I follow the latest developments in LLMs very closely. There is a lot of noise out there and very little signal. I decided to make one easy-to-follow list for anyone who feels overwhelmed by AI or who knows they should be doing more with AI but hasn’t gotten around to it yet.
- The only manual for AI is AI itself - AI is changing rapidly; written instructions for AI are quickly outdated. The only instructions you need to remember are where to type your first question.
- Form AI habits - The hardest part of learning AI is developing muscle memory. Try to ask it something every day.
- Get your ideas in writing - AI’s only weakness is that it can’t read your mind. Use speech-to-text tools like WisprFlow to get ideas out of your head into text. Use AI to organize those thoughts.
- Talk to AI naturally; it fills gaps. Unlike traditional software, interacting with AI is conversational. Don’t worry about perfect sentences – AI generally understands you even with typos and omissions.
- Partner with AI, don’t outsource to it - Use AI to draft and structure, but always add your own voice; people can tell the difference.
- Use AI to be more social, not less - Ask it how to ask better questions and how to say things so they’ll be well-received by your intended audience. It doesn’t matter what you say if it’s not received well.
- Learn about AI blind spots - AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. AI is just as susceptible to bias as people.
- Try to include AI Summaries when you share content links with friends and colleagues. It’s good practice with AI, and it helps the recipient gain context.
Bonus, a few more technical points:
- Autonomous AI will be bigger than the AI we know today - When autonomous AI agents arrive, they’ll work best with explicit instructions. People who have instructions ready will 10x their productivity overnight on easily replicable tasks.
- Prepare for the MCP revolution - Similar to how APIs liberated data to the cloud, Model Context Protocol (MCP) will turn every app into an AI-connected app.
To get started with AI, try asking Perplexity, ChatGPT , or Gemini some thought-provoking questions. Here are a few examples:
- How will AI transform K-12 education? Be specific and give examples .
- What’s a random fact I probably don’t know, and why did you choose this one?
- Before sending an email, ask AI:
- What’s the smallest change I could make to this below email to make it more effective to the recipient? Give me the full email text incorporating this change, and then explain why you made the change. [Paste your email draft here]
Was this list useful to you?