From AI Skeptic to Believer in 90 Days

Like many of you, I sat in conferences 90 days ago silently wondering: “Why does everyone seem to think AI is transforming business when, for me, it’s basically just better autocomplete?”

Today, my entire team is actively requesting that we roll out our AI infrastructure to every single project we work on. They moved from initial technical setup challenges to genuine enthusiasm in about a week, and now they want to expand well beyond our pilot scope.

So what changed? How did I go from quiet AI skepticism to having my team proactively ask for more AI integration in their daily workflows?

The answer surprised me. It wasn’t a gradual warming up to the technology. It was a series of three specific breakthrough moments over about 90 days that completely shifted how I understood AI’s practical business potential.

The Starting Point: Why I Thought Everyone Else Was Wrong

Let me be honest about where I was 90 days ago. I wasn’t new to GitHub Copilot – I’d been using it for basic autocomplete functionality, hitting “tab” to accept suggestions, occasionally copy-pasting code from the Chat panel. I’d even explored it early on YouTube, but I genuinely wasn’t seeing what others were seeing.

The disconnect between the AI enthusiasm at conferences and my personal experience was puzzling. Conference speakers would share stories about AI transforming their businesses, and I’d think, “I wonder if we’re using the same tool, because my experience feels like slightly enhanced IntelliSense that occasionally suggests something useful, but mostly just gets in my way.”

My usage pattern was pretty typical for someone missing the point entirely:

• Hit tab for autocomplete suggestions
• Sometimes ask Chat panel basic questions
• Copy-paste code snippets when they looked useful
• Generally treat it like a slightly smarter search engine

The problem wasn’t GitHub Copilot. The problem was that I was completely missing how to actually use it.

Breakthrough #1: The Tine Moment – “Copilot is just fancy autocomplete…” DISPROVEN

Everything changed at Days of Knowledge Nordic 2025 in May. Tine Starič gave a presentation with a title that perfectly captured my skepticism: “Copilot is just fancy autocomplete…”

But then he showed me what I was missing.

He explained something called “Models and Modes” that initially didn’t quite click for me. I remember thinking, “If ‘Ask’ mode creates files to copy-paste, and Agent mode saves some of that copy-paste work, I’m not immediately seeing the transformational difference here.”

But Tine demonstrated something I had never encountered before: Agentic mode – essentially a way for Copilot to work through entire problems systematically rather than just suggesting individual lines of code.

I had been completely missing this entire capability. While I was treating Copilot like a fancy autocomplete engine, there was this whole other mode where it could actually understand context, make decisions, and work through complex problems systematically.

The moment I realized I’d been using this tool completely wrong was the turning point. It wasn’t that I needed a different tool – I needed to understand the tool I already had.

Walking out of that session, I had a BC TechDays presentation coming up in a few weeks. 90 minutes of technical content about Job Queue Parallelization. Perfect timing for an experiment.

I gave myself a challenge that seemed impossible based on my previous experience: Write ZERO code for this presentation. Only instructions and prompts.

Breakthrough #2: The 5-Day Miracle – BC TechDays Demo Success

What happened next still amazes me. From June 7-12, 2025 – exactly 5 days – I built an entire BC TechDays demonstration using nothing but prompts and instructions.

And it was easy.

But here’s the key insight that made everything click: I stopped treating GitHub Copilot like a tool and started treating it like a junior developer I was delegating work to.

Instead of asking for code snippets, I started having conversations:

• “Here’s the business problem we need to solve…”
• “The architecture should consider these constraints…”
• “Make sure we handle these edge cases…”
• “Test this scenario and make sure it works correctly…”

The difference was night and day. Instead of getting isolated pieces of code, I was getting complete, thoughtful solutions that considered business requirements, error handling, and real-world implementation challenges.

The BC TechDays demo was a complete success. I had proven to myself that this “AI as teammate” approach actually worked in practice, not just in conference presentations.

