Issue #1 — Why All The Buzz About AI?

Issue #1  ·  From Gary Russell Why all the buzz about AI?

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Remember when calculators showed up and people worried students would forget how to do math? Then the Internet arrived and nobody could figure out why they'd ever need it. Then Google, and we couldn't imagine life without it.

We survived all of it. We adapted. And quietly, each one made our lives better.

AI is the same story — just on steroids.

Here's the simplest way I've found to think about what makes AI different from everything that came before it. It doesn't just do one thing faster. It does almost everything faster — and it opens doors to things that were never practical or possible before.

The framework

Productivity

Doing existing tasks dramatically faster — researching a trip, drafting an email, comparing Medicare plans, summarizing a long document.

Possibility

Doing things that were previously out of reach — a personalized wellness plan, a financial analysis that once cost $500 at an advisor's office, a playlist of music you've never heard but will love.

Both are real. Both are available right now. Neither requires a computer science degree.

✎  This Week's Tip

Think of one task you do regularly that feels repetitive or time-consuming. Write it down. That's your first AI experiment — we'll tackle it together in a future issue.

That's what this series is about — one idea at a time, no hype, no jargon.

More next week.

— Gary

📚  Want to go deeper? A Deeper Look at AI →  — the full guide, free to download

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