexpected Journey
- 00:09:16 AI's Profound Impact on Knowledge Workers
- 00:14:50 How AI Kills Traditional Talent Pipelines
- 00:15:57 Why AI Art Doesn't Bother Me, But I'd Never Hang It on My Wall
- 00:20:40 How To Overcome AI's Complication of Competitive Edge
- 00:22:06 The 20 Dollar Investment That Changes Everything
- 00:24:40 The 84 Percent Rule: Why AI Can Now Do Your Seven-Hour Job in 15 Minutes
- 00:25:59 Your Voice Matters More Than You Think: Why AI Can't Replace Taste
- 00:19:53 The Discomfort-Avoidant Generation Meets the Efficiency Machine
- 00:13:08 Why Young People Are Worse at Using AI
- 00:43:35 The Brain We're Sacrificing: From Phone Numbers to Critical Thinking
- 00:51:39 Two Prompts That Will Transform How You Use AI
- 00:52:58 How to Use AI As Co-Intelligence
- 00:54:57 The Agency You Have Right Now: It's Not About Policy, It's About How You Use It
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Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.
Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do.
Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game.
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Website: http://simonsinek.com/
Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful
Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek
Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/
Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSimon Sinek· Host0:00
So when you're interviewing for a job and everybody's good because of AI, how do I stand out and, and get a job that's still, that they still need to hire for? I'm fascinated by that.
Ethan Mollick· Guest0:11
Like, if Claude is really good at running your company, Claude's also good at running every other company, and there's no variation between them. And generically high quality with no variation means there's no moats or com- competitive edge. I think humans who bring competitive edge to this one way or another, just by providing variation if nothing else- Yes ... is a useful way to think about problems, right? You start to care a lot more about the taste of that person than you do about the entire organization built to deliver the product.
Simon Sinek· Host0:37
We're all a little afraid of AI. Even the people who love it are a little bit afraid. Some of us are afraid it'll take our jobs or make us dumber, or change everything so fast we'll never be able to catch up. It doesn't help that most AI experts fall into one of two camps. They're the doomers or they're the zealots. That's why I wanted to talk to Ethan Mollick. He's an AI expert who refreshingly is neither. Ethan's a Wharton professor studying how AI, entrepreneurship, and innovation impact our work. He focuses on how employees actually use these tools rather than how they're theoretically supposed to improve our work. His New York Times bestseller, Co-Intelligence, and his popular Substack, One Useful Thing, have become the go-to resources for all those people trying to make sense of AI without losing their minds. Ethan