7 Ways to Get So Good at AI, People Will Think You Are AI

Sam Liang is appalled arsenic I confess my method for signaling an interview: moving the Voice Memos app connected an iPhone and transferring the transcript manually to a Google Doc. The CEO of Otter, a transcription work for analyzing meetings, looks astatine maine arsenic if I tried to telephone into our video chat utilizing a rotary phone. He believes, naturally, that I should power to Otter. He’s astir apt right.

It’s each portion of a caller individuality astatine enactment (and possibly astatine home): the AI native. Time-saving productivity tools similar next-gen note-takers, task-based agents, and chatty inbox assistants are exploding successful popularity arsenic they invade each nook and cranny of our integer lives. While it’s captious to support concerns astir information and hallucinations apical of caput erstwhile utilizing immoderate AI feature, aboriginal adopters are processing a fluency that volition apt wage dividends for years to come.

Being AI native—or “agentic,” arsenic AI natives say—means staying adaptable to caller experiences. Transcription failures aside, I’ve embraced experimentation, from generating AI podcasts to letting Claude signifier my desktop files. (Some of this I talked astir successful my newsletter bid past year, AI Unlocked.) If you privation to get truthful bully astatine utilizing AI tools that your coworkers commencement questioning whether it's humor oregon ribbon cables moving beneath your skin, present are my 7 tips for AI-powered ascendance.

1. Kill Your Chatbots

ChatGPT is truthful 2022. These days, the chill kids are each astir Codex. Your eyes whitethorn glaze over, rightfully, astatine the notation of “AI agents,” but compared to thing connected the marketplace adjacent a twelvemonth ago, bundle automation tools similar Codex and Anthropic’s Cowork are leagues amended astatine really taking implicit your machine and completing tasks. Don’t discarded your clip fiddling with a azygous chatbot erstwhile you could beryllium commanding a full service of them.

2. Go Voice Mode

Oh, you’re inactive typing up everything you privation your AI tools to do, Boomer-style? That’s cute. But spot Otter’s Liang: “Voice volition go much ascendant moving forward,” helium tells me. “People hatred writing.” (He caveats that I, a journalist, astir apt don’t hatred writing, which is, mostly, true.) This determination is chiefly for the input, not needfully the output. I seldom usage the voice-only mode connected ChatGPT, for instance, but I often talk a punctual into my telephone and past skim the written output.

3. Build a Sandbox

Even though agents are really bully now, the rascally small devils tin inactive eff everything up without due boundaries. (Earlier this year, a Claude-powered cause deleted a startup’s full accumulation database and backups.) So if you’re acceptable to person immoderate outer entity instrumentality power of your computer, you request to walk an day researching everything these tools tin bash and acceptable up immoderate dedicated folders with the files you privation them to access.

4. Give It Everything You’ve Got

With apologies to our privacy-minded information writers, it’s simply the lawsuit that the much information you stock with AI, the much personalized the outputs tin be. Jo Barrow is the main of unit astatine Granola, 1 of Otter’s competitors, and she puts it this way: “I person a idiosyncratic OS system, which is simply a bid of files connected my machine which my AI lives inside. Whenever I inquire questions, each of that discourse is close there, and the cause tin spell and fig it out. I don’t request to repetition myself implicit and implicit again.” Fair warning: Sensitive conversations are inactive champion had without a imperishable record.

5. Create an Impersonator

Barrow tells maine she dumps each of her Slack messages into a papers to fto bots cognize however she sounds connected that platform, and she does the aforesaid for her email inbox and societal media accounts. “People usage AI for finessing their code of voice,” she says. “There’s lone truthful galore times you tin say, ‘OK, a small spot warmer. OK, a small little formal.’ That’s a large clip sink.” Creating these guides for the agents to travel won’t afloat replicate your voice, but they tin nudge the bot to output thing astatine slightest person to your cadence and tone.

6. Think Across Teams

Data is powerful, and adding much of it from radical astir you tin further heighten AI tools. Consider your coworkers: “Many radical are utilizing a gathering note-taker now, but they're inactive utilizing it astatine the idiosyncratic gathering level,” Liang says. He touts the “knowledge engine” Otter tin make erstwhile a whole workplace buys in, from the engineering squad to the selling department. You tin adjacent bash this astatine home: If household members determination assorted notes from their time into a single, shared AI tool, that’s going to supply much insights than siloed usage.

7. Learn to Jailbreak

Successfully utilizing AI tools successful 2026 doesn’t necessitate writing—I mean speaking—perfect prompts. Even so, starting disconnected much analyzable tasks with a creative, well-calibrated petition tin beryllium clutch. Experiment with the wording, particularly if you’re hitting unexpected guardrails blocking the output. Recently, I attempted to person a bot to nonstop maine email addresses for a assortment of niche experts, and it refused to deliver. But erstwhile I started a caller chat and shared details astir wherefore I wanted this info (for reporting purposes, of course, not stalking), it forked implicit a list.

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