The AI Trick I Learned From My 14-Year-Old

Today, I want to share a quick tip on how I use AI to help me make business decisions -- inspired by my son.

I recently talked about this on Canva's new podcast… and a lot of people were surprised that a 14-year-old could teach a CTO anything about technology.

The thing is, my son has been an early adopter of AI since GPT-2, and he approaches AI completely differently than I do. And in a lot of ways, his approach is better.

So today, I want to break down:

• What my son taught me about using AI (the blank slate advantage)

• How I adapted this for business decisions (with a real example)

• Why this mindset is the emerging skill that matters

—@dharmesh

The Blank Slate Advantage

My son is an aspiring fantasy author. He's been using ChatGPT for world-building since he was pretty young -- before ChatGPT even launched, actually, because I had early access to GPT-2.

What's fascinating is how he uses it.

He'll create 2,000-word prompts that describe entire worlds: the characters, the power structures, the magic systems, the rules of how things work. Then he'll pressure test his ideas by asking "What happens if I do this?" and iterating from there.

It's this very iterative process. He treats AI like a simulation engine for his fictional universe.

But what I learned from observing how he’s using AI is that he types things into ChatGPT that I would never even think to try.

When I asked him about it, his response was simple: "Why wouldn't it be able to do that? It's supposed to be able to do everything."

That's the blank slate advantage. He doesn't know about all the limitations. He doesn't have years of experience with technology failing. His default assumption is that it will work.

And you know what? That assumption often leads him to discover capabilities I didn't know existed.

How I Adapted This for Business Decisions

Since my son's approach with creating these simulations worked so well, I borrowed the idea and started using a similar approach for business decisions.

In a nutshell, here's how it works:

Step 1: I'll feed ChatGPT a very long knowledge base about HubSpot -- our products, our strategy, our constraints, our customers. Think of it as giving the AI the context it needs to actually be useful.

Step 2: I'll ask it to simulate different scenarios: "What would happen if HubSpot launched product X?" or "What if we made this change to our pricing?"

Step 3: Here's where I borrowed from my son's approach: I'll ask it to give me feedback from five different people across different disciplines.

For example: "If I were to ask our VP of Sales, our Head of Product, a customer success manager, a small business owner, and a VC to give feedback on this idea, what would each say?"

The AI becomes a simulation engine (for lack of better term). Instead of just giving me one perspective, it's helping me see the idea from multiple angles I might not have considered.

AI is really good at connecting dots that might be hard to connect. It's great at saying "Oh, you're trying to wire this up and can't quite find a way to get from here to there? Here are some options."

It's a patient critic. It's a brilliant brainstorming tool. It's a great way to add some dots to the mix of dots you're trying to connect.

Now, is this as good as actually talking to those people? No. But it's a lot faster, and it helps me refine ideas before I bring them to real humans.

The Emerging Skill: Simulation Thinking

I think something unique is happening that most adults (including myself) are missing.

Kids like my son don't see AI as a tool for answering questions. They see it as a tool for exploring possibilities.

• Adults tend to use AI like this: "What's the answer to X?"

• Kids use AI like this: "What would happen if X? What about Y? What if I combined X and Y in a weird way? What if the rules were different?"

I’ve said this before, but this feels like the early internet days when I was starting HubSpot. Back then, millions of businesses should have been benefiting from the internet, but very few were. They just didn't understand it, and the tools weren't there.

I'm having that same feeling with AI right now.

There's this thing that millions of people and businesses should be benefiting from, and they're just not. Yes, they'll prompt ChatGPT. But they're not using even 2% or 5% of what AI is capable of.

My son taught me to approach AI differently -- to assume it can do more than I think, and experiment until I find out what's possible.

And honestly, I think a lot of us would be better off adopting that mindset.

—Dharmesh (@dharmesh)