i feel so outdated. where do i even begin with ai?

i know this old lady who cannot get an office job because she doesn't know how to use a computer. when you tell her to scan a page using a scanner, she doesn't know what you are talking about. it seems that i am slowly turning into her. i think in the future ai won't replace humans but humans will be required to use ai at their job. if you dont know how to use ai you will be considered incompetent just like today if you dont know how to use ms word you are considered incompetent.

i know how to ask chatgpt a question. that's the extent of my ai knowledge. but there are so many tools out there. chatgpt has a lot more features than just text. there is claude. i have been watching a 2 hour training video about claude. within claude there are so many features. claude skills? claude connectors? there is gemini. there is grok. there is other llm tools. i am so overwhelmed. where do i even begin?

I'd say don't panic. Just use the tool that feels the best for you and start implementing it only if it helps you on your work.

Don' worry, even not all are using it for the job purpose. But I can give you start. Rather than going for any course or video start with simple AI tool which you already know like ChatGPT. You know your work and how it is done, just give GPT all the idea and ask how you can optimize your work through GPT. What is the best way to do your work more efficiently? As you already have knowledge about your work then you know if Chatgpt is giving the wrong answer or giving the right ways to do your work in minimum time. Try the methods by ChatGPT in an small scale. Check the output if that is making sense then go for it. Always take a backup of your data just in case output is not upto the mark. Hope you got my point.

I can say from my own perspective. Test test test.
Everything depends on what you want to do with the AI.

The best promt I use in Grok is this:
"Style this image. Modern Style."

I get very good results if I have done some basic things first with Canva and I want to exchange the image more to look better.

Meta AI is good at making images, too.
Of course, there is that watermark, but you can delete that using some websites.

Remember, that you can upload things to the ChatGPT and ask, what this is and analyze it.
I needed last week help for some electric motor and ChatGPT told me what I wanted. I just uploaded the image to the ChatGPT.

Check Google Pomelli AI too, if you have a website or some product you want to have "content"

There is a learning curve with every technology , so you don't have to worry about it .
You don't need to learn AI because everyone is talking about it and it is in hype .

There are Many AI tools and more will come , learning about every tool is impossible
so focus on only the tools that you need to improve your work .

Like i am a website developer and i use chatgpt for content generation , gemini for images generation , lovable for website prototypes , some ai tool to remove the background of images or enhance them .
& i also use ChatGPT for some of my tasks .

don6644 said:

i know this old lady who cannot get an office job because she doesn't know how to use a computer. when you tell her to scan a page using a scanner, she doesn't know what you are talking about. it seems that i am slowly turning into her. i think in the future ai won't replace humans but humans will be required to use ai at their job. if you dont know how to use ai you will be considered incompetent just like today if you dont know how to use ms word you are considered incompetent.

i know how to ask chatgpt a question. that's the extent of my ai knowledge. but there are so many tools out there. chatgpt has a lot more features than just text. there is claude. i have been watching a 2 hour training video about claude. within claude there are so many features. claude skills? claude connectors? there is gemini. there is grok. there is other llm tools. i am so overwhelmed. where do i even begin?

Click to expand...

You could try a Udemy course on AI in order to understand and learn eveything step by step.

AI tools are evolving by the hour these days. In the future, those lacking technological skills or relying solely on manual labor will almost certainly be left behind. You should select three to five tools to assist you—don't be afraid of the changes happening around you. Just focus on making a little bit of progress every day.
For instance, you can use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas, Kling or Gemini to create videos, and Midjourney to generate images...
Keep at it—it’s never too late.

If you know how to ask ChatGPT questions, you're already much further ahead than you think! Don't try to learn every AI tool at once, most of them are just copy/paste tools. You don't need Claude, Gemini, Grok, Midjourney... stick to one and you are good.

Learn its secrets... for example, here are some prompts that you can enter into ChatGPT, which might generate unexpected results for you:
1. be creative
2. think outside the box
3. what would you do in my place?

Test these prompts, as they will give the AI "superpowers", it will give you straightforward answers which are not "boxed" into what many people would think.

So, just pick one tool... ChatGPT is perfectly fine... and use it every day for real tasks. Ask it to help write emails, summarize articles, explain concepts, analyze spreadsheets, brainstorm ideas, review code or whatever is relevant to your work. After a few weeks, you'll naturally discover where it helps and where it falls short. If it lacks something you need, move to another tool and check if it has that missing piece you require, but I think this will not be the case.

I've been working with technology for a long time and one thing I've learned is that you don't need to understand every feature before getting started. Most people using AI productively today are learning by doing, not by watching endless tutorials... Go get your hands dirty with it and you will learn a lot on the way.

See them as toys, and simply explore them at your leisure

honestly the overwhelm comes from trying to learn the tools instead of solving an actual problem. nobody learned word by reading the whole manual, you opened it because you had a letter to type.

pick one thing you do every week that you hate doing. just one. then open chatgpt and make it help with that specific thing until it works. that's it. once that becomes muscle memory you pick the next annoying task.

the skills and connectors and all that claude stuff... ignore it for now. that's like worrying about excel macros before you can make a basic table. you'll get there when you actually need it, and by then it wont feel like a mountain.

and yeah you're not turning into that old lady. the fact you're even asking this puts you way ahead of most people who just pretend they get it.