The AI Literacy Gap Nobody Is Talking About

If you spend enough time on Twitter or YouTube watching AI content, you start to develop a skewed picture of reality.

You assume that people know what MCPs are. That “agents” is common vocabulary. That the debate about Claude vs. ChatGPT is something everyone has an opinion on.

Then you get in front of actual business owners.

Smart, successful people who have been running companies for years. And they ask: “Wait, is ChatGPT the same as Claude?”

That gap — between the AI-immersed and the AI-adjacent — is one of the most underappreciated dynamics in the current moment.

What I Discovered Running Workshops

I didn’t fully understand this gap until I put together my first in-person AI workshop in Austin.

I wasn’t planning to make it a business. I just thought: if you knew what I knew about AI, you’d be operating at a completely different level. So I put something together, texted a few friends, and posted on Instagram.

It sold out in four days.

I figured it might be a fluke. Did it again the next month, capped at 16 seats.

Same thing.

And something interesting happened: some of the people who came to the first workshop came back to the second one. I was initially surprised. Why would you repeat a fundamentals workshop?

Then I understood. These people are busy running businesses. They can’t dedicate hours each week to consuming AI content. But they know the landscape is shifting fast. Coming back to the workshop is their way of staying current without drowning in everything else.

That’s not a productivity failure. That’s a rational choice given their constraints.

Two Completely Different Populations

There are two groups of people in the AI space right now, and they almost never interact.

Group 1: The deeply immersed. These are people spending 4-8 hours a day using AI tools, following the latest model releases, experimenting with agents, watching every Andrej Karpathy tweet. They’re on YouTube and Twitter. They think everyone is here with them.

Group 2: The capable but uninitiated. These are successful business owners, executives, and professionals who have heard about AI through the news, friends, or adjacent conversations. They know it’s important. They’ve maybe tried asking ChatGPT a question. But they don’t have a mental model for what’s actually possible or where to even begin.

The gap between these two groups is wider than most people realize. Even in Austin — a tech city — even among sophisticated entrepreneurs — Group 2 is enormous.

Why Most AI Content Misses Group 2

The overwhelming majority of AI content is created by people in Group 1 for other people in Group 1.

That makes sense. You write about what you know, for people like you.

But here’s the problem: the content that would actually help Group 2 looks nothing like what’s being created.

Group 2 doesn’t need a breakdown of the differences between Claude 3.5 and o3. They need to understand why AI can answer a customer email as well as a good assistant. They need someone to show them how to turn a 4-hour weekly report into a 20-minute process.

They need to see it. Not read about it.

That’s why the workshops worked. It wasn’t sophisticated content. It was demonstration. Sitting down with someone, showing them what’s possible on their specific problem, and watching the lightbulb go on.

The Multi-Tool Native Thing Nobody Explains

One of the things that separates Group 1 from Group 2 is what I call being multi-tool native — understanding that different AI tools are better for different jobs.

Group 1 has strong opinions about this. ChatGPT for general thinking. Claude for technical reasoning. Gemini for Google-connected workflows. Perplexity for real-time research.

Group 2 doesn’t know that multiple tools exist at all. Or if they do, they think you’re supposed to pick one and stick to it.

That’s not a knowledge failure — nobody told them otherwise. But it’s the difference between using AI like a single hammer and using AI like a full workshop.

The skill isn’t “use AI.” The skill is knowing which tool to reach for based on what you’re trying to do.

The Bigger Picture

I think about this a lot: the people who become fluent in AI over the next few years are going to have an enormous advantage over the people who don’t.

Not because the tools are complicated. They’re not.

Because the gap is growing faster than most people realize. Fluent users are compounding their advantage month by month. The learning curve gets easier when you understand the terrain.

Group 2 isn’t wrong or slow. They’re just busy. And the AI content world isn’t speaking their language.

If you’re someone in Group 1 — a creator, a consultant, a practitioner — there’s a real opportunity here.

Not to dumb things down. To translate.

The most valuable thing I can say to someone in Group 2 isn’t “here’s how Claude works.”

It’s: “If you knew what I knew, you would be unlocked to a whole new level.”

And then show them what that looks like.