AI is already right beside us.

Even for me personally, I utilize AI across my work and daily life, including ChatGPT, Cursor, and Claude. It is now hard to imagine life before it.

However, at the same time, I feel a sense of crisis. Am I falling behind in this era? What should I do to avoid that? These thoughts occur frequently.

Amidst such worries, I want to summarize the skill sets I feel I lack, yet are essential.

Since this is strictly a personal opinion, someone else reading this, or perhaps my future self, might come to a completely different answer.

1. Asking Properly - The Depth of the Question

The first survival skill in the AI era depends on how well you input.

Most work these days starts with "what should I ask the AI?" However, if the question is vague or lacks context, it inevitably returns an inaccurate answer.

When I converse with Cursor, I often realize how blurry my own thinking is during the process of explaining what I truly want.

Inputting properly to AI is ultimately the act of structuring one's own thoughts. Current AI does not organize thoughts for you. Rather, it is a mirror that reveals how clearly I am thinking.

A good question is already half the answer. Creating that half is the task I need to practice the most right now.

2. Reading Fast and Accurately - The Speed of Judgment

AI provides the output.

But judging which of those is the answer I truly want is ultimately my job.

The ability to quickly read the results AI produces and pick out the accurate and practical solution from within. I believe this is the most important capability in this era.

AI's suggestions are always plausible. However, hallucinations, or plausible errors, are an inherent limit of AI and cannot completely disappear.

That is why agility of judgment is important.

The sense to distinguish between "usable" vs "unusable".

This isn't simple reading comprehension; it requires domain knowledge + intuition + responsibility working together to be possible.

I am particularly weak at 'reading'. When I see a long text, it takes me a long time to find the core within it. Faced with the vast amount of information AI pours out, I get anxious thinking, 'Is my speed too slow?'

So these days, I practice 'reading accurately' instead of 'reading fast'. Rather than absorbing all information, I first think, "What can I do with this answer?" and pick out only the necessary parts.

Rather than trying to run at AI's speed, balancing it with the accuracy of judgment. That is the rhythm I need right now.

3. Expressing and Delivering — Thoughts into Form

There is a realm that AI cannot replace. That is the ability to convey thoughts to people.

No matter how excellent the idea or code AI creates is, explaining it in language and melting it into context is still the human's role.

• Making a persuasive proposal to a PM,

• Leaving it as team documentation,

• Or connecting it to a single decision,

The 'power of expression' is absolutely necessary in these processes.

These days, I find this part particularly difficult. Even if I think I "understood" something, there are many times I cannot naturally convey it to others. AI organizes my logic, but it does not fully speak my intentions for me.

So, I am practicing writing. I believe writing is the last human skill in the AI era. The power to organize complex thoughts into words and sentences is ultimately the fundamental skill that refines the structure of thought and determines the efficiency of collaboration.

Thoughts are only complete when expressed.

Conclusion: AI is Not Fear, but a Mirror for Growth (Rewriting)

Surviving in the AI era isn't about becoming smarter than AI. Instead, it is closer to understanding oneself more clearly through AI.

AI reflects the gaps and habits in my thinking exactly as they are. So, standing before that mirror, I am relearning how to ask, how to read, and how to express.

The world will continue to get faster. AI will do more and more things for us. Amidst that, the human's job might be "to think more humanly".

Ultimately, what matters is not speed, but direction. If AI calculates the world, we must become the people who understand and connect those results.

For me, this post is a part of that practice. While working with AI, I am still contemplating how to think, learn, and survive.