I Saw AI Do My Job and It Changed How I Learn Forever

How asking better questions replaced my sense of professional security

3 years ago I was a data analyst.

I thought I was good at the whole numbers thing. I could milk the corporate world for a decent salary as an analyst all my life and live in peace… but then ChatGPT came along.

After probably an anxiety attack or two…

I sat down and said: fine. I’m going to replace myself.

I started building a GPT that could talk to a database.

Automate analysis itself.

The thing that I do really well.

And the wild part is: it taught me how. Natural language to SQL. API calls. Setup.

For the record, I wasn’t a real programmer back then. Really more of a data analyst. I’d used SQL and Python for data analysis work. But that’s not the same as building full stack applications.

The next problem I asked was even crazier.

Teach me how to clone my voice.

It wrote the first version of that program.

Teach me how to run that program.

It showed me how to set up my computer, installing Python, setting up my environment along the way.

Next thing you know, I have a program that can speak in my own voice running on my computer.

That moment was a hard reset. Not for AI. For me.

I saw GPT-3 reach into parts of software world I’d never had exposure to. Stitching together solutions I’d never seen before.

Sticks and stones aren’t going to tell you how to make fire.

Intelligence is different. You can just ask for things.

The model has studied a lot of what humans built. So when you ask for something, you’re often not the first person to do the thing.

There might already be a solution inside it - waiting to be stitched together.

So you can reach into capabilities you didn’t invent. Like grabbing Lego blocks from the whole internet brain.

Learning voice cloning took me two hours. Two hours.

It was almost too easy.

So I asked my second question of the day. Teach me how to build a GPT-powered chatbot.

It wrote the first version. I got it running on my computer.

And suddenly I’m staring at this thing like… Okay. This is not normal software.

You should ask dumb questions.

The real unlock is asking without shame.

The model doesn’t judge you.

It just tells you how the world works.

I don’t know how Git works. Teach me.

I don’t know this knob in my music software. Teach me.

I don’t know how to build the app. Teach me.

Most people won’t say that out loud. Especially around smart roommates, coworkers, or anyone they want to impress.

We’re afraid of being judged.

A language model doesn’t do that.

It doesn’t care what you should know. It doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t keep score.

And once that clicks, something shifts.

You stop pretending you already understand. You stop posturing. You start learning. Openly, aggressively, without fear.

That alone is a superpower.

I’m not limited by everything I’ve ever worked on. I’m limited by the questions I ask.

I’d ask it to write a Python program. Then another. Then another.

Sometimes I’d ask for 100 variations just to see what was possible.

I’d step away for a bit, come back, and read through what it made, flipping through project ideas from an eager intern.

And over and over I’d have the same reaction:

Wait… you can automate that?

Nothing about the computer changed. My imagination did.

So the bottleneck shifts. From typing. To thinking.

From memorizing. To asking.

Try these prompts for a day:

• Teach me how to do the thing I’m avoiding

• Let’s make the first version of this idea

• Show me what I’m missing

Then notice what changes in your brain.

Because once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it.

What dumb question are you avoiding right now?