The "AI Can Do Everything" Delusion: Domain Knowledge Cannot Be Prompted
- Jana Simeonovska
- Jan 21
- 4 min read
"We reduced our headcount. Now, we’re training the remaining staff to use AI to cover the workload. The goal is to produce the same volume of work - faster and more efficiently - with a smaller team."
This has become a strategy in corporate planning, built on this very tiring yet dangerous belief that a career’s worth of craft can be replaced by a single line of text. This line of text, the "prompt," is seen as the ultimate substitute for experience.
A founder can write a 30-page white paper in a day.
A junior designer can build a brand identity in an hour.
A non-marketer can manage an entire content lifecycle.
How?
With the right prompt.
No. I’m not buying it.
I think this "AI can do everything" delusion is ruining the way we (humans) communicate. We confuse output with authority over and over again, and in the process, we create a new kind of content spam: technically correct, but completely forgettable.
The “Exposure” Trap: Data vs. Reality
The data doesn’t lie, I know that! Research shows that the editorial lifecycle is in a real trouble spot. Writers (0.85), technical writers (0.82), editors (0.78), proofreaders (0.91)… All are among the most "exposed" professions to AI.
I’ve heard this a thousand times - and I’m sure everyone else in my field has, too. It’s a statistical fact.
But there's a huge gap in that logic...
Understanding "Exposure"
High exposure doesn't automatically mean high replaceability. It means the tasks - the mechanical act of arranging words or fixing commas - can be automated. But the responsibility for the truth cannot.
When companies use these stats to justify replacing experts with generalists using AI, they are falling into a trap.
The Reduction of Expertise
If everyone is an "expert" because they can generate a 1,000-word article in seconds, then nobody is an expert.
I keep hearing this tiring narrative that, an LLM can replace a career's worth of craft. This creates the illusion of expertise without effort, and worse, authority without depth.
The 10% Illusion: Why Prompting is the Easy Part
We’ve been led to believe that "prompt engineering" is the new magic wand. If you can just write a "strong" prompt, the AI will do the rest.
The prompt is only 10% of the job.
The other 90% is knowing if the answer is correct, accurate, credible. And if you don’t have domain knowledge, you will not be able to spot a hallucination. You can’t tell when a technical detail is slightly off, or when a narrative is technically "correct" but practically useless.
The Problem with "Correct" Content
AI is excellent at being average. It can produce content that follows all the rules of grammar but lacks the "scars" of real scenarios. Only a person who has dealt with the topic in question is able to verify the output and give it a soul.
Lived Experience: The Only Thing You Can’t Prompt
Every experienced person brings a specific domain of knowledge: years of education, failed experiments, the memory of nuanced customer interactions.
Context vs. Output
Tools cannot replace experience, period! You cannot hand a colleague’s workload to a non-expert and expect the same results just because they have an AI tool. AI gives the output, but it doesn't give the context.
Working with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
In content marketing, the magic lies in the gap between the writer and the subject matter expert (SME).
An AI can summarize a topic, but it can't interview a veteran engineer and pull out the one specific anecdote that makes a white paper go viral. Domain knowledge is about the "unspoken" truths that aren't in the training data.
If you’re curious, you can see how I’ve turned expert insights into meaningful content here. :)
The Real Win-Win: AI as a Helping Hand, Not a Replacement
The goal shouldn't be to give AI tools to non-experts to do "expert work." That's the recipe for content spam. :D The real win-win happens when we give these tools to the domain-knowledgeable people themselves.
Why use AI to replace the expert? Why not let it be the helping hand that lets the expert do more of what they’re already great at?!
For the editor: AI handles the proofreading so they can focus on the story.
For the tech writer: AI handles the formatting so they can focus on technical accuracy.
For the marketer: AI handles the distribution logistics so they can focus on strategy.
Prompting Isn't Perspective (To Say the Least)
Prompting is a shortcut to an output, but it is not a shortcut to a perspective! When we treat AI as a replacement for deep understanding, we end up with communication that is hollow.
The future belongs to those who use AI to amplify their expertise, not those who use it to hide their lack of it. Don't trade your domain experts for an LLM subscription - you'll find that in the long run, the "efficiency" of AI is veeery expensive if it costs you your credibility. :)
Cheers,
Jana
