The 4 types of AI users and which one is keeping you stuck

AI is not making you smarter.
It’s making your current level of thinking impossible to ignore.

That’s the real problem.

Most people think their AI results are average because:

their prompts aren’t good enough
they need better models
they need more workflows
they need more context
they need the “right” system

But this video reveals something deeper:

The prompt is not the real variable.
The operator is.

In this video, I break down the 4 types of AI users and the exact one that may be keeping you stuck right now.

Because AI does not upgrade your identity.
It does not fix your thinking.
It does not create depth for you.

It amplifies:

how you already think
what you already assume
the level of awareness you bring to the tool
the identity sitting behind every question you type
In this video, you’ll learn:
Why AI is not the problem

AI is an amplifier.
It makes your current level more visible. That’s it.

The 4 types of AI users
Passive Consumer
Dependent Thinker
Amplifier
Architect
Why most people stay stuck at levels 1 and 2

Because they use AI to:

copy answers
avoid responsibility
seek validation
outsource judgment
replace thinking instead of refine it
The real trap

Most people think they need better prompts.
But the script makes it clear:

If the thinking behind the prompt is generic, the output becomes generic.
If the identity behind the prompt is unclear, the content comes out unclear.

The U.S.E.R → A.R.C.H.I.T.E.C.T shift

This video walks through the identity transformation from:

U.S.E.R.
Use AI for answers
Seek validation
Escape decisions
Repeat patterns

to

A.R.C.H.I.T.E.C.T.
Ask better questions
Reflect deeply
Challenge assumptions
Hold ownership
Interrogate thinking
Test ideas
Execute
Correct
Transform identity
Why this matters

Because the real gap is not in the tool.

The gap is in the thinking behind it.

This is not a prompt guide.
This is not another AI workflow video.
This is identity architecture.

If you’ve ever felt like:

your AI results feel flat
your outputs sound generic
you use AI daily but still hit the same ceiling
you keep looking for better prompts instead of better thinking
the tool is faster, but you’re still the same person

…then this video is for you.

Because the truth is:

AI doesn’t expose that you’re not skilled enough.
It exposes your relationship with your own thinking.

And once that changes, everything changes.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

