AI Fluency Isn’t Enough for What’s Coming
- Russell Fitzpatrick, PhD
- Jul 23
- 2 min read
I’m sure you have all heard the call. “You must become AI fluent to save your job.” “AI literacy is the new leadership skill.” “Upskill in AI or risk being left behind.”
I understand why these messages are trending. They offer certainty in a time of rapid change. They suggest that if you learn the tools, you will be prepared for the future. And of course, they’re designed as marketing hooks, meant to provoke a reaction.
But the future isn’t just about learning how to use AI. It’s about how you change (or don’t) because you are using AI.
The real opportunity, and the real challenge, isn’t becoming more tech-savvy through artificial intelligence. It’s becoming… more human intelligent.
What AI Fluency Doesn’t Offer
AI fluency matters. Understanding how to productively use these new tools is now baseline leadership literacy. But technical skill alone isn’t the differentiator people think it is.
Anyone can learn prompts. Anyone can generate outputs.
The leaders who will thrive in this new era are the ones who evolve how they think with the help of AI. This is the deeper shift. AI invites us to question:
How do I process complexity?
How do I hold ambiguity?
How do I grow and innovate and expand what’s possible?
These aren’t AI questions. They’re human ones.
Why Second Brain Thinking Is Leadership’s Next Evolution
The future of leadership will be shaped by those who can architect their thinking in partnership with AI to extend what it means to lead, decide, and create in a world of shared cognition.
A Second Brain allows you to create a new way of organizing your thoughts, perception, and attention. The Second Brain amplifies, clarifies, and expands your mental range. And because of that, you become a different, more powerful version of your former self.
The Real Work Ahead Isn’t Technical. It’s Cognitive.
Right now, we’re at the early stages of this human-AI collaboration. But as AI continues to evolve, especially as we move toward more advanced systems, even Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), those who’ve learned to treat AI as a collaborative thinking partner will be miles ahead.
Why? Because AI isn’t evolving in isolation. It’s evolving in relationship to how we use it. If you treat AI like a hammer, you stay stuck in tool-based thinking. If you treat AI like a collaborator, you begin to co-evolve. The leaders who collaborate with AI, rather than just use it as a tool have made the leap. They aren’t just tech-savvy. They’re ahead of the curve.
This is about more than productivity. It’s about evolving your cognition, your leadership, and your impact so you’re not reacting to the future. You’re shaping it.
Most people treat AI like a faster Google search. The leaders I work with are learning to treat it as their Second Brain, a thinking partner that they can turn to for insight, challenge, and perspective. And by doing that, they evolve how their own human brain works.
Your Second Brain can become the foundation for how you think, decide, and lead in a world where human intelligence and machine intelligence are becoming inseparable.
Read more about why you should develop your own Second Brain in The AI-Enhanced Leader.
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