Whilst many people are arguing that domain expertise will be of key importance, even with the rise of AI (see The continuing importance of domain knowledge), it is undoubtably true that AI can help us quickly gain a decent foundational knowledge in areas in which we do not have expertise. This is also a good example of using AI to augment our thinking, not to replace it.
Dylan Davis in The ChatGPT Skill That Makes You Dangerous in Any Room (Feb 2026) claims that in the AI era, the most valuable people won’t just be specialists but also generalists who have enough breadth to ask the right questions across domains, letting AI supply the depth. He suggests three prompts to use within the same conversation: Map, Mind, Move.
Phase 1 — MAP Goal: Go from knowing nothing to knowing enough to get real value from AI.
State your role and experience, describe your specific situation in detail, acknowledge you’re smart but not an expert in this domain, then ask for a brief executive briefing at a fifth-grade reading level. Within that, specifically request key concepts and vocabulary, the major approaches or options and how they differ, how the process typically works, and what outsiders consistently get wrong.
Phase 2 — MINE Goal: Apply the inversion principle — instead of asking how to succeed, ask how everything could go wrong.
The most valuable phase. Ask what hidden complexities do most people in my position miss until it’s too late? What seems simple but is actually tricky? What are the most expensive mistakes people like me make? What are the second-order effects I should be thinking about? What would a 20-year veteran tell me over coffee that I wouldn’t find anywhere else?
Phase 3 — MOVE Goal: Convert all the insights from the first two phases into concrete action and a cheat sheet.
Ask what are the three to five most important questions I should ask going into this situation? What information should I gather before proceeding? What is the smartest first step I can take immediately after this conversation? What red flags should I watch for as the process starts?