This Video Will Make You Dangerously Smart With AI

Most people think they're using AI the smart way, but they're actually getting dumber. The smartest people I know aren't using AI to get answers. They're using it to upgrade their entire brain. And the gap between them and everyone else is growing every single day. I've built AI into every part of how I run my business. I'm talking my team, my learning, my decision-making. Martell Ventures alone, my AI incubator, is on track to break $250 million in enterprise value this year. This way of thinking is a huge part of how they'll get there. I'm going to show you how to use AI to upgrade the way you think, how to use it to make every decision bulletproof, and how to make AI a part of who you are, not just something you use. Starting with the biggest mistake everyone is making: the calculator trap. Most people are using AI to do tasks faster, things like emails, summaries, or slide decks. But that's using a supercomputer as a calculator. The people pulling ahead use AI to think better, learn faster, and make smarter decisions. I mean, I remember reading Harvard study where they tested whether AI tutors could actually help students learn, not just get work done faster. So what they did is they had two separate groups: students who use the AI tutor and those who didn't. The ones who did improved their test scores by twice as much. And they finished in less time. So they got better and faster. That's why you want to stop treating your AI like a calculator. It can do way more. So if saving time is just the surface level, what's the actual unlock? Well, let's start with the easiest upgrade most people completely ignore. Upgrading your inputs. Gen Z was the first generation in 100 years to score lower than their parents on IQ, memory, reading, and focus because of these new technologies, and people didn't understand how it was going to change everything. The screen-based consumption replaced the deep, deep learning. Your brain is a machine. It takes information in and ideas come out. If you put garbage in, guess what's going to come out? A lot more of that. Brain rot, doom scrolling, random nonsense— this is all just equals junk ideas. Premium inputs like organic food are things like frameworks, expert knowledge, insights, and those produce better ideas. A long time ago, I realized my ideas were only as good as my data, so I subsidized my curiosity. I had my AI assistant set up a dedicated Slack DM for me every morning. It went out there, it looked for the top breakthroughs, the news, the information around 4 core buckets. For me, it was frontier models in AI, robotics, infrastructure and the tools. No fluff. I'm talking signal because I need that to feed my mind. The quality of your output is a direct reflection of the quality of your inputs. So here are 3 ways to upgrade your inputs today. The first one is my favorite, is reset your social algorithm. Go into your settings, go under content preferences and reset your suggested content. And most platforms have this setting. Instagram has it, TikTok has it. It wipes your Explore page, your Reels, and your feed clean for you to start over. Then go look up the stuff that you wanna master and engage in, and then like, save, and comment on that content. That tells the algorithm, hey, I like this. And on Instagram, they even have a button that says Your Algorithm, and you can tell it exactly what you wanna be fed. Most people just don't realize that the algorithm that is used in these platforms is actually powered by AI. And it is a reflection of you. It is a mirror of you. That's why I always say, use your feed to feed your mind. Number 2, build your own daily newsletter. That thing I told you I do every day, you do it. So use AI to go scrape news sources in the categories every morning that you need to know. So here's the prompt to do that. Really simple. You're my daily AI research assistant. Each morning, find the top 3 developments in this, this, and this. Summarize each one of them into 2 sentences with the source links because you might want to click through and read more. And then the key for me is tell me why it matters and then format it as a quick briefing I can read in under 3 minutes. Keep it entertaining and easy to digest. Within 3 minutes every morning for me on my treadmill, I'm getting caught up, up to date on everything that's important in my industry. Which brings us to the third way that you can upgrade your inputs, which is use NotebookLM to learn your way. I call it accelerated consumption. Essentially, you can go into it, give it any topic, and then it takes that all and it creates like this mini AI brain just on that topic. So you can chat with it and ask it questions. The coolest feature is it can create other media from that research. So it can create PowerPoint slides, it can create an infographic, it can create a quiz, it can create flashcards, it can even create a podcast. And the coolest feature is you click the button and you can call in and ask it questions. I call it just in time versus just in case. Most people are consuming information, they're reading books, they're talking to friends just in case someday I might need to use it. Sound like school, doesn't it? I like to do just in time where I am using it to feed myself the information that I'm gonna use to make a decision this afternoon. And look, if you're really serious about upgrading your inputs for yourself and for your business, I created this AI company operating system that teaches the top CEOs how to implement AI so their teams and their processes become AI first. So just DM me @ai.business on Instagram and I'll send it right over to you. So now you're feeding your brain better information. Thumbs up. Next, we have to find the real power that comes only when you use AI to upgrade your outputs. Here's the problem. Every bad business decision started with a great idea that nobody challenged. Nobody said anything. And next thing you know, it costs you 6 months or $50,000. Our brain is wired to fall in love with our own ideas because it sees all the fit in all of our ideas and it ignores all these fatal flaws. Back in 1985, the company Intel were making profits of $198 million and then they crashed down to $2 million in one year. Essentially, the Japanese competitors came in and they destroyed them around memory chips. Andy Grove, who I consider a legend, Intel's president at the time, sat down with co-founder Gordon Moore, went back and forth for months with what to do, and honestly, they couldn't come up with an answer. And then Grove asked a beautiful question that I asked most of my coaching clients, which is, if we got fired by the board and they brought in a new CEO, what would he do immediately? And Moore said he'd get us out of memories. They had the answer the whole time, but they couldn't see it. They were blind because they had emotional attachment to the business they had built. A single pre-mortem question, that's what it's called, led them to pivot into processors. Intel then became one of the largest tech companies in history, leading to $52 billion in revenue. One honest question about their ideas got them clear and they built a mega company. So my question to you is, what are you pretending not to know? If somebody came into your business today knowing your industry, what's the first change they would make? And if you know the answer to that, my question to you is, is why haven't you made it yet? So here's a solution to that problem, and this is where AI really comes in. It's called red teaming, right? It's a military concept. Essentially, intentionally try to kill your own plan before the enemy does. It's kind of like doing devil's advocate, or what's called steelmanning. AI is the perfect red team partner because it has no ego, it does not hold back, and it has infinite knowledge about a lot of stuff. So it can attack you from 10 different angles in 30 seconds, and it's so cheap you can fail 100 times for free instead of losing $100,000 every time you test a new idea. So before you ship your next big idea, can you please red team it with AI? But do it in this specific order. First, ask it to find the fatal flaw. Okay, this is a pre-mortem. Prompt it, if this project fails in 6 months from now, why did that happen? 