AI proficiency isn’t optional if you care about leverage in your career

I think about most things through an ROI lens. It's kind of the FI mindset applied everywhere. So, I've been running the numbers on AI proficiency as a career investment, and the math is pretty striking.

I'm based in the Denver area, work in financial analysis, and here's the rough calculation I've done: The research puts the productivity gap between AI power users and average users at 4x (OpenAI's own numbers) to 10-50x (some enterprise measurement frameworks). Even discounting heavily for optimism and taking a conservative 3x, that means a power user is doing the equivalent of 3 people's work in one person's time.

In a career context, that's not just a productivity story. It's a leverage story. If your output quality and quantity increase that significantly, the salary and career trajectory implications compound over time, both in current role performance and in how you differentiate during transitions.

The investment required: deliberate practice, not courses. Using AI for your hardest work, not just the easy stuff. Building workflows rather than running one-off queries. Adopting new capabilities as they release rather than getting comfortable with 2023 tools. The return timeline: probably 6-12 months of deliberate development to meaningfully move up the proficiency curve. After that, compounding.

Anyone else thinking about AI proficiency as a personal finance / career investment question rather than just a workplace skill question?