Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s a present-day reality reshaping our world. The generative AI market, valued at nearly $45 billion in 2024, is exploding and projected to grow into a trillion-dollar industry within a decade.¹ From powerhouse chatbots like ChatGPT, which attract billions of web visits, to the AI integrated into your daily navigation and shopping apps, this technology is everywhere.²

But how do you navigate this vast and rapidly expanding “digital ocean?” For many, the sheer number of tools and the speed of innovation can be overwhelming.

To help you chart your course, we’ve developed a simple framework that breaks down AI proficiency into four distinct levels, using a water metaphor. Are you a casual Beachcomber, an intentional Swimmer, a system-building Snorkeler, or an expert Diver?

Find your level, discover the essential skills and tools for each stage, and learn how to take the next step in your AI journey.

Level 1: The Beachcomber — Dipping Your Toes in the Water

The journey into AI begins on the shore. A Beachcomber is a curious explorer, fascinated by the power of AI but interacting with it casually and without a specific goal.

• Who You Are: You might be a student using ChatGPT for homework help, a professional drafting a quick email with an AI assistant, or anyone who’s played with an AI photo filter on social media.⁵ You’re “kicking the tires” of AI, driven by curiosity.
• Core Skills: Your main skills are basic digital literacy and the ability to ask simple, direct questions. You’re also developing an awareness of how AI is already embedded in tools you use daily, like Google Maps’ route optimization or Amazon’s product recommendations.³
• Your Toolkit: You use the most popular and accessible AI tools, which are often free.
  • Chatbots: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are your go-to platforms for brainstorming, summarizing text, and getting quick answers.²
  • Content Generators: You might use Canva’s integrated image generator to create a simple graphic or Grammarly to proofread your writing.⁶
  • Productivity & Lifestyle Apps: You interact with AI through virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa or use AI features in apps like Notion to organize notes.⁵

How to Level Up: The goal for a Beachcomber is to build confidence. To move to the next level, start thinking more intentionally about the results you want and how your instructions influence the AI’s output.

Level 2: The Swimmer — Navigating with Purpose

A Swimmer leaves the shoreline and ventures into the water with intent. This level marks the shift from casual use to deliberate practice. You’re no longer just asking questions; you’re directing the AI to get the right answer.

• Who You Are: You’re an active learner who understands that the quality of AI output depends on the quality of your input. You might be a marketer creating targeted ad copy, a developer automating simple tasks, or a researcher gathering specific information.
• Core Skills: The key skill for a Swimmer is prompt engineering. This is the art of crafting clear, specific, and contextual instructions for an AI.⁸
  • Giving Clear Instructions: You provide specific details and context.
  • Assigning a Role: You tell the AI to “act as” an expert, like a financial analyst or a travel guide, to shape its tone and response.⁸
  • Platform-Specific Prompting: You know that a good prompt for the image generator Midjourney (which requires specifying subject, style, lighting, and composition) is different from a good prompt for ChatGPT.¹⁰
  • Basic Automation: You use no-code tools like Zapier or Make.com to connect different apps and create simple “if this, then that” workflows. For example, you might set up an automation to take a new lead from a Facebook ad, use ChatGPT to draft a personalized email, and save it as a draft in Gmail.¹⁴
• Your Toolkit: You’ve upgraded from free tools to more specialized platforms.
  • Advanced Chatbots: You might subscribe to ChatGPT Plus to access more powerful models and create Custom GPTs—personalized chatbots pre-loaded with specific instructions and data.¹⁶
  • Specialized Tools: You use platforms like Jasper for marketing copy or Fireflies.ai to automatically transcribe and summarize meetings.⁵
  • No-Code Automation: Zapier and Make.com are central to your toolkit for connecting apps like Google Sheets, Slack, and Trello.¹⁴

How to Level Up: You’ve mastered directing AI tools. The next step is to start architecting them into more complex systems that solve unique problems.

