🎧 Listen to part one (3 min)
AI can do a lot for you.
It can write code, design pages, draft emails, explain difficult ideas, generate images, summarise documents, compare options, and help you move faster than ever before.
That is incredible.
But there is a catch.
AI can make you look competent before you are competent.
That is the danger of artificial competence.
The output may look good. It may sound confident. It may even work for a while. But if you do not understand what has been created, you are still dependent on something outside yourself.
You have borrowed the intelligence, but you have not owned the understanding.
The illusion of progress
One of the clearest examples is vibe coding.
You can ask AI to build a website, an app, a landing page, a calculator, or an interactive tool. Within minutes, something appears on the screen. It looks impressive. It works. It feels like magic.
And in many ways, it is useful.
But then something breaks.
A button stops working. A plugin conflicts with something you cannot see. The layout breaks on mobile six months later, and now you are stuck.
Suddenly, the magic disappears.
You have the output, but not the understanding.
You can ask AI to fix it, of course. Sometimes it will. But if you do not understand what it built, why it works, or where it is fragile, you are still not in control.
That is borrowed intelligence.
It is useful, but it is not the same as capability.
AI can execute, but it cannot understand for you
This is one of the real limits of AI.
Not because AI is weak. Not because AI is overhyped. Not because the technology is useless.
The limit is human understanding.
AI can do the task. It can explain the task. It can help you complete the task. But it cannot make you understand something unless you are willing to learn.
That part still belongs to you.
There is no shortcut around awareness, practice, experience, judgement, and responsibility. AI can accelerate the journey, but it cannot walk the path on your behalf.
Ten years of experience still matters
This is why experience still has value.
Ten years of WordPress experience is not just knowing which buttons to click. It is knowing what usually goes wrong before it goes wrong.
It is knowing that the client who asks for “just a simple booking form” may actually be describing three weeks’ worth of edge cases they have not yet considered.
It is knowing when a theme is too bloated, when a plugin is unnecessary, when a request sounds simple but hides complexity, and when a quick fix will create a bigger problem later.
That knowledge cannot be faked by a polished AI output.
AI can help a beginner produce something that looks professional. That is useful. But the experienced person can look underneath the surface and ask better questions.
Is this maintainable? Is this secure? Is this easy to update? Will the client understand how to use it? What happens when something changes?
That is not just intelligence.
That is judgement.
And judgement is built over time.
🎧 Listen to part two (5 min)
The danger of artificial competence
The danger of AI is not that it helps too much.
The danger is that it can create the appearance of skill without the substance.
A person can generate a legal document without understanding the law. A person can generate financial advice without understanding risk. A person can generate code without understanding security. A person can generate a website without understanding maintenance.
The output may look convincing.
But convincing is not the same as correct.
This is where AI literacy becomes essential.
You do not need to become an expert in everything AI helps you with. That would be impossible. But you do need enough understanding to know when you are out of your depth.
A simple rule helps:
Own the things you are responsible for and the things that break quietly. Borrow the rest.
If the consequences are yours, the understanding needs to be yours, too. If something can fail silently, cause harm, create risk, or become expensive later, you need more than a good-looking answer.
You need enough understanding to question it.
Borrowed intelligence is useful
Borrowed intelligence is not bad.
Every time you ask AI to explain something, compare ideas, generate options, or help you think through a problem, you are borrowing intelligence. That is a good thing.
We have always done this in different forms. We borrow intelligence from books, teachers, mentors, experts, and conversations.
AI simply makes this faster, cheaper, and more available.
The problem is not borrowing intelligence.
The problem is never converting it into your own understanding.
Owned intelligence requires effort
Owned intelligence is different.
It means you have absorbed the lesson. You can explain it in your own words. You can apply it without copying. You can notice when something feels wrong. You can adapt when the situation changes.
That takes effort.
It takes repetition, mistakes, patience, testing, better questions, and enough care to understand what is happening.
This is why there are no real shortcuts.
AI may reduce the friction of learning, but it does not remove the need to learn.
The four stages of competence still apply
This connects to the old model of competence.
AI does not remove the learning process. It may make parts of it faster, but the structure remains the same.
| Stage | What it means | What it looks like with AI |
|---|---|---|
| Unconscious incompetence | You do not know what you do not know. | You ask AI for an answer and assume the output is correct because it sounds confident. |
| Conscious incompetence | You become aware of what you do not understand. | You realise the output may be useful, but you cannot yet judge whether it is right, safe, or complete. |
| Conscious competence | You can do the task, but it still requires attention and effort. | You use AI carefully, check the result, ask better questions, and understand enough to make informed decisions. |
| Unconscious competence | The skill becomes natural through experience. | You know when to trust AI, when to challenge it, when to simplify it, and when to rely on your own judgement. |
AI can also create a false fifth stage.
This is the stage the original model never needed to name:
Artificial competence.
That is when the output looks good, but the understanding is not there.
It is competence by appearance, not competence by ownership.
The real value of AI is learning faster
The best use of AI is not to avoid learning.
The best use of AI is to learn faster.
Ask it to explain, compare, challenge, simplify, test your understanding, and point out what you are missing.
That is when AI becomes more than a productivity tool. It becomes a learning partner.
But the human still has to participate.
You cannot outsource your curiosity. You cannot outsource your judgement.
AI can support both, but it cannot replace them.
The better question
So the question is not:
Can AI do this for me?
The better question is:
What do I need to understand to use this properly?
That one question changes everything.
It turns AI from a shortcut machine into a learning accelerator. It moves you from passive consumer to active participant. It helps you avoid the trap of becoming dependent on tools you do not understand.
Final thought
Borrowed intelligence is powerful. But owned intelligence is freedom.
AI can help you build, write, design, code, plan, and think. But if you do not understand what it gives you, you are always one step removed from real capability.
The goal is not to reject AI.
The goal is to use AI without surrendering your own development.
Borrow the intelligence. Study it. Question it. Practise with it. Test it. Improve through it.
Then turn it into something that belongs to you.
That is where the real value is.
