Ai is a hammer.
An agentic data engineer at @Meta gave me a great analogy for what it means to be ai native yesterday, and I wanted to share.
He asked me what I thought it meant to be ai native and I described it as someone whoโs first instinct isnโt just to โuse aiโ. Someone ai native will inherently understand both its capabilities and limits and effectively apply them to parts of a project.
He responded and said it was a hammer. When you hang a poster you understand the challenge is getting the nail into the wall. You could use a bottle, a rock, your hand or a plethora of other misc items, but you know a hammer is most effective.
The same goes for being ai native. Knowing how to swing, aim, and hit the hammer at the right angle is the same as knowing what tool to use, how to prompt it, and when your input is invaluable.
Iโm not there you yet and maybe you arenโt either, but at some point we both didnโt know how to use a hammer.
how to 4x your learning:
have AI explain difficult concepts in 3 levels so you build layers of understanding versus diving right in and getting confused