'Cause then what happens is it works backwards through from the disaster, that single point of failure, and it figures out where you should try to fortify the idea so you don't have that thing happen to you. The second is you wanna eliminate blind spots. So here's the prompt for the AI. You are a cynical, highly successful competitor. Now analyze this plan and tell me exactly how you'd exploit the weaknesses steal my customers. Now the key is, if you want this to really blow your mind, give it your constraints, your timelines, your resources. I'm talking if you want to give it access to your CRM, to your internal documents, so that it can really push back. The third is risk ranking. So this is the prompt: Rank the top 3 risks by likelihood and impact, then build a contingency plan for each. That will turn all your fears into a checklist. A list of vulnerable ideas into answers on how you can defend each one of them in that checklist. The more I do this, the more I realize that the decisions that seem obvious are the ones that almost need the most scrutiny because like your brain is 100% hiding something from you. If it is just quick to get to a thing and you got to go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why did I decide that? And how do I have the AI to put me in check? So now that you're feeding your brain premium inputs and stress testing every output, here's the shift that makes all this stick. Point number 4, your new identity. So what you're going to do is you're going to pick a new name and you're going to go and change your name and you're going to be that new person. That's what we're doing. Problem solved. No, I'm just kidding. But the truth is, if what you want out of life you don't have in your life, then who you are today isn't the right version of you to get that. And I call this the 92% rule. AI can now handle 92% of your tasks. Now, you might pretend not to know this, but I'm going to tell you it can do writing, it can do research, it can do analysis, it can do scheduling, it can do drafting, it can build things for you. So your new identity has to be one of director, not doer. This is going to be hard for a lot of people. You come in at the end at that 8%. That 8% is 3 things. It is taste, knowing what looks great. It is vision, understanding what the future should look like that doesn't exist, that should. And it is care. It's the emotional connection. It's the ability to talk to people and show ideas and get involvement and enroll people. That's what you do as a human that AI will always have a hard time. A couple of years ago, I came into my team and I sat them down and I looked at them in a very loving and positive way. And I said, you're all fucking cooked and I need you to listen, please. I need you all to sit down and decide what is that 92%? What can you engage and invite and co-create with AI to help you get all this time back? Because I want you to stick around. I don't want to not work with you. And if your work's being done by the AI, game on. Okay, that 8% is where the talent lies. And that's why we have to change our identity and our beliefs around it. Or you'll always feel stuck as a doer. See, the best leaders don't do the work, they orchestrate it. That is the future of AI. So here's what I need you to do right now. The first thing is we gotta gather every task you do on a typical week. Sit down and write 'em down. Look at your calendar, look at your projects list, and just break 'em down into like 15 to 30 minute like chunks of things you do. And then the second step is you put 'em all in a quadrant. And this quadrant should help you understand how to be future-proof forever. So on the bottom of the x-axis, you want to have hard for humans, easy for humans. And on the y-axis, you want to have easy for computers, hard for computers. Then you go look in the top right quadrant and ask yourself, what are the things that would make it hard for a computer to do but easy for a human? Think about it. Things like detecting sarcasm in conversations, reading emotional tone in a room, making ethical judgment calls in messy situations. Those things computers will have a hard time with. So when you look at your list, you find that 8% that usually should be in the top right quadrant. So circle the ones that require taste, your vision, your care, the emotion, the ones that without you just don't get done well and are super important. And then the rest, we bring it to step number 4, which is automate the 92%. How can you delegate the rest to AI? You might be still pretending that AI is chat. It is way more than that. The tools can automate things. The tools can think for you. The tools can go from prompt to completed project itself with no human involvement. And if you've never heard of any of these tools, can you please just go on my YouTube channel and search AI and Dan Martell and you will see me break these down step by step. Super easy. I even give you the scripts and the tools and the configurations and the prompts all for free. So my question is, What can you automate this week? If you want one of my favorite tools around this, go check out Manus AI. And for the nerds that really want to take this to another level, check out OpenClaw. In the quadrant which is easy for computer and hard for human, that's where you want to start automating your shit. That's the one shift from an identity point of view that you need to make. But to wrap all that up, let me just share this. I think in the future there's only going to be two types of people. They're going to be consumers and creators. Be a creator, be a director, be somebody that partners with the AI to create. People who use AI to improve themselves versus there's people who use AI to cut corners. Those are two different things. That will literally be what separates those who win versus those who get left behind. You started this video using AI like a fancy Google search. Now you have the playbook to use it as a brain upgrade, as a sparring partner, as a leadership multiplier, as a tool to level up your identity. So I need you to leave a comment below. What's one way you're going to use AI to level up your thinking? Tell me what you're going to do, because guess what? I don't want your AI to tell me. I want you to tell me. Put it in the comments below. And remember, if you want my full AI company operating system with all the system prompts and the tools that I use to run my business, just DM me @ai.business on Instagram and I'll send it right over. Next up, if you want to know the 20 AI tools that will make you rich, click here and I'll see you on the other side.