Learn to speak AI

If you ask me today, as an experienced individual living in an AI era, what is an important skill that every person, be it a student or a professional, should have in order to be employable or even should have in order to be productive (personally and professionally)?. I would confidently answer, “Learn to speak AI." Precisely, know how to use, ask and engage with AI tools via "prompt engineering”.

Simply put, prompt engineering is the ability to give (or in other words ask) artificial intelligence clear instructions, relevant information and sufficient context to produce a useful result. A prompt is the question or instruction you give an AI tool/app such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Claude. Engineering that prompt means refining how you ask so the response better meets your needs. If you ask/give wrong input, it will not produce an ideal solution/output – garbage in, garbage out!

Think of AI as a capable colleague who has enormous knowledge but does not automatically understand your objectives, expectations or working environment. If you ask a vague question, you may receive a generic answer. If you explain what you need, why you need it, who the audience is and what the final output should look like, the results can be considerably more useful.

Let us take a simple example. Instead of asking AI to “write a promotional email", try this: “Act as an experienced marketing professional working for a technology company. Write a friendly email introducing our cybersecurity services to small businesses in Oman. Highlight three business benefits, avoid technical jargon and finish with an invitation for a meeting. Keep it under 150 words.”

The difference is clear. You have given AI a role, a target audience, a purpose, specific requirements and a word limit. You can then ask it to improve the result, suggest alternatives or make the message more persuasive. That conversation is where the real value begins.

Prompt engineering's beauty lies in its accessibility to individuals beyond just technology professionals. A salesperson can analyse customer feedback, prepare proposals and practise negotiations. A human resources professional can develop interview questions and improve job descriptions. A teacher can create lesson plans for different learning abilities, while a student can turn a complicated topic into a simple explanation with practical examples.

In healthcare, authorised professionals can use AI tools to assist with administrative documentation and summarise information. Accountants can use them to explain financial concepts and organise reports. Entrepreneurs can explore business ideas, identify potential customer segments and develop initial business plans. Programmers can use AI to explain code, identify possible errors and generate test cases.

The possibilities are enormous, but there is an important catch. AI can hallucinate and also produce inaccurate information, overlook context and sound confident even when it is wrong. Never treat its response as unquestionable truth. Verify important facts and always check sources. Furthermore, judgement and appropriate human oversight remains essential, something that I see many users today neglect to do/follow.

So how do you become good at it? First, start using an AI tool regularly for genuine tasks in your work or studies. Second, be specific: explain your objective, provide relevant context and describe the format you want. Third, experiment. If the answer is poor, explain what is missing and ask for improvements. Finally, learn to break complex tasks into manageable steps, compare different answers (even using different AI tools/apps), and verify the results.

You do not need to become an AI engineer to benefit from artificial intelligence. But you do need to understand how to work with it. As we prepare ourselves and future generations, let us remember that employability is not only about the qualifications we hold but also about how effectively we apply our knowledge.

Learning to communicate with AI is becoming an important part of that equation. The future will not belong exclusively to those who know the most about AI but to those who learn how to use it wisely, responsibly and creatively. Until we catch up again next week, start practising your prompts today. Your next career opportunity might depend on the questions you learn to ask.