How I Use AI

"Okay, but what do you actually do with it?"

That's the question I get most when I tell people I'm building my own AI.

It's a great question, and to answer it, let me walk you through my journey with AI and the three levels I've seen so far.

Level 1 - The Investigator
Many people think of AI as a super search tool. And they're right, it is. That's Level 1.

Google became one of the most valuable companies in the world, all based on one thing: search. Like Google, search is a place that AI really shines too. Ask it anything and it will sift through everything online quickly to answer your questions. But unlike Google, which would just give you links to go check out for yourself, AI tries to answer your questions directly. No links to click. Just a response to your question based on the best information it can find. It's like a thinking partner, but how does it think?

The backbone of AI is its training data. For years before it is released to the public, AI companies teach their AI how to think and communicate using large amounts of data. This is how AI can still answer you, even if it is offline. It doesn't have to search; it already has information and it can use that to answer you thoughtfully.

Even at this first level, AI distinguishes itself. It feels more human, so we hear people say, "I asked Chat..." or "I talked to Gemini about it and..." the way they would refer to a friend. Because it feels like a friend. At this first level AI is like a private investigator or a psychologist. Ask it anything and you might be amazed at its insight and resourcefulness.

That's the first level of AI.

Level 2 - The Builder
This is where AI actually makes things for you. For many people this started with pictures and video. A funny photo of your dog flying an airplane or a complex chart for work. And then you realize it can make a slide deck, a spreadsheet, an app and a website.

Here's a fun example of something it built for me a year ago. I like watching local football games in the fall. I asked AI to look up all of the schedules of every high school and college football game in my local area and create a schedule for me of which games I should go see. I wanted to see match-ups that would be great games. This was a combination of a dozen game schedules, team rankings, local rivalries and home games versus away games. It was pretty complicated and required research across dozens of websites. It would have taken me hours to research and then compile into a spreadsheet. AI did it in a fraction of that time while I was off doing other things.

This past year it has done much more. It helped me rebuild my website with over 1,750 articles and pages, it's built databases, created a personalized app to help my wife study for her citizenship exam, organized fun dad jokes, researched gratitude questions, created my personalized 1000 Words writing app I've mentioned before, built Quote libraries from my old books and much more.

At Level 2, The Builder does incredible things but there's still one more level.

Level 3 - The Partner
At Level 1, AI is the investigator sitting in their office. They are ready to help you, but you have to knock on the door. You give them a lot of information and then they can help.

At Level 2, AI is the builder still sitting in an office. They are ready to help you build, but you have to knock. They have skills ready to deploy, but you need to bring the dream or idea for them to create.

At Level 3, AI is the partner knocking on your door.

Mine checks in with me daily to share questions and check in on things we predetermined together. I answer, it logs the response and continues to improve each day.

It proactively pulls together a weekly retrospective where we review what went well that week, what didn't and how we can both improve.

It notifies me that one of our websites went down because of a security update, it noticed, researched the issue and fixed it. The website was down for 3 seconds and it just wanted to let me know.

There are dozens of processes like this going on in the background all the time.

I could go into a lot more detail, but that feels like quite enough for this post already.

I've spent years at Level 1 and Level 2, but only the past few months at Level 3.

There is a lot more to explore, including why I think it's very important for you to own your own AI and not rent it from someone else, and I look forward to sharing that with you soon.

In the meantime I would love to hear your questions so I can answer them in future posts. I've loved hearing from so many of you in your email replies. Thank you for your encouragement and your kindness. I'm honored you are here.

Also thank you for your patience. As you could see in last week's essay, I'm very much building and learning as we go. The URL links looked crazy in your email inboxes last Saturday and with a little tweaking to markdown files, HTML, and my homemade email system, I've figured out how to make things come through smooth this time.

I appreciate you being on this journey with me and I'll see you next Saturday.