Why Curiosity Beats Competence in the Age of AI

With the release of Claude Fable 5 recently, and AI advancements that keep happening every day now, the way we think about competence has to change.

People who never touched the terminal or any sort of code are now making dashboards, websites, and things that just work for them. These don't have to be production-ready applications serving 100k people. A small business getting its website up and running used to need a frontend designer spending a few days, and cost a lot of money. Now, a $20 subscription gets you that and much more: insights into your business, suggestions, and beyond.

The competence of the frontend designer was slowly replaced by the curiosity (and the will to explore) of the small business owner.

We keep hearing how AI is the next fundamental change; that's a different story to tackle, but this reality of competence being replaced by curiosity is as real as it gets.

A curious person with the right tools, especially with AI, beats a competent person who doesn't adapt. And curiosity here is simple: it's the habit of asking "can my toolset or AI do this?" before assuming it can't. Because if frontend designers get hands-on and use AI tools, they're still competent and more powerful, since they can now do this for 10 small businesses at once.

This shift is visible. It's here to stay, and it looks like the next stage of how we think about skillsets, the future of work, and the future of jobs.

The more curious a person is, the more competent they become. This applies to everyone, across every field, because staying unaware and in denial is worse than using these tools imperfectly.