I'm a worse speller because I use AI.

AI has gotten so good at understanding what we need, it doesn’t matter what you type. Don’t believe me? Try prompting AI by typing a bunch of misspelled words. It doesn’t matter what you type. It understands what you meant. In fact, it is so good, people (including me) overestimate the answers.

A new study tested confidence with AI tools. The experienced users misjudged the most.

Aalto University researchers ran participants through tasks with ChatGPT. Every group overestimated how well it performed, and the group that misjudged the worst was the one that rated its own AI skills highest. Most participants typed one prompt and accepted whatever came back.

I see the same pattern within companies. A team gets one impressive output, usually a rewritten email, and decides it has the tool figured out. Dunning and Kruger described this spot decades ago. Confidence peaks early, long before skill does. We call it the Learning Curve and it happens ANY TIME you learn a new skill.

Right now, the skill worth building is judgment. What to feed the tool, what to delegate, and how to catch a wrong answer. An unchecked quote, freight class, or safety answer is the cost of skipping that step.

It matters most with new hires. Make AI explain the chemistry, then have the rep explain it back, and an 18 month product knowledge curve can shrink to a few months. Let the rep paste answers without understanding them and nothing sticks.

I helped my daughter use an agent we designed to prepare her for an in-person interview. Gemini asked her questions while she answered during a voice session with the agent. We programmed the agent to coach her answers on what she did right and what she can improve. She never typed a word. The result? She did great on the interview and got the job.

I run workshops where teams practice using these tools and leave with the confidence to start using AI that afternoon.