Using AI is all the buzz today and a lot of people would wonder where to start with it all. Common questions would for example be:
- What is it?
- Was it good for?
- How do I start using it?
- And from all the choices of AI websites which website is the best one to use?
Each person would have their own ideas of how to use AI once they have gained experience in using it, but for the beginners here some pointers on how best to start using it to help you with your tasks. Here, I ask AI to help answer those basic questions above and this is what they came back with in brief:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of a machine to imitate human-like cognitive functions such as learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. Most importantly to answer back / respond like a human would.
- It is beneficial for automating tasks, enhancing decision-making processes, and providing insights across various fields like healthcare, finance, and customer service. Not to mention create new ideas and creation results from your ideas.
- To start using AI, you can explore user-friendly tools and platforms, take online courses, and identify specific areas in your work where AI can improve efficiency. All the Free tier AI tools are web based, so just head to their webpage, register for free and start using them. The paid tier ones sometimes have apps installed on your computer like Microsoft Copilot. Expect to pay about £20 per person per month for the paid tier versions.
- Among the numerous AI websites available, platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are often regarded as some of the best.
The above was edited somewhat to make it more relevant and less generic, which is what AI answers tends to be, but AI was at least a great help in starting off the answer (especially good for people having writers’ block moments).
Most people start off using AI to ask it questions and have it reply with concise answers so that we don’t have to scour the web for the answers ourselves. After that, people tend to then explore the creativity side of things by telling AI what to do through typing a description of what they want and then have AI generate the results for them i.e. tell AI what picture they want to generate, and AI comes back with some suggestions of pictures as described by the user. You can now understand why for example graphic designers are worried for their jobs.
The best way to start to make use of AI is for you to dive in and try out some of the free AI tools and websites and see what they can surprise you with. There are paid tiers to choose from also (e.g. Microsoft, google)- expect to pay About £20 per user per month for those.
All the free versions are web based (nothing to install) so just register for free with them and use. All the free versions also have paid tiers.
Here are some suggestions:
For general usage – ie. Answer questions, draft documents, research
ChatGPT (openai.com) free tier one version lower but is at least working with live internet data now.
Google’s Gemini – Gemini (google.com) sometimes inaccurate we find or won’t answer if it “violates their policy”.
Perplexity AI – the one we use the most; it gives even the sources links for cross check against.
Claude AI – good at dealing with long research documents.
For creating images and picture manipulation
For video generation
Note that as AI continues to grow, more specialist AI web tools will become available. Check out these AI tools directories to find the latest one that fits your particular task.
Have fun!
