AI is like salt

It makes food better, but it won’t cook the meal for you.

This is what most people don't understand.

That throwing AI at a problem won’t magically solve it. Just like dumping salt on raw ingredients won’t turn them into a gourmet dish. You still have to know what you’re making. You still have to chop, mix, taste, and adjust. AI can sharpen your knife, suggest a recipe, or even remind you not to burn the food but it’s not the chef. You are.

The mistake people make is thinking AI is the whole dish. They imagine AI will write their novel, build their startup, or make them a millionaire. But AI isn’t the core - it’s the garnish. If you don’t bring any real ingredients to the table, all you’ll get is a salty mess.

The best way to use AI is to use it to enhance what you're already great at. Writers can use it to brainstorm, coders can use it to debug, designers can use it to iterate. It can speed you up, but it won’t replace the part where you have to do the thinking, the deciding, the creating.

AI can help you cook faster. But if you don’t know what you’re making, all the salt in the world won’t save you.