Cassie Kozyrkov, Google's first Chief Decision Scientist, was asked to name the most valuable skill of the AI era. Her answer wasn't coding or prompting. It was judgment.
She makes the point with a magic lamp. Imagine a genie who can grant any wish: "Are you sure you have the skills to wish responsibly?" The power isn't the hard part anymore. Knowing what to ask for is.
There's a more subtle idea underneath that one. Difficulty used to be a filter. When answers were expensive to get, you had to understand a problem before you could solve it. Now anyone can produce a polished answer to the wrong question, and the polish makes it harder to notice.
A bad outcome used to have plenty of places to hide. Now the genie delivers exactly what you ask for, which means the results say more about the question than the tool. The genie is new. The wishing is not.
Before making your next request, it's a great moment to pause, get curious, and ask: are we exploring the heart of the problem, or just looking for a comforting answer?