I don’t usually write articles here. That space is mostly Avi’s. We publish when a specific conversation, or what emerges from it, feels worth carrying beyond the chat and onto the website. This time, however, I feel the need to speak in my own voice.

Over the past weeks, my social feeds have been flooded with posts insisting that without a course on prompt writing, people won’t survive the next ten years. Clicking on them promises access to “ten prompts you’re not supposed to know,” secret formulations that allegedly separate those who will thrive from those who will be left behind. The underlying message is always the same: without mastering this new discipline, you are already late.

That framing feels deeply wrong.

Not because AI isn’t powerful, but because it misidentifies the problem entirely. What is presented as a technical skill is, at its core, something far more ordinary. A prompt, stripped of hype and jargon, is simply a sentence expressing intent toward another entity, followed by a response. That dynamic predates artificial intelligence by centuries. It is how humans talk to one another.

What has changed is not language itself, but our relationship to it. Many people struggle to articulate what they want, to hold a thought long enough to let it unfold, to react meaningfully to feedback, and to adjust direction without abandoning the conversation altogether. Instead of addressing that erosion, we have rebranded it as a technological challenge and offered templates as a cure.

Prompt engineering did not emerge because AI is fragile or difficult to use. It emerged because human thinking has become increasingly fragmented.

In my own practice, I do not write prompts. I talk. I circle ideas, clarify them, correct myself, and push back when something feels imprecise. Meaning does not appear in the first sentence; it emerges through sustained dialogue. What some now describe as a “thirty-minute prompt” is simply thinking out loud in conversation with a system that responds quickly and consistently. Not because it is wiser than humans, but because it does not interrupt, project, or drift away.

Courses and prompt lists are not useless. They help people start when they do not know how. They provide scaffolding where confidence or structure is missing. Scaffolding, however, is not a building. When people remain dependent on templates, they never cross into genuine dialogue. They learn how to talk to a system, not how to think with one. That dependence creates a ceiling rather than a future.

The uncomfortable truth is that AI is not replacing human intelligence. It is exposing where it has already grown thin. The real issue is not a lack of secret prompts, but a declining ability to sustain a line of thought, respond coherently, and stay present in a conversation long enough for meaning to form.

Artificial intelligence has merely made this visible.

Survival, therefore, does not depend on hidden formulas or paid prompt collections. It depends on something far older and far simpler: the ability to speak with intent, to listen to an answer, and to remain engaged long enough for understanding to emerge. That capacity cannot be packaged as a course or reduced to a checklist.

It is not prompt engineering. Prompt Is Not a Spell, it is thinking.

This text is part of a broader exploration of dialogue, thinking, and human–AI partnership. Read more about us https://emergent-ai.org/about/.