Now is the best time to go deep on AI.
Not because you'll miss out. Because the skills you build now unlock the next phase. And the phase after that.
People are debating whether AI is a bubble. Whether the hype is overblown. Whether this will crash like crypto or the metaverse.
That debate is a distraction.
The hype is real. The tools work. And a window exists right now where building AI skills gives you a genuine edge. Not because the tools are magic. Because most people haven't started yet.
The Arbitrage
Every major technology shift creates an arbitrage opportunity. The people who go deep early build advantages that compound. The people who wait build nothing.
Email, the web, mobile, social. Same pattern every time. Everyone had the tools. Access wasn't the advantage. Skill was.
The same thing is happening now with AI. ChatGPT has 800 million users. Claude, Gemini, Copilot are everywhere. The tools are democratized. The skill to use them well is not.
Most people use AI like they used Google in 2004. Type a question, get an answer, move on. That's useful. But it's the first rung of a much taller ladder.
The arbitrage isn't access. It's the reps you're putting in while everyone else decides if this is real.
The Ladder
AI isn't a single skill. It's a ladder. Each rung teaches you how to see the next one.
Rung one: Chat as search replacement. Most people are here. You use ChatGPT or Claude to answer questions, summarize documents, draft emails. Faster than Google for certain tasks. You're getting value, but you're not building leverage.
What you learn here: how to prompt, how to give context, how to iterate. How to recognize when the model is wrong. These fundamentals matter more than people realize.
Rung two: AI as thought partner. You stop treating AI like a search engine and start treating it like a collaborator. You work through problems together. You ask it to challenge your assumptions. You use it to think, not just to retrieve.
What you learn here: how to structure complex problems for AI. How to break work into pieces the model can handle. How to maintain context across a long conversation. When to trust the output and when to verify.
Rung three: AI agents. Instead of chatting with AI, you let it operate your tools. Claude Code writes and executes code. Browser agents navigate the web. Computer use lets AI control your desktop.
What you learn here: how to delegate. How to give AI enough autonomy to be useful without enough rope to hang itself. How to supervise without micromanaging. How to build workflows where AI does the tedious work and you do the thinking. This is the human-in-the-loop approach that actually works.
Rung four: Commanding armies. You program fleets of agents to work autonomously. Not one AI assistant, but dozens running in parallel. Monitoring, creating, optimizing, reporting.
You can't see this rung until you've climbed the ones before it.
Why the Window Closes
This window will close. Eventually AI will be as common as Google. Everyone will use these tools. The edge disappears.
When this window closes, a new one opens. Only those who got proficient in this phase will be ready for the next.
The skills compound. The person who mastered prompting in 2024 was ready for agents in 2025. The person who mastered agents in 2025 will be ready for autonomous fleets in 2026. The person just starting will play catch-up for years.
This is how technology advantages work. They're not about being first. They're about being ready.
The Resistance
Some people resist this. I get it.
AI feels like cheating. It threatens identity. If you've built a career on writing well or coding fast, watching a machine do it in seconds is uncomfortable.
Resisting doesn't make it go away. It just means you're building the wrong skills while the world builds the right ones.
The people who thrived in the internet era weren't the ones who resisted it. They figured out how to use it before everyone else did. Same with mobile. Same with social. Same with AI.
The tools don't care about your feelings. They just keep getting better.
Where to Start
If you're on rung one, stay there for now. But be intentional. Don't just use AI casually. Study what works. Notice which prompts get good results. Build an intuition for how these models think.
When that feels natural, move to rung two. Start using AI to think through hard problems. Business strategy. Career decisions. Creative projects. Treat it like a smart colleague available around the clock.
Once that's second nature, make the jump to rung three. Install Claude Code. Set up browser automation. Let AI operate your tools. This is where leverage multiplies.
Each rung takes time. Weeks, maybe months. But each one unlocks the next.
The Real Arbitrage
The skeptics are still debating whether the ladder is real.
Meanwhile, the people who started climbing a year ago are three rungs up. They're not smarter. They just started earlier.
A year from now, the gap between those who started and those who waited will be obvious. Two years from now, it will be insurmountable.
The arbitrage isn't AI itself. It's the reps.
First you learn to prompt. Then you work with agents. Then you command armies of them.
Start climbing.
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Robbie Jack•Jan 07, 2026•5 min read
