Always Invite AI Principle
The first of Ethan Mollick’s four core principles (from the book Co-intelligence 1) is deceptively simple: “Always Invite AI to the Table.”
This means developing a habit of involving AI in your work by default, not just when you’re stuck or as a last resort. Treat AI as a collaborator that should be present from the beginning of any project, whether you’re brainstorming ideas, drafting content, learning something new, or solving problems.
The principle addresses what Mollick calls the “blank page problem.” Instead of staring at an empty document trying to conjure the perfect first draft, let AI generate something (anything) to react to. Even if 90% of AI-generated ideas are mediocre, having ten ideas to filter is vastly better than struggling to produce two from scratch.
The key is pairing this with “human in the loop” filtering. AI dramatically expands the volume of raw material you can work with. Your job becomes curation, refinement, and steering rather than pure generation. This is especially powerful when you push AI into “weird non-average territory” by giving it specific personas or constraints.
By making AI participation automatic rather than optional, you shift from asking “Should I use AI for this?” to “How can AI help with this?” It’s a subtle but significant change in mindset that unlocks AI’s potential as a genuine thinking partner rather than just a fancy search engine.
It’s an interesting mind shift that I think will become increasingly important as AI tools become more capable and ubiquitous. It’s embracing experimentation and iteration over perfectionism and paralysis.
Footnotes
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Mollick, E. (2024). “Co-intelligence: Living and Working with AI.” Penguin Random House. ↩