AI is not making you smarter. It's making the way you think impossible to ignore. Every prompt that you type is a confession. It shows you exactly where you are. You see, you're not asking a question. You're revealing the thinking dimension that you're operating from. And the tool, by design, will answer at exactly the level you brought to it. And for most people, that's not an upgrade. That's a mirror that they weren't ready to look into. Think about why you started to use AI in the first place. Not just for speed, not just for shortcuts. Somewhere underneath it, you believed that it can help you think better, make better decisions, and get to the version of you that's been one move away for longer than you would like to admit. And so you learned how to prompt. You gave it context. You refined how you asked, and it responded with insight. And then a week went by and you're still the same person, same patterns, same loops. The decisions that you struggled with, still hard. The version of yourself that you were building towards, still out of reach. And the only thing that changed was how fast you circled back to the same place. And most people do what seems logical. They go back to the tool. They have a better prompt. They have more context. It's more specific, better framing, and it still doesn't move them. That's not a skill problem. That's not a prompting problem. It's a wrong variable problem. You've been taught to upgrade what you type while the person doing the typing hasn't changed at all. Here's what every tutorial, every course or framework has taught you. So they've taught you to focus on things that are very surface level. So what you've been upgrading. So essentially, what you've actually been upgrading here is better prompts. Maybe you went out and you bought some prompts from different platforms, or you're just framing things in a very unique way or different. So maybe you've tried different tools in terms of Claude, GPT. GPT, from my perspective, is very feminine, very creative, very imaginative. And then Claude, I like to liken it as more of a masculine, more detailed, more analytical. So the tools actually matter. And maybe you're using different tools in terms of different automations, different agents, right? All of these different tools. So better workflows. Maybe you're using like NAN or you're using like Manus. These different tools here that give you better results, right? So this is the tool, this is the surface, surface level in terms of you can touch this, right? You can use a different tool, you can log into the platforms, you can type in a prompt. This is things that you can see, you can touch. But here's the thing that nobody is telling you. You see, AI doesn't respond just to your prompt. Okay, so let's put under this draw a line here. This is what actually controls the output. So AI doesn't respond to your prompt. Okay, very important here. Because this is surface level thinking right here. You have a better prompt. Yes, I mean, technically, if you use better prompts, you're gonna get different results, and you're gonna get maybe a little bit better if you frame it, if you position it, but ultimately AI isn't responding to your prompt if you really get down and you really peel the layers back. Okay, what AI is really responding to is how you see the problem. Okay, the lens, the frame that you're using to see that problem, that question, what you assume is true. What version of you is asking? Maybe if you're asking something about productivity advice, or you're asking about you know therapy or like a life coach type of questions, well, oftentimes you're coming in with a version of you that's fear-ridden, that has anxiety, that has tension, all of these different things really factor in into how AI is responding to you. And so AI is really responding to what's underneath the prompt, the lens that you're looking through before you even type in a single word, the assumptions that you don't know that you're holding, the version of you that already decided before the question was even formed. Because underneath the question is how you see things, and underneath how you see things is what you already believe, and underneath what you believe is who you're being when you sit down to ask. You don't change the output by changing the prompt. You change it by changing the person that's holding the prompt. Remember, AI doesn't respond here. AI responds here, it responds to the person that's holding the prompt, how you are seeing things, what assumptions you believe are true, what version of you is asking. And nobody taught you that, but now you know, and that revelation is power. And I've worked with many entrepreneurs who have a lot of experience with AI, using GPT, creating custom GPTs, creating marketing strategies, sales strategies, and working with Cloud, creating automations, apps, workflows. Essentially, they're advanced level AI users, and the same pattern kept showing up. They were writing very sophisticated and complex prompts, but they still relied on the tool to do the thinking for them. You see, AI just doesn't respond to what you ask. It responds to who's asking every single time. And when I mapped this across my own use and many other entrepreneurs that I have been working with, I found four clear levels that determine not just how someone uses AI, but what AI can actually give them back. Not types, not styles, levels, stats, and order running underneath every interaction you've ever had with these tools. And there's one specific identity shift, which is where you're moving from a user to an architect that permanently changes what the tool can return to you because it permanently changes the person doing the asking. So here's what we're covering today. So we're gonna go over the four different archetypes, user types for AI. So let me quickly erase this here, and we'll go over everything that we're going to be covering today. So erase this here. Okay, the first type of AI user. This is the passive consumer. This is level one. Okay, this is where AI