Two prompts that make AI a better teacher.

Most people use AI to learn the same way they used a search engine. Ask for an explanation, read it, move on, forget it by Friday. Two small changes fixed that for me.

1. Do not ask it to explain. Ask it to quiz you.

Read a page. Close it. Then ask the model for questions about what you just read.

This is what your parents did when you were preparing for a school test. They held the book and asked you questions. The difference now is that the one asking already knows the whole subject, so it does not need the book. It can push on the part you got wrong, ask a harder follow-up, or go sideways into the thing you skipped.

Retrieval is what makes learning stick. Reading feels like learning and mostly is not. Being asked, and having to answer from memory, is.

2. Do not ask for a five-year-old. Ask for a smart adult who is new to this.

"Explain it like I'm five" gets you a cartoon. Analogies about cookies and playgrounds. It is charming and you learn nothing you can use.

"Explain it to a smart adult who is new to this" gets you the real thing, in plain words. No jargon, but no condescension either. The actual mechanism, the actual trade-offs, the actual names for things so you can go and read more.

Use the second one. Every time.

Why this matters at work

I lead AI adoption inside a regulated company. The people who get the most out of these tools are not the ones with the best prompts. They are the ones who treat the model as a patient tutor instead of a vending machine. Ask it to test you. Ask it to talk to you like an adult. The rest follows.

One thing you tried with AI this month and did not tell anyone? No judgment. A lot of useful habits start in private.