Level 3: The Snorkeler — Building Custom Solutions

A Snorkeler looks beneath the surface to see the rich, interconnected ecosystem below. You’ve moved from using AI tools to building bespoke AI-powered solutions. You are a systems thinker and a creative problem-solver.

• Who You Are: You might be a product manager prototyping a new AI feature, a marketing manager building a fully automated content pipeline, or a “citizen developer” creating internal tools for your team.
• Core Skills: Your skills have evolved from execution to design and architecture.
  • Advanced Prompting: You use sophisticated techniques like Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting, where you guide the model to “think step-by-step” to solve complex problems.⁸ You also use self-critique prompts, instructing the AI to evaluate and improve its own output.²³
  • Complex No-Code/Low-Code Development: You build multi-step, conditional workflows and autonomous “AI Agents” using platforms like MindStudio or VectorShift that can perform sequences of actions without human intervention.²⁵
  • No-Code Model Customization: This is where you create truly unique AI. You use techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to connect an AI to your own private data (like company documents or a product manual), making its answers far more accurate and relevant.²⁸ You might also use tools like Google’s Teachable Machine to train a simple image recognition model on your own images without writing code.³⁰
• Your Toolkit: Your tools are designed for building, not just using.
  • AI Agent Builders: Platforms like MindStudio, VectorShift, and Zapier Agents are designed for creating autonomous AI workflows.²⁵
  • No-Code ML Platforms: You use tools like Amazon SageMaker Canvas or DataRobot to build predictive models from your data using automated machine learning (AutoML).³⁰
  • Low-Code Platforms: For more flexibility, you might use tools like Appsmith or Bubble to build custom applications by integrating AI via APIs.³³

How to Level Up: You can build powerful AI systems by integrating existing technologies. The final frontier is to create the core technology itself.

Level 4: The Diver — Shaping the Future of AI

A Diver goes into the deep, where the foundational structures of AI are built. This level represents the pinnacle of AI expertise. You aren’t just using or assembling AI systems—you are creating them.

• Who You Are: You are a machine learning engineer, a data scientist, or an AI researcher. You work in the R&D labs of tech giants, innovative startups, or leading universities. Your work is published in top-tier academic conferences like NeurIPS and ICML.³⁵
• Core Skills: You possess a deep combination of theoretical knowledge and practical engineering prowess.
  • Model Development and Fine-Tuning: You are an expert in the entire model development pipeline, from collecting and cleaning massive datasets to fine-tuning open-source models (like Llama or Mistral) on specific data using techniques like Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT).³⁸
  • Deep Framework Proficiency: You have mastered Python and the dominant deep learning frameworks, PyTorch and TensorFlow, which are the building blocks of all modern AI.⁴¹
  • Training Foundational Models: This is the ultimate challenge—building a model like GPT-4 from scratch. It requires designing a neural network architecture, curating petabytes of data, and using thousands of GPUs for months at a time.⁴⁴
  • Architectural Innovation: You design entirely new neural network architectures, like the recently developed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), pushing the boundaries of what AI can do.⁴⁷
• Your Toolkit: Your toolkit is a professional laboratory of software and hardware.
  • ML Frameworks: PyTorch and TensorFlow are your primary tools.⁴²
  • Cloud Platforms: You use scalable cloud platforms like Amazon SageMaker, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and Azure Machine Learning for heavy-duty training.⁴⁸
  • The Open-Source Ecosystem: You live on platforms like Hugging Face (for pre-trained models and datasets), GitHub (for code), and ArXiv (for the latest research papers).⁵¹

Find Your Level and Start Your AI Journey

The path from a curious Beachcomber to an expert Diver is an incremental journey. No matter your current level, the key is to take a gradual, project-based approach. Master the skills at your stage before moving to the next.

And at every level, it’s crucial to proceed responsibly. As our ability to build and automate with AI grows, so does our responsibility to consider the ethical implications, including fairness, privacy, and transparency.⁵⁴

So, where do you stand? Identify your level, pick a new tool or skill from the next stage, and continue your journey into the exciting world of AI.