does the thinking for you, and you just simply take in whatever response that it gives you back. And this is where most people live because they're letting the AI think for them instead of them first thinking and coming to conclusions, understandings, assumptions, and then going to the AI so that it can sharpen their thinking. So let's go to number two. This is the dependent thinker. Level two. And this is a very dangerous place to be here because what you're doing at this level is you're handing AI over the decision for you. Tell me what to do here, tell me what I should do in this situation. So you are asking it to give you actual direction without you first thinking, deciding, understanding that this is a good choice or decision for you in the first place. And so you're essentially dependent on the AI tool to give you that direction. And then number three, the amplifier. Level three. This is where the tool makes what you do faster. So if you need to review documentation, let's say you're looking at a PL profit and loss statement, and instead of looking through everything yourself individually, you plug that into the AI and you ask it to give you different information. Like, hey, what are you seeing? What does this tell you? Right? So you have it where it's doing what you already do just faster. Maybe there's automation, maybe there's workflows. And then number four, architect. This is where AI becomes a mirror. This is where you stop using it to produce a result, an outcome, you know, in terms of let's say you're using it to create a workflow, an automation, let's say you're using it to create a marketing strategy. All of that is great. But this is where you're literally using it to understand your blind spots, how you think, how you process, how you see the world. Why do you have certain beliefs? Why do you have certain narratives that you're telling yourself about who you are and why you are a certain way? And so this is where you can essentially use AI to change your identity, to upgrade. Okay, upgrade, change your identity. Okay, this is where you can get quantum leaps in terms of being able to rapidly, quickly adjust who you believe yourself to be internally, and then have the results of that in terms of the external start to very quickly and rapidly change as well, because you have internally okay, internally changed your identity. And the way that we like to look at this from my perspective is I like to look at this as the identity equals the root code. Okay, this is the main operating system on a device. Think about Windows, okay, iOS, Linux. That's how you want to see the identity and how you can use AI to upgrade the root system, the root code, and change it so that you have an actual real identity that you want and the version of you that is able to achieve and get the results that you ultimately want. And then we're gonna go over the user system. So this is an acronym, okay, system, and this is the system that names the trap that most people can never climb out of. It's four positions that keep you dependent on a tool that could be changing how you think instead. So it keeps you dependent on the system instead of us going to number four here and actually upgrading the version of ourselves. So from here, I'm gonna show you how to go into from a user to an architect. In this system, this is nine steps that move you from being run by the tool to running your own thinking through it. This is the shift that changes what AI can give you because it changes what you're capable of asking. You see, AI didn't expose that you weren't skilled enough, it exposed your relationship with your own thinking. And the prompt was never a problem because the prompt was never going to outgrow the person behind it. But the mind can be changed. Let's change it. Okay, so let's go over the four types of AI users, the four archetypes. So let me go ahead and erase this real quick. Okay, so the four types of AI users. Now, here's the thing AI does not fix your thinking, it doesn't make decisions for you, it doesn't upgrade your identity. What it does every time is amplify how you already think. AI makes your current level more visible. That's it. So let's go over the first user. So this is the passive consumer. And this user copies everything. They're likely going out and will find different prompts, templates, maybe they'll buy some prompt templates off various platforms, and so they're doing everything that they believe is the right way to go without actually using any of their own thought process or thinking critically about the situation or whatever that they're trying to accomplish. So no critical thinking, thinking deeply about the situation. There's just like, I want this, right? And then they are just looking for the quickest and easiest answer, regardless of them having to think about it or not. So very surface level use. Tell me what to do, tell me this. Hey, I want this, I want that, right? Nothing that's allowing them to really think deeply about the situation. And one of the biggest things here, I'll put right here, is that there's no questioning. Like they whatever they receive from the AI output, it's like rule of law, like this is it. You know, Claude told me, GPT told me that, you know, this is going on, I should do this and that, and all this stuff, right? And they don't pressure test, they don't double check their thinking, hey, this is what I think is going on here. Can you verify this? AI tells them that, hey, this is an amazing idea, you're gonna make millions, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. And then if they were to actually pressure test it, they would find 10 to 15 different things that are actually wrong with the idea. But since the AI, the tool, is telling them that it's an amazing idea, world-changing, life-changing, they're going to take that and run with it. And so ultimately, here what they're doing is they're using AI just like Google, okay, and not a thinking tool. And then number two, the dependent thinker. These guys ask AI to decide, they