Power of AI: A Practical Guide to Using and Understanding AI
Discover useful ways to think, work, learn and create with AI. Practical examples, better questions, current realities and independent guidance for curious people.
See a possibility
Original illustrated examples. Not live AI responses.
Untangle something
A head full of notes. A next step you can see.
Starting material: Saturday repair café? Jo can bring tools. Need a room. Ask library. Poster after room confirmed. Someone should check insurance. No date agreed.
Illustrated result: Ask the library about a room — Owner not agreed; Confirm insurance requirements — Owner not agreed; Make the poster — After the room is confirmed
Notice what stays uncertain: no invented deadline, no person quietly assigned a job.
Request to adapt: Turn these notes into next steps. Separate confirmed facts from suggestions. Preserve missing owners and dates as unknown. Show dependencies. Notes: [paste notes you can share]
Understand something
An idea makes more sense when you get to use it.
Starting material: A correlation means two things vary together. It does not, by itself, tell you whether one causes the other. A third factor might affect both.
Illustrated result: Ice-cream sales and sunburns rise together. What else could explain both? Hot, sunny weather can increase both. The association alone does not show that eating ice cream causes sunburn.
Ask for one question at a time. Try answering before revealing an explanation.
Request to adapt: Help me practise [topic]. Ask one application question at a time. Wait for my answer. Give feedback on my reasoning, then try a new example. Don’t give me the answer first.
Build your own practice session
Express something
The same message. Much more like a person.
Starting material: I am writing to inquire as to whether you might have availability to provide your feedback on the attached draft at your earliest convenience.
Illustrated result: Could you take a look at the attached draft and let me know what you think?
The revision makes the request direct without inventing a deadline or changing the ask.
Request to adapt: Make this message clearer and more natural. Keep my meaning and facts. Remove unnecessary formality. Don’t add promises, deadlines, or enthusiasm I didn’t express. Draft: [paste your draft]
Find a voice that feels like yours
Make this about your life
Everyday life
Make a little room in your day. Start with a realistic plan, a confusing document, or a conversation you want to practise.
Bring your constraints. Keep the final decisions.
Plan a day that actually fits · Explore this path
My work
Turn the loose ends into a clear next step. Work through notes, drafts and spreadsheets with a method you can check and repeat.
Use material you’re allowed to share.
Turn notes into next steps · Explore this path
My learning
Make understanding the thing you keep. Use questions, hints and fresh examples to practise a subject, rather than just collect explanations.
Answer first. Explain it back. Try again.
Try learning by being quizzed · Explore this path
My business
Give a recurring task a better process. Try a customer reply or FAQ grounded in your actual policies before expanding to a larger workflow.
Keep promises tied to what you can deliver.
Draft a thoughtful customer reply · Explore this path
Our family
Follow a question somewhere unexpected. Make a story together, investigate an everyday mystery, or turn a lesson into a game.
An adult leads. Everyone brings an idea.
Start a story together · Explore this path
A little curiosity. A lot of possibility.
Discover what AI could help you do. Get a feel for it, find your starting point, and learn to use it well.
Free to read. No technical background needed.
Start with a useful task or read the practical guide.
Give it something to work with
Written examples, ready to adapt. These are not model responses.
Writing
A place to start: Make this sound better.
A more useful request: Help me improve this email to a colleague. Keep it friendly and direct, preserve the facts, and cut anything that sounds like a sales pitch. Before rewriting, point out the one place my meaning is unclear. Email: [paste your draft]
An audience, a purpose, and a boundary give the AI a direction.
Then keep the conversation going: The opening still doesn’t sound like me. Keep my original first sentence and shorten the rest.
Learning
A place to start: Explain this topic.
A more useful request: I’m learning [topic] and understand [what you know so far]. Ask me one question to find out where I’m stuck. Wait for my answer, then use a concrete example to help me work it out.
You get to do some thinking before the explanation arrives.
Then keep the conversation going: Give me a different example to solve on my own. Don’t show the answer yet.
Planning
A place to start: Help me plan my week.
A more useful request: Help me make a realistic plan from these tasks: [list]. I have [available time] and these fixed commitments: [list]. Ask what matters most, then suggest what to do, postpone, or leave out. Include room for interruptions.
Real constraints make a plan easier to judge and use.
Then keep the conversation going: I lost Tuesday afternoon. What should move, and what will no longer fit?
Powerful. Uneven. Worth understanding.
Reviewed September 13, 2026.
AI can help you explore an idea, work through a document, or make a useful first draft. Some tools can also carry out a project. The useful question is what works for your task, and how you’ll know.
A good answer is possible. Accuracy still needs checking.
AI can produce a clear explanation and still invent a detail. Open the source, check the calculation, and inspect the part you’ll rely on. A confident tone is not evidence.
The app matters as much as the model.
A chat, a document workspace, and an agent with file access can do different jobs. Check what your chosen tool can actually read and do. Access and features vary by account.
You can ask for work, as well as words.
An agent with suitable tools may produce a spreadsheet, edit files, or build an app. Give it a clear result and limited access. Review the work before allowing it to send, spend, or publish.
Start with something that matters to you
Sound more like yourself.
Get a second pair of eyes on a draft while keeping your meaning and voice.
Have a patient practice partner.
Try a question, explain your answer, and get feedback on where you got stuck.
Untangle a confusing letter.
Locate the dates, next steps, and questions you need to ask the sender.
Find the actions in messy notes.
Separate decisions from suggestions and keep missing details visible.
Read with a better question.
Compare a set of sources and trace important claims back to the original.
Give an idea a few possible lives.
Explore distinct directions for a story, poster, or project before choosing one.
You don’t need a secret prompt
Bring the situation.
Share the goal, audience, relevant material, and what a useful result would look like. Use information you’re allowed to share.
Make a specific correction.
Name what missed: the tone, a wrong assumption, an overlooked constraint. Ask for a targeted revision.
Try to find the weak point.
Ask what is missing, then check it yourself. A second AI answer can raise questions; it cannot certify the first one.
Notice what you learned.
Try the result on a small scale. Keep the useful method, record what failed, and test again when the task or tool changes.
Questions worth exploring
What changes when AI can take action?
Follow your curiosity
Search the guide. An independent, AI-assisted project from Canada. Meet Graham and the idea behind this site.
What this guidance draws on
- Ethan Mollick: An opinionated guide to which AI to use (July 23, 2026): An editorial perspective on choosing an environment, trying real tasks, and staying involved as AI takes action. Our examples and recommendations are independently written.
- Anthropic: The AI Fluency Index (February 23, 2026): An observational study of Claude conversations links iteration with other collaboration behaviors. It does not prove that a prompting habit causes better outcomes, or measure every check users make outside the chat.
Our sources and editorial standards.
New practical guides
Make a document and slides from one brief. A five-minute voice practice session. Follow The Signal with RSS.
Keep up without chasing everything
The Signal: AI updates for September 21, 2026 — 2026-09-21. Claude Docs and Slides, ChatGPT in Word, Gemini Live and a reasoning-setting change: what changed, who gets it, and useful things to try.
Where could AI help you?
Five practical paths with worked examples, learning projects and local tools.
- I’m a student: A study session built around one concept you keep mixing up.
- I’m working: A meeting action list with no invented owners or deadlines.
- I run a business: A customer FAQ whose promises match an approved fact sheet.
- This is for my life: A realistic plan for three available sessions, with room to change it.
- We’re learning together: A small illustrated story with choices the family actually made.
Related Power of AI pages
Keep reading with Start here, everyday uses, the tool guide, the writing workshop, and sources and standards.