Treat AI like a sharp junior teammate, not an oracle

The people I see getting the most out of AI aren't the ones with the cleverest prompts. They're the ones who treat it like a capable new hire: fast, eager, widely read, and sometimes confidently wrong.

That framing changes how you work with it.

You give context, not just orders. You wouldn't tell a new teammate "write the spec" and walk away. You'd explain the customer, the constraint, and what good looks like. Same here.

You review the work. A junior's first draft saves you hours, but you still read it before it ships. AI output deserves the same review, especially numbers, names and anything that sounds too neat.

You delegate the right tasks. First drafts, summaries, test cases, "explain this old code to me", turning meeting notes into action items. These are great. Final decisions about people, money or production systems stay with you.

You teach it your standards. Write down your conventions once (tone, format, the checks you always run) and reuse them. It gets better, the same way a teammate does after a few weeks.

An oracle is something you trust blindly. A teammate is someone you work with. The second relationship is far more productive, and far safer.