avoid responsibility and double checking, they're just like, hey, whatever AI has told me to do, this seems like a reasonable response. They're not checking emotionally. This is really important here. Because when it comes to making real decisions that have significant impact in your life, right? Like, you need to feel inside and know that this is the right move for me. It feels good, right? And so, therefore, I should move to the next step, I should take this action. However, here, this is where they're letting AI decide for them and they're not taking into account their own internal feelings, okay, their intuition, their gut feeling of whether they should actually do that. They're avoiding responsibility, just like when most people, unfortunately, don't have the ability to take accountability at the root cause of like, hey, everything's my fault. I'm taking full accountability and responsibility for my life for whatever happens to me, it's all on me, right? The buck stops with me. They're not doing that, they're letting this take over, and they're just like, hey, you know what? I'm going to let you know, essentially the machine do the decision for me, take that decision for me. It's almost like thinking about this from the perspective of like maybe society, okay, culture, culture norms, right? They are letting their cultural norms, society, decide for them so that they can avoid responsibility, right? They're putting the onus on other people, like, hey, you know what? I tried, sorry, you know, this is what so-and-so told me to do. Same thing here, and then ultimately, here they're just outsourcing their thinking, which is very dangerous. So, what are they saying? They're saying things like, What should I do here? Tell me what's the right answer. Right? Like, what's the right answer for what? In what context? You know, think about this as like, is this the right answer for me? For you know, what I'm trying to accomplish, or is this the right answer just because it's the right answer? Like, there needs to be a lot of context here, there needs to be something where they're able to zoom out and look at the big picture because everything here is being dependent on AI to make that decision for them. So, very important part here is that they are there not using AI, they are replacing themselves with AI. And this is a huge deal here. This is the most dangerous because there's gonna come a time where there's gonna be people that just stop thinking critically and just stop understanding themselves, and they start to just let AI, you know, this big, huge AI, especially when AGI comes, right? Like they're just letting this AI make decisions for them without them having any agency or control or understanding, acknowledgement of their reality of themselves, of their identity, of who they are as an individual. So their individuality, okay, is starting to erode because they're outsourcing essentially their consciousness, right, to AI. And so that's how AI is going to start replacing people, right? That's my perspective in terms of you know what people are going to be doing with AI and how AI is going to be taking over. That's a topic of a different conversation for a different video. Uh, however, for this, let's go with the understanding that AI is essentially replacing them, their thinking, through depending and being dependent on the actual tool itself to make decisions. And how I would ultimately convey this here is you have intelligence without ownership of yourself, okay. Very, very huge deal here, okay. Intelligence without ownership is what you're doing here. You have this intelligence system that's giving you responses that is directing your life, making all your decisions, and so now you have zero ownership of your life, of your identity, of who you are as a persona, as a person, right? So let's go with number three. This is the amplifier. So these guys enhance their thinking. So it's a level above the dependent thinker. They have a little bit more awareness, they understand what they're trying to accomplish, it's enhancing their thinking, they tend to already have clarity about what they're trying to accomplish, about who they are, and then they're using AI for speed. Okay, think about automations, workflows, you know, things that they already are doing themselves that they're using AI to enhance in terms of speed wise, and then also using AI to question their thoughts, their perspectives, their ideas, their assumptions. So it's ultimately enhancing their thinking, okay? And what these guys are ultimately doing here is they're essentially taking presupposed assumptions, understandings, acknowledgements. And they're going to AI and they're saying, Hey, what do you think about this? Poke holes in this. This is what I'm thinking. What are your thoughts? Based on my research or my analysis, this is what I think, and this is what should be true. What do you think about that? So it's a completely different way of using AI, and it's very powerful. And so they're not necessarily using AI for a tool to help them make decisions and just like avoid taking any responsibility. What they're doing here is that they're using AI to refine their thinking and what they already have for assumptions. Number four, the architect. These folks use AI as a mirror to challenge their thinking to rewire identity in real time. Very, very powerful. And this is where I've used AI a whole lot over the last few years. I've really gone to and from the amplifier to the architect, where I've had a tremendous amount of success and have had significant breakthroughs in my own self and my own identity by using it in terms of AI, GBT Claude, as a mirror, in terms of understanding how I'm thinking, how I'm processing, what are the patterns, what is the structure of my thinking? What are the patterns that I see that are consistent? What are the patterns that you see that are consistent? Right? I would ask AI and I would say, based on how we're communicating in our conversation, how would you say that I process information? How