Within a few years, many young professionals will enter the workforce having used AI throughout their education. They will be familiar with the technology in a way previous generations could not have imagined. Yet that familiarity may not be the competitive advantage many expect. The more interesting question is what happens when everyone has access to similar capabilities.

Traditionally, mastering new software and developing technical skills could give someone an advantage at work. AI is changing that dynamic as increasingly powerful tools become available to people across different professions.

We can already see it happening. Students use AI to help them understand difficult subjects, entrepreneurs use it to explore business ideas, and employees use it to prepare for meetings or work through complex tasks. Like internet access and digital literacy before it, what looks like an advantage today can quickly become something everyone is expected to have. Once that happens, the focus shifts from having the tool to knowing how to use it effectively.

Consider two young professionals preparing for the same customer meeting. One uses AI to summarise the background materials and draft a presentation. The other uses it to challenge the proposed approach, identify potential concerns and explore questions the customer might raise. Both benefit from the technology, but the second is using it to strengthen their thinking rather than simply complete the task. Knowing how to prompt AI effectively is part of that skill, but so is having the critical thinking to question what comes back.

That distinction will matter as AI becomes a routine part of work. Being able to produce content or complete familiar tasks more quickly is useful, but over time the greater advantage may come from using AI to solve difficult problems or identify opportunities that might otherwise be missed. Doing so requires curiosity, an understanding of context and the ability to recognise when an answer needs further scrutiny.

The stakes are growing for Belgian businesses. Kyndryl's 2026 Modernisation Report found that 38% of Belgian organisations rank enabling advanced AI capabilities among their top three reasons to modernise. As AI becomes a bigger business priority, developing the skills to use it effectively becomes just as important as investing in the technology itself.

Education therefore has a wider role than simply explaining how the technology works. Young people need opportunities to explore its limitations, assess the reliability of information and consider the consequences of using it.

This reminds me of the idea of the human-AI “centaur”, which former world chess champion Garry Kasparov helped pioneer. The thinking is simple: people and technology can achieve more together when AI's capabilities are combined with human judgment and critical thinking. And that's exactly what we should be aiming for in education: developing independent thinkers who can draw on AI as a resource without becoming dependent on its answers.

But education is only part of the picture. Employers have a role to play, too. Perhaps the biggest mistake organisations could make is to confuse a generation's confidence with AI for its readiness to use it at work. CIOs should be particularly wary of that assumption. Someone who has spent years using AI may still need to learn when not to trust it, when to challenge it and when their own judgment matters more.

The opportunity for business leaders is not to welcome a generation that already knows the technology, but to build an environment where that familiarity is put to the test. The real competitive advantage won't come from hiring people who know how to use AI. It will come from developing people who know when, why and whether to use it.