Breakthrough #3: The Stanford Validation – I Wasn’t Crazy

A few weeks later, I discovered something that completely validated my experience. Jeremy Utley from Stanford had published research that confirmed exactly what I had discovered: “Outperformers treat AI like a teammate… shifting your orientation from tool to teammate changes everything.”

I wasn’t just stumbling onto a useful trick. I had discovered a fundamental principle that researchers were identifying as the key differentiator between people who get transformational results from AI and people who see it as glorified autocomplete.

The research showed that the mindset shift – from “AI as tool” to “AI as teammate” – was the critical factor in unlocking AI’s business transformation potential.

Everything I had been missing was suddenly clear. The speakers at those conferences weren’t exaggerating. They weren’t using different technology. They were using the same GitHub Copilot I had access to, but they understood something I didn’t: methodology matters more than the tool itself.

What This Means for You Right Now

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This sounds like my experience with AI,” you’re not alone. The gap between AI skeptics and AI believers often comes down to usage methodology, not tool capability.

Here’s what you can try this week to test the “teammate mindset”:

Instead of asking for code:
“Write a function that calculates tax”

Try delegating like to a team member:
“I need to handle tax calculations for multiple regions. Consider that tax rules vary by location, some items are tax-exempt, and we need to handle edge cases like tax holidays. Make sure the solution is maintainable and easily testable.”

Instead of copy-pasting snippets:
“Here’s my current architecture… here are the business requirements… what’s the best approach to implement this feature while maintaining our existing patterns?”

The difference isn’t just in the code you get back. It’s in having a thought partner that can consider business context, architectural implications, and real-world constraints.

The Ripple Effect: From Personal to Organizational

Those 5 days in June didn’t just change how I used AI. They started a chain reaction that led to organizational transformation.

By July, I was thinking bigger. Microsoft had launched their official Copilot guidelines initiative. Industry leaders like Dmitry Katson were sharing “Vibe Coding” best practices. The timing was perfect for something bigger than personal productivity improvement.

I started asking different questions:

• How do we scale these benefits across our entire team?
• What infrastructure do we need to make AI accessible to everyone, not just experts?
• How do we maintain this teammate relationship while working on complex business projects?

The personal breakthrough became the foundation for organizational AI adoption. But that’s a story for the next post in this series.

Your Next Step: The 5-Day Challenge

Here’s what I’d suggest: Give yourself the same 5-day challenge I accidentally created.

Pick a project you’re working on this week. Could be a feature, a bug fix, or even documentation. Instead of approaching it with your normal development workflow, try the teammate approach:

1. Day 1: Explain the business problem and constraints like you would to a new team member
2. Day 2: Collaborate on the technical approach, discussing trade-offs and alternatives
3. Day 3: Work through implementation together, handling edge cases and error scenarios
4. Day 4: Review and refine the solution based on testing and real-world considerations
5. Day 5: Document the approach and lessons learned for future reference

The goal isn’t to prove AI can replace developers. The goal is to discover whether AI can be an effective thinking partner for the complex problems you solve every day.

What’s Next

This transformation from skeptic to believer was just the beginning. Once I understood the teammate approach, entirely new possibilities opened up:

• How do you scale AI benefits across an entire organization?
• What infrastructure makes AI accessible to team members with different skill levels?
• How do you maintain business governance while unleashing AI’s creative potential?

In the next post, I’ll share how we went from individual AI mastery to building infrastructure that had our entire team requesting AI integration on every project. The technical and organizational challenges were completely different from personal productivity improvement.

Here’s what I learned: Individual breakthroughs are exciting, but organizational transformation requires systematic approach. We ended up creating a complete framework – including templates, guidelines, and tools – that lets anyone on the team access these AI benefits without needing to become an expert first.

But for now, I’m curious: Does this teammate vs. tool mindset shift resonate with your AI experience? Have you discovered similar breakthrough moments in your own AI adoption journey?

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This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on organizational AI transformation. Part 2 will cover the technical infrastructure and scaling challenges we solved to democratize AI access across our team.