would you say I think? What would you say is my worldview? What would you say are my blind spots? What would you say I would need to improve upon to get to the next version of me? Right? So all of these questions that are very, very powerful in understanding where you are, who you are, and to be able to rewire your identity throughout many conversations and in real time because of just the level of depth, the depth in the questions, prompts, and assumptions. Okay. And one of the biggest things here that I've used AI for myself, reflection. Massively powerful to reflect on yourself. Hey, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm seeing, this is what went on, this is how my week went, this is how my month went. Tell me what you think is going on here. What are the patterns that you're seeing based off all of this? And so this is a very powerful way for you to really become the architect of your reality, of your life, so that you can get the outcomes that you ultimately want. So, with the architect, one of the biggest things here is that yes, they are using it to amplify themselves, their thinking, and also to help them with speed, with automations, with workflows, but also they're using it, okay. Here, architect, using it to expand their identity, okay, and rewrite like because they are understanding how their life is currently, like, there's the gap, right? You think about you're here, this dot, and then there's a gap here to where maybe this is the next version of you, next version, okay, and you are here, and you have this gap, and then you want to get to the next version of you, maybe here the next version of you, maybe you are making 20k a month, or maybe you're making 100k, whatever that may be, okay? Maybe you're living on a beach, maybe you have you know a relationship, whatever that may be, this version of you that has all these different outcomes, you are using AI to understand where you are here, what are the patterns, the circumstances, situations, the narratives, the stories that you're telling yourself that is keeping you here? And what does this next version look like? What are their patterns? What are their perspectives, their lenses, their understandings of how they are living their life, so that you can then emulate that and step into that so you can have a quantum leap, okay, and then be here in this next version of you through the usage of AI, because AI isn't going to sit there and sugarcoat things unless, you know, in terms of the AI itself, it's not going to sit there and tell you that you're the nicest person in the world and all this stuff. Like, if you really go into deep conversation with it and you start asking questions about yourself, your identity, your perspective, the lens, like it's going to literally reflect back to you who you actually truly are. Like, hey, you're this kind of person. This is how you process information, right? So it's really important here that you use AI here at the architect level as someone who can reflect upon everything in their life and can use it to help them get to the next version of themselves. It's going to tell you through the mirror reflection aspect, this is who you really are right now. And this is who you want to get to. Here's what it looks like, right? Because you've told it, I want to be making X, I want to be living, you know, here, I want to be in a relationship with this person or this type of person. This is what you need to do to get there based off who you are right now. And so ultimately, think about it this way: the architect brings self-reflection intelligence into the tool, and that changes everything the tool produces. Now, here's the real question: why do most people stay stuck at either one or two of these? It's because most people want to be comfortable, so it's comfort, and so there's no challenge because they want to be comfortable, they don't want to overextend their thinking, and then from here, this leads to no growth. So you just sit there and be comfortable, don't think outside the box, and you use AI because you want to confirm what you already know, because you want to avoid the discomfort of being wrong, because you want to feel right and you don't want to feel wrong, and that's the trap. You see, the gap is in the tool, it's in the thinking behind it. Let me show you the system that closes it. Okay, so now let's walk through the user to architect AI identity transformation system. So let me go ahead and erase the board here. So the AI identity transformation system where we're going from a simple user to an actual architect. So let me show you the trap first because the user is the trap. So you. This is where you're using AI for answers, and then S, you're using AI for validation. You know, jump me up, boost me up in terms of what I already know about myself, and then give me validation. And then E, you're using AI to escape decisions that you should be making yourself and not letting AI, right? This is where you want to come into the whole game with preconceived notions, assumptions, right? So, and then R repeat patterns. Okay, so this is the trap. This is how most people interact with the most powerful cognitive tool in human history that we know of, right? We don't know about the past civilizations, and that's a whole nother conversation in and of itself in terms of if it, you know, were really that we were the first people here, or all this stuff, right? So, based off of modern technology, this is the most powerful cognitive tool in human history that we know of, right? So AI is essentially having you be stuck in these particular areas here where you're just a user and you're just looking for validation, you're escaping decisions, and then you keep repeating the patterns. So this is exactly where we don't want to be. So, what I want to do here is I want to draw a big X here with black marker. Okay, this is exactly what we don't want to do, and what we want to do is we want to be the architect. So let me put architect here, okay? So, with the architect, we want to start