Special Edition: What can I use AI for?

The non-engineer mind is way more likely to be useful in the new AI world

Hey All, real John here and I want to be clear about this special edition. I’m sitting in my bed on my laptop writing this in the substack editor. Why not in VS Code, Google Docs, or something else? Because they all have AI tools built into it and they do autocomplete, recommendations, and all sorts of other things. With Substack’s editor, I write. Not claude, not grok, not ChatGPT, me. No tabbing for autocompletion, just me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE AI. It has made coding so much fun again. I don’t need to know every library, module, css trick to generate great code. I do need to know what is garbage code and what isn’t.

Here’s the thing about AI that I’ve seen over the years (or months). There are a few different people that are using AI and how they progress is really interesting to me. The first person is the skeptic. They will try to use AI to code something and it turns out horrible. They laugh at it and go back to their daily life. The next person is the AI-Pilled person. They believe AI can do anything and will spend days proving it. They will tweak their prompt, reinforce rules to make the ideal markdown file that will help them solve their specific problem. They will do that for any task they have, even if the task will take them about 5 minutes, they will spend 5 hours helping AI to do it for them. Then finally there is the non-engineer person using AI. They are the ones that want to write less emails, figure out what to have for dinner, and wonder how to get their first pull-up.

Wait, what?

YES! I love those people. They are not engineers. They have not spent years of their life figuring out ideal algorithms for sorting techniques, distributed system architectures, or days doing L33t code problems. They are the non-engineers, the “normal” people who make up over 90% of the world’s population. (I made that statistic up, but sounds about right). They are the non-technical cofounders, the teachers, the waiters, the marketers, the botega owners. You know every one who is not an engineer.

They are the ones that are using AI to improve things. to help with daily tasks. They get so excited when AI writes an email better than they can. When it tells them how to make the best scrambled eggs, or how to teach their dog to stop pulling on a walk.

This is what this special edition post is about. It is not about code, it is about life. It is about taking your life back by using AI. We spend hours researching, reading, learning, doom-scrolling, to hopefully find something to engage us, to entertain us, or to educate us. We don’t need more research. We need more human connection. Spend your time with others, ask AI how to do something you are worried about, go do that, and then get back to your life.

Do something you love, something that really lights you up. I love playing Street Fighter VI and I really love card magic (thanks Covid for getting me back to card magic). I enjoy it and I love it! I’m not a professional magician and I’m definitely not MenaRD in Street Fighter, although I do love Blanka. But I play for fun. AI has helped me 3x myself. I’m not going to say something crazy like 100x or even 10x. But it has helped me work on my card magic, work on strategies for playing Luke on SFVI and even helped me do some simple workouts that don’t require 3 hours in a gym.

You can ask AI to help you in areas you didn’t think of. Ask how you can lose that last 10 pounds, where you should go for dinner on date night, what is something you are not doing that you should be. What should I ask my doctor next time I have my physical. What do you know about me that may be a blindspot for me. How can I be a better version of myself and help the world on a daily basis. What are the next steps I can do to create world peace.

Literally anything.

Sure, it will hallucinate and give you some crazy ideas at times, but that is the fun part. You get to decide what to take action on. You need to improve your critical thinking skills on what is crazy and what is something you didn’t think of that maybe is worth your effort. Also, let’s get back to the skeptic real quick. They use it, laugh at it, and move on. That is like teaching a child to play basketball and they miss their first shot and you laugh at them and say you aren’t Jalen Brunson. Of course they aren’t, they didn’t see a basketball until that day. The more you work with it, the better it becomes for YOU. Not for everyone, but for you. You teach it like you would a new intern starting or a new PA. AI can do so much for you, but it needs your guidance on what you want it to do.

Imagine having a PHD in every topic in college and you wonder why they can’t make a three-pointer. Because that is not what they practiced. AI is full of knowledge, but it is not smart, yet. It is learning everyday. It gets better everyday.

Ask it about your nutrition, your fitness, your favorite book, how to do the dougie, what is the latest tik-tok dance I need to learn, can I be a better singer (the answer is probably not on that one). But play with it. I don't care what you use, Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, doesn’t matter to get started… but play with it… spend 15 minutes a day asking it something you need help with and see how it does, and then correct it when it is wrong. Help it be better.

You are no longer limited by knowledge, you are limited by imagination.

Go do something amazing and watch what happens to the world as you, not someone, YOU, make this world the place you dream of.

-the real john- (I know eight of spades was the other one, so lets see, 2 of clubs for this, if you know you know)

(no picture, no buttons, no links, no signature, just my content on this one)