AI As Gateway Drug to Real Expertise?

Rather than eroding expertise by having people use ChatGPT as a cheap replacement, a more optimistic scenario has AI chatbots give a cheap sneak peek of what it would be like to work with an expert, which then increases the chance that you'll hire such an expert.

I can see this play out in two ways: Incidental and intentional.

In the incidental way, you use ChatGPT for some expertise you feel you're missing. Maybe you're brainstorming a design for your business website, maybe you're talking through some personal issues. You weren't quite ready to hire a designer or a therapist, mostly because you don't know what it'd be like working with them. But now you see that there's value in bouncing things off, just, the AI isn't quite cutting it. Now you've got a clearer idea of what you want to get out of the expert relationship and are ready to hire one.

In the intentional way, the experts themselves put out bespoke AI versions that interested clients can interact with. Maybe you're a strategy consultant with a unique framework. You bottle that up into a custom GPT, a Claude Skill, or something behind a web interface. Your (potential) customers can now try out what a mini-version of you (with far less depth, to be sure) would look like and get an intuition of what working with you might look like. I could see this as a powerful marketing tool. Already, there are platforms that do this for you: Upload all your insights, and they'll make an AI bot version of you.

Exploring these possibilities is a shift of mindset away from doom and gloom toward seeing what completely new opportunities get opened up with novel tools.