I\u2019m not proud of it, but for the last year I\u2019ve been that annoying guy at parties who talks about AI. When I tell people I\u2019m working on a newsletter about it, I\u2019m met with the usual frowns and suspicion.<\/p>\n
But wait! Don\u2019t walk away yet. This is not one of those ads about how an AI tool can replace your friends or trick your boss into thinking you stayed up all night working on a presentation. Instead, I\u2019m focused on ways to use AI that don\u2019t rob me \u2013 or anyone \u2013 of humanity.<\/p>\n
Like most people, I hate mindless slop and the threat AI poses to our privacy, mental faculties and jobs. But I view AI in a similar way to the internet.<\/p>\n
Yes, the internet unfortunately gave us doomscrolling, data harvesting, clickbait and your uncle\u2019s Facebook posts on vaccines. But it also gave us digital maps, podcasts, niche blogs, Wikipedia, video calls and, who can forget, the Guardian app.<\/p>\n
Like any powerful tool, people are going to exploit AI for nefarious means, but that doesn\u2019t mean we have to follow suit or acquiesce. It means we have to demand the companies building it are properly regulated and accountable. Now is the time to call for guardrails regarding privacy, environmental impact, and the reach of misinformation.<\/p>\n
And if we\u2019re going to use AI, we should do it with our eyes open.<\/p>\n
So where does that leave us? In AI for the People, our new free six-week newsletter course<\/a> , we look at useful ways to work with AI while staying alert and in control \u2013 at work, in the kitchen, at the gym, and beyond. We will do this with guardrails \u2013 more on this below with our four cardinal rules.<\/p>\n But back to me being annoying at parties.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I tell my skeptical acquaintances about how AI can actually be useful: I hate informational asymmetry. Take, for example, corporations trying to bamboozle us with legalese and ending with us signing contracts we never read. Remember those arbitration clauses used by Disney<\/a> and Uber<\/a> that stopped people from suing them?<\/p>\n So I\u2019ve been taking terms and conditions and legal contracts and getting the AI to explain them in plain English while highlighting the clauses I should be most concerned about.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also used AI to help with my chronic time blindness, cram for my driving permit test, cook more adventurously, work out more consistently and, even better, learn to play the Lord of the Rings theme on the tin whistle.<\/p>\n In most cases, I\u2019ve found that AI is no substitute for a real human being \u2013 no big surprise there. But as an assistant that helps me understand new information, speed up tasks, or come up with tailored plans, my year has been full of small, practical revelations that I\u2019m looking forward to sharing with you.<\/p>\n AI for the People isn\u2019t about \u201c10 prompts that will change your life\u201d, or letting a chatbot do your job for you. It\u2019s about learning the ways in which AI can help you without surrendering your judgement.<\/p>\n As the AI expert Ethan Mollick told me: \u201cIt\u2019s just like any other tool: you dull your skills and critical thinking by giving all your skills and critical thinking to the AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of these problems aren\u2019t new. Speaking to the New York Times in 2002, the Italian author Umberto Eco was already grappling with misinformation in the early days of the web. \u201cThe problem with the internet is that it gives you everything, reliable material and crazy material,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?\u201d<\/p>\n That question \u2013 how we learn to discriminate, adapt and stay in control \u2013 is the guiding philosophy behind AI for the People. We hope you\u2019ll join us.<\/p>\n Our four cardinal rules for this series<\/p>\n AI can be powerful and genuinely useful, but only if we approach it with intention. Here are the principles we\u2019re working from.<\/p>\n 1. You\u2019re the boss<\/p>\n You can give the AI instructions and let it do everything for you, and regurgitate its responses uncritically. But over time, that trade-off costs you control.<\/p>\n As Ethan Mollick, the AI expert and bestselling author of Co-Intelligence, told me: \u201cit\u2019s just like any other tool, right? You dull your skills and critical thinking by giving all your skills and critical thinking to the AI. If you\u2019re trying to learn something, make sure the AI is asking you questions and not giving you answers.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s why we\u2019ll always look at AI as a smart collaborator or an assistant \u2013 with you staying in charge.<\/p>\n 2. Be your own factchecker<\/p>\n AI tools can get things wrong, whether it\u2019s because of bad sourcing or hallucinations. One example: in 2024 Google\u2019s AI search overview advised people to add glue to pizza, after mistaking a joke on Reddit for a real recipe tip.<\/p>\n The key is to treat AI information like any other information. \u201cIf it\u2019s something that really matters, you have to spend the time to verify it,\u201d says Mollick.<\/p>\n You can ask your AI tool to provide links to sources, or you can upload the source itself (like a peer-reviewed study or an official report) and ask the AI to only base its answers on what you\u2019ve provided.<\/p>\n 3. Be informed and intentional<\/p>\n