Do you remember when most people thought AI was basically a machine for writing slightly dodgy blog posts?
It really wasn’t that long ago.
I remember when ChatGPT first appeared and the conversation was almost entirely about what it could write. Articles. Emails. Books, God help us.
Then came the prompts.
We were all apparently supposed to become prompt engineers and learn increasingly elaborate ways of asking a computer a question.
And somewhere along the way, something rather more interesting happened.
AI became useful.
Not futuristic. Not something you need to understand. Just useful.
I use it constantly now, and quite a lot of what I use it for has nothing to do with creating content.
I’ll give it a document I don’t want to wade through and ask it to find something. I’ll show it a screenshot and ask what I’m looking at. I’ll get it to compare options, research something I’m considering buying, untangle information or help me work out what I’ve forgotten to do.
That, I think, is the big change.
We’re moving away from “What can AI create?” and towards “What can I hand over?”
And you don’t need to be remotely technical to take advantage of it.
Start treating it like the useful person sitting next to you
One of the easiest ways to get more from AI is to stop trying to think of impressive things to ask it.
Give it annoying things instead.
Something arrived that you don’t understand? Give it the letter and ask it to explain it in plain English.
Going somewhere unfamiliar? Ask it to research the practical stuff you’d normally spend half an hour looking up.
Have six things you could do this afternoon and no idea which one matters most? Tell it what they are, how much time you have and what you’re trying to achieve.
Got a 47-page PDF and need one particular piece of information?
You can probably guess what I’m going to say.
This is where AI becomes much more interesting to me. It isn’t replacing your judgement. It’s getting rid of some of the faffing about that happens before you can use it.
A few free things worth trying
NotebookLM has become one of the most useful free AI tools around if you have a pile of information to get through. You give it your own sources, such as PDFs, websites or notes, and then work with that material.
One thing I’d try: give it several documents about something you’re researching and ask it where they disagree. That’s often far more useful than another summary.
Goblin Tools is much simpler and I still love it. If you have something horribly vague on your list such as “sort out website”, its Magic ToDo tool will break it down into actual things you can do. Most of its web tools are free.
Perplexity is handy when what you really want is research rather than a conversation. It searches the web and gives you the sources with its answer, which means you can actually go and check them.
And don’t overlook the AI you already have. The free version of ChatGPT can do considerably more than the early versions could.
Try giving it something real rather than asking it to “write a blog post”.
A photo…a document…a decision you’re trying to make. Something you need explained. Something you’ve been avoiding because sorting it out will take twenty minutes you don’t have.
That’s when you start discovering what it’s actually good for.
Something worth watching
I went looking for a TED Talk for you and found one that is particularly appropriate this week.
Michael Littman’s How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Be Realistic About AI is actually from 2017, which makes it fascinating to watch now.
His argument was that AI was already part of ordinary life, often without us noticing it. Nine years later, we’ve gone several steps further.
And perhaps that’s where we are with AI now.
You don’t have to love it. You certainly don’t have to use everything it can do.
But I think it’s worth finding the bits that make your own life easier.
Which brings me neatly to something I made this week.
AI Master Keys came out of my own frustration with knowing AI could help me with something but still having to work out how to get the bl***y thing to do it.
So I created 27 Keys for jobs I actually want AI to help me with, and I’ve made them ridiculously easy to use.
I launched it earlier today and readers like you are still getting in during the early dimesale.
Have a look at AI Master Keys here
Amanda x