The Joe Reis Show Freestyle Fridays - The AI Skills and Competence Gap
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Mar 6, 2026 A lively take on the difference between the AI skills gap and the competence gap. True stories of AI misuse in labs and classrooms highlight risks. Discussion of who adopts AI at work and why culture, hoarded knowledge, and bad data block success. A call to learn fundamentals like coding and architecture and to use AI to amplify, not replace, judgment.
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Lab Data Fabricated By AI New Hire
- A new biology hire apparently fabricated genetic sequences by prompting a Copilot/ChatGPT model and submitted them as real data.
- Joe Reis recounts researchers were puzzled when lab results didn't match expectations and traced it to AI-generated sequences.
Entire Class Failed From ChatGPT Homework
- A university causal inference instructor gave zeros after every student handed in ChatGPT-generated assignments that were plainly wrong.
- Joe Reis says students couldn't explain how they arrived at answers, forcing the instructor to grade them all as failures.
AI Amplifies Skill And Masks Incompetence
- AI amplifies whatever skill level a user already has: it boosts capable practitioners but can mask incompetence until failures surface.
- Joe Reis cites examples like friends using cloud code to write Go despite varied underlying skill levels.