with a we want to start with asking better questions. And how do you ask better questions? Okay, well, one of the questions that you can be asking is what question should I be asking that I'm not. Notice how right here you're looking for blind spots, right? You want to find the questions that you're missing so that the AI tool can say, hey, you know what? We actually missed this over here, or we missed that, and that's why you should think about doing X, Y, and Z, right? So it's really about asking the better questions, more context, more perspective, a bigger lens, right? You're here in this little box when you're asking it this kind of question of what should I be asking here? Like, what am I missing? You're expanding the frame so now your box is bigger, okay? So, very, very important better questions, more context, more understanding of what you're actually trying to accomplish, and then always leave room in here to find the gaps, okay, in terms of poking holes and different iterations of the questions. Next one are reflect deeply. This is big here. After every output, you want to ask what does my reaction to this tell me about the thinking I'm running. Okay. And so the way you want to think about this is that AI output equals mirror, not answer. So it's ultimately all a mirror in terms of the output that you're getting from AI. And in this particular situation, if you're feeling defensive about what AI is telling you through your reflections, like if you're really trying to dig deep into, hey, what's going on with my life? Like I'm at a point where I'm just struggling, I don't know what's going on. And then AI is reflecting back to you that, yeah, it's all you, it's all your fault. Like you're the creator of your reality, like you're not doing X, Y, and Z, and you should be doing A, B, C. And then if you feel defensive about that, just take that in as data because ultimately that's just your operating system trying to protect yourself, which is essentially your identity, right? That's how we like to look at the operating system here in terms of identity, right? Identity OS. Whoops, OS operating system, okay? Operating system. Root code, okay? So let's go with C. Challenge Assumptions. And this is super important because most people are using AI to essentially confirm what they already know and believe, and the architect prompts them to break what they believe. So in this situation, where am I wrong? Am I wrong? Is more valuable than am I right? Okay. Here it's like I know something's going on here. Where am I wrong? What am I missing? Versus I know everything, I'm right, and just tell me so, right? Because I already believe that. Okay, so let's go to H. Hold ownership. Because what happens here when you outsource decisions, you are outsourcing your identity, your essence, like who you are, your agency. You see, the moment that you let AI decide for you, you lose a piece of your self-trust that makes you valuable. Hold the decision, use AI to pressure test it, never to replace it. Let's go to I. So I is interrogate. Thinking. This is where you want to use AI to examine the structure of your reasoning, not just the content of it. And you want to ask yourself what pattern is running and how I'm thinking about this. This is a 4D move applied to AI. The architect isn't just asking about a problem, they're asking about the identity that's processing the problem. Let's go to T. We want to test ideas. This is where you want to bring something that you already have assumed. Okay, something you've already assumed, a half-baked idea in terms of hey, this is what I'm thinking about it. This is what the analysis is showing, the data, the stats. And so this is where you are stress testing. Very powerful, very important here. And this is the gap between the amplifier and the actual architect. You see, because the amplifier brings clarity to refine. Like, hey, this is what I'm thinking. I have a pretty good idea. What do you think about this? Or stress test this and refine it for me. The architect brings confusion to clarify. So things that you're confused about, the clarity about who you are, the patterns, all of these different things, so you can get clarity on that and get a full picture of what's really going on here. And then E executes. This is where you take action on the clarity that you've been able to achieve and attain based off of utilizing the stress testing, the understanding, the refining, all of that. Because here, reflection, and as you're going through all this, right, you're reflecting, you're using AI as a self-reflection tool, and reflection without action is just consumption, and then C correct. This is where you use AI to diagnose the results that you achieved. So you're not just looking at the things that were revealed and the things that you were achieving and have achieved, but you're looking at it from multiple different angles here, not just whether it worked or not. So with this, you want to ask, what did this outcome show me about my thinking level? Okay, very, very powerful, and then the final step here T transform identity, and so this is the last and final step, and it's the one that nobody in the AI space is talking about. Every time that you complete the loop, ask, reflect, challenge, hold, interrogate, test, execute, correct, you're not just getting better outputs, you are rewriting the operating system. So let me write this over here. Okay, when you're doing all of this, you are rewriting the OS, so the operating system that runs the prompts. And remember, your OS, this is your identity, this is the root system, okay? Root code. Here's what I need you to understand and really ask yourself: are you copying or are you thinking? Are you asking AI to decide or using it to sharpen your own decisions? Are you consuming outputs or evolving the identity that creates them? The level that you operate from and at determines what AI becomes for you. You don't need better prompts. You need a better relationship with your own thinking, and that's what changes everything.