Embracing AI: A Practical Guide for the Curious but Cautious

Your First Steps Into the World of AI Tools

I had a whole other newsletter queued up for this week when I came across

Sarah Fay, PhD

's Substack live about whether people should have an AI policy. As many of you know, I've written about grappling with the ethics of using AI for my newsletter and business.

Listening to Sarah's interviews and reading the comments, I realized how much people still don't know about AI and how rapidly it's evolving. For months, I've been thinking about starting a how-to series, and yesterday I woke up at 5 am thinking that now is the time to start with AI as my first topic.

Each week, I'll provide tips on incorporating AI into your everyday life, sharing my experiences with different platforms. We'll cover the pros and cons of various models and discuss ethical guardrails. Daily social media tips will complement these newsletters, creating space for your questions and experiences.

For this first installment, we're covering AI basics, major companies, ethical considerations, why prompting differs from search queries, and a fun garden-planning exercise to try.

Future newsletters will include:

• The Art of Effective Prompting

• AI as Your Creative Partner

• AI for Personal Productivity

• AI for Personal Branding

• Advanced AI Applications

Let's get started!

What is AI and Why Should You Care?

Artificial Intelligence might sound like science fiction, but it's already woven into your daily life—from Netflix recommendations to voice assistants. The recent explosion of generative AI represents a fundamental shift: technology that can create rather than just calculate.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini have been trained on vast amounts of content from across the internet, allowing them to generate human-like responses, create images, assist with coding, and much more.

Why care? Because AI tools aren't just reshaping industries—they're changing how we work as individuals. Learning to leverage these tools is quickly becoming as essential as knowing how to use a search engine was in the early 2000s. Whether you're writing, planning, brainstorming, or creating, AI can help you work more efficiently and focus on what truly requires human insight.

The good news? You don't need to be a tech expert to benefit. This series will show you options on how to incorporate AI into your workflow in practical, ethical ways that enhance rather than replace your unique perspective.

Major AI Players and Platforms

The AI landscape is evolving rapidly, but several key players have emerged:

OpenAI's ChatGPT: The tool that sparked the current AI revolution when it launched in November 2022. It offers text generation, image creation (DALL-E), and is venturing into video (Sora). The free version gives access to older models, while a subscription ($20/month) provides the latest models.

Anthropic's Claude: Created by former OpenAI employees focused on building "safer" AI systems. Claude excels at creative brainstorming and nuanced responses for complex writing tasks.

Google's Gemini: Google's answer to ChatGPT, integrated into Google Workspace. It's particularly strong when combined with Google's search capabilities.

Meta's Llama: An open-source model that's more customizable than most. Meta is integrating AI across Instagram and Facebook (which is probably where you encounter it most), including AI-generated image suggestions and its Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Microsoft's Copilot: Building on their OpenAI partnership, Microsoft has integrated AI throughout Office—helping create presentations, analyze data, and draft documents.

Specialized AI tools are also flourishing: Riverside.fm enhances podcast recording, Midjourney generates images, Grammarly improves writing, ElevenLabs provides AI voices, and even your iPhone's photo editor uses AI to remove unwanted objects.

Many of these tools offer free tiers perfect for beginners, with paid options available as you advance. I use ChatGPT and Claude the most. For some tasks, I will ask each to do the same thing so that I can compare across models and continue to train them both on my voice and style. You can pick the one that works best for you.

Ethical Considerations and Personal Guardrails

As AI becomes more integrated into our work, several ethical questions arise:

Privacy and security: Be mindful about what you share with AI tools. Avoid uploading sensitive client data or confidential documents to public AI platforms. Many companies now offer enterprise solutions with stronger privacy protections.

Copyright considerations: There's ongoing debate about AI training methods and copyright implications. These models learn from vast amounts of text scraped from the internet, including copyrighted materials—sometimes without creator permission. This has sparked legal challenges and questions about fair use and compensation.

Be aware that AI may occasionally produce content resembling existing copyrighted material. Platforms are getting better at this, but checking what is generated is especially important when creating commercial content, publishing creative works, generating code, or emulating specific authors' styles.

Originality and disclosure: No universal standard exists yet for disclosing AI use, but transparency builds trust. Consider how you would disclose an editor's help—AI falls into a similar category. You can read my disclosure here.

Finding your balance: I've found a personal approach that works for me: using AI for brainstorming and refining my first drafts rather than generating complete content. This ensures the core ideas remain mine, while AI helps polish. As I wrote previously, "I feel better about that than asking it to generate a whole thing."

Check for uniqueness: For important work, run distinctive phrases through a search engine to ensure originality and avoid unintentional similarity to published work.

Remember that ethical norms around AI are still developing. Stay reflective about your boundaries, and be willing to adjust as conventions evolve.

Mindset Shift: AI Prompts vs. Search Queries

Using AI effectively requires a fundamental mindset shift:

Conversations, not commands: Unlike search engines that respond to short queries with results lists, AI tools engage in ongoing conversations. You can ask follow-ups, request revisions, and build on previous exchanges.

Specificity yields better results: The more detailed your prompt, the better the output. Where a search query might be "meal plan ideas," an effective AI prompt would be "Create a 7-day meal plan for a family of four, including a vegetarian teenager, with recipes under 30 minutes, focusing on Mediterranean cuisine."

Length is your friend: Don't fear writing longer prompts. Include relevant context, specify goals, desired formats, and constraints. A prompt can be hundreds of words long if needed.

Iteration is key: AI interactions improve through back-and-forth refinement. If you don't like the initial response, ask the AI to adjust specific aspects or try different approaches.

Role-setting enhances results: Improve responses by giving the AI a specific role. Try phrases like "Act as my editor" or "You're my brainstorming partner" to frame the interaction.

This conversational approach might feel strange initially but quickly becomes intuitive—and often more satisfying than traditional search.

Practical Exercise: Planning Your Garden with AI

Ready to try AI for yourself? Let's tackle a seasonal project: planning a garden. This exercise demonstrates how AI can help with a task requiring both general knowledge and personalization.

Start a new chat in ChatGPT, Claude, or your preferred AI tool. Here's a sample prompt:

I'd like help planning a small vegetable and herb garden. I live in [your location], have approximately [dimensions] of space, and can dedicate about [time commitment] weekly to gardening. I'm a [beginner/intermediate/experienced] gardener looking to grow food that is [easy to maintain/organic/productive/etc.]. Can you recommend:

1. 5-8 vegetables and herbs that would grow well in my conditions

2. A simple layout for my garden space

3. A basic planting and maintenance calendar

4. Essential tools and supplies I'll need

The beauty of AI is the conversation that follows. You can refine based on the response, get specific guidance on particular plants, request visualization help, and create a personalized calendar. I used it recently for tips on the tomatillo plants I bought at the nursery this weekend, which I learned a few years ago can be hard to pollinate if you don’t have at least two of them.

Try it yourself, and notice how this differs from a standard web search!

Let me know what you think and what questions you have. Next week, we'll focus on what makes a good prompt.