Most AI trainings try to meet non-technical people where they are. That radically limits what they can get out of the tool.

The pattern is familiar. Show the demo. Give them a prompt template. Have them paste it into ChatGPT and rewrite an email. Everyone leaves feeling productive.

The problem is that the skills that make AI actually work are old skills: structured problem solving, task decomposition, setting and evaluating quality criteria, clear communication, working through blockers when something stalls. They were always valuable. They were optional. They’re not anymore.

A prompt template gets you a generic output. Working with AI on something real means breaking the problem down, knowing what good looks like, telling the model what’s wrong with what it gave you, and iterating until it isn’t. None of that is an AI skill. All of it is now mandatory to use AI well.

You can’t teach this without teaching those. Or you can, but the people you teach will get subpar output and earnestly believe they’re using AI to its fullest. No idea they could be doing anything differently.

The honest version of AI training is thinking-skills training. AI is just the excuse to teach them.

Most trainings skip this part. You can see it in the output.