AI: Getting Started

Before I get into the boring technical background, I invite you just to jump right into the online software. The top tools are free to play with. There’s ChatGPT. And Claude.ai. You can dally with Microsoft Copilot. Or try Google’s Gemini. Perplexity.ai has taken the lead in AI search. It is said that Elon Musk has some AI chat tech attached to X. I’ve not explored this.

That’s how most people start with AI—I bet you’ve already tried one or more of these toys. I also bet that you haven’t tried them for very long. Most people I talk to devote just a few minutes. They try a few questions, get back some pretty obvious answers, and they move on.

Wrong approach.

I side with Ethan Mollick, whose work I’ll describe a few times in this book. In his blog and in a recent interview, Mollick talks about his ‘10 hour rule’:

“I want to indicate that 10 hours is as arbitrary as 10,000 steps. Like, there’s no scientific basis for it. This is an observation. But it also does move you past the, I poked at this for an evening, and it moves you towards using this in a serious way. I don’t know if 10 hours is the real limit, but it seems to be somewhat transformative. The key is to use it in an area where you have expertise, so you can understand what it’s good or bad at, can learn the shape of its capabilities.”

Another commenter, reviewing Mollick’s recent book on AI, pointed out an equally-true ‘rule of ten’: “An hour of experimenting with these tools is worth ten hours of reading about them.”

You get the idea. This is about doing, not pondering. My book is a ponderance. You need to get your hands dirty.