AI Guide: These 25 Real-World Cases Might Be More Useful Than Paid Courses
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The birth of generative AI amazed the world, but it's also a 'solution' in search of a 'problem,' making us feel itchy, urgent, and anxious, eager to apply it to everything possible.
In this AI gold rush, we've heard too much hype and gimmicks, rarely seeing the technology return to its original purpose in life — it can be inspiring, collaborative, and everyday.
Recently, 'The Information' invited 25 entrepreneurs, company executives, and investors in the AI industry to share how they apply AI in their daily lives. AI can be a tool for co-creation with children, a guide to help them explore their inner selves, or a companion to assist them through life's sudden challenges. More often, AI presents a new alternative to the frustrating experience of Google searches.
We roughly categorize these self-descriptions into several types based on scenarios: tools for co-creation with children, alternatives to Google searches, travel companions, work assistants, creative aids, and helpers for daily chores.
These categories are not precise. Just as life has many facets, the ways a person uses AI are far more diverse than just one. As the original author stated, this "Insider's Guide" aims to "inspire your creativity and provide insights into what the AI funding frenzy and hype have brought us."
The article is quite lengthy, so it's recommended to bookmark it for later reading.
Roy Bahat, Head of venture capital firm Bloomberg Beta I've tried using AI for some small things, like when something breaks at home. You can take a photo and ask ChatGPT what the problem is.
The most recent time I did this was when dealing with a tripped circuit breaker at home. The AI even explained to me that modern circuit breakers don't have fuses inside.
But what I'm most proud of is our spontaneous use of AI at Disneyland. My daughter and I visit Disneyland about once a year. Previously, we'd play mobile games like 'Heads Up!' while waiting in lines, but kids get bored easily. Since my daughter loves solving puzzles, I came up with the idea of using ChatGPT to create a detective story set in Disneyland that invites readers to collect clues from different locations in the park. It generated a story about a murder case that occurred when the park first opened in the 1950s, involving various ghosts.
During queue times, she would read the story and collect clues. To keep the story progressing, I had the AI repeatedly summarize what it had previously said, allowing us to develop the narrative and find all the clues based on that. It could continue generating with memory.
There were some minor issues along the way — it occasionally forgot certain details, requiring me to re-ask questions — but overall it exceeded expectations and was incredibly fun. Jaclyn Rice Nelson, Founder of TribeAI
My six-year-old is obsessed with AI. Since adjusting to kindergarten has been challenging for him, we set up a reward system: "If you can get through the next few days, we'll do something fun over the weekend." His response is always, "Can we use AI?"
We use ChatGPT to read stories we write together in real-time. He can change variables and see how the story develops: he and his friends can become characters, or we can incorporate things we did over the weekend into the story. We have a whole series of stories about "Naughty Oliver," the dog my husband had when he was a child. I think the entire feedback mechanism left him completely stunned. If it weren't for this experience, I wouldn't have engaged in creative writing with my six-year-old child, but it truly allowed us to have our own little writers' room.
His next big reward will be using the speech-to-text feature on my phone. I imagine his little mind will be blown all over again. Of course, once he realizes AI time doesn't have to be tied to a laptop, we'll probably end up using it constantly.
I'm consciously choosing to open a very complex situation, but that's because I know he'll genuinely enjoy it. These tools can actually fuel creativity, which stands in stark contrast to our usual perception of children's relationship with technology being passive and zombie-like. Yashar Behzadi, Founder and CEO of Synthesis AI
Ever since my nine-year-old son became obsessed with Pokémon, he's been using Midjourney and Dall-E to create his own Pokémon characters — thousands of them. Some of them actually look really good, including claymation-style ones.
My seven-year-old daughter has different interests: she loves reading and is more into stories. She interacts with ChatGPT using voice input — the interaction is so natural — and without any prompting from me, she started using it to create 'Build Your Own Interactive Adventure' stories, like those cheap paperback books I had as a kid — for example, if you die, turn to page 57; if you survive, turn to page 68. She would write a story outline for ChatGPT and then ask, 'Can you provide a few options for what happens next?' It would offer suggestions, and she would respond, 'OK, I think he would do that—or I think she would do this.' Then she could introduce a dragon or anything else to alter the story. Through this collaborative method, a complete story is constructed.
Tomasz Tunguz, Partner at Theory Ventures
One of the best uses of AI is as an infinitely patient teacher, adaptable to students of different ages and learning styles. The learning curve for children is almost zero—they can start using it immediately. I've seen people directly using ChatGPT and Bard as personal tutors. They seem to work best for learning math. You can say, "ChatGPT, pretend you're a third-grade teacher"—you can assign it a role, and it will adopt that persona—"Teach me multiplication. Give me 10 problems." It can grade your answers, and you can ask, "Where am I weakest?" Then it will give you 5 more problems based on that weakness.
It's great for teaching math, but I wouldn't trust AI for every subject—it still has hallucination issues, like telling you George Washington was the fourth U.S. president. I do trust Bard a bit more on such matters because it has that little verification button.
Michael Lam, Co-founder and CEO of Studdy My mother has seven sisters, and they do quarrel. Last year it really ruined Christmas — the aunts split into two factions and basically refused to celebrate together. This meant that we cousins didn't get to celebrate or see each other during the holidays.
I tried to break the silence and tension in the family WhatsApp group by sending a picture I generated with Dall-E. It showed six very happy Chinese aunties holding hands, with a beaming Chinese Santa Claus floating above them — I gave Santa an Asian face just for fun.
This got people replying in the group. I think some aunts who aren't very familiar with AI thought I had somehow magically created this photo or specially commissioned someone to make it. They didn't realize it was AI-generated. They might think I found it on Google. But then again, where on Google would you find a photo of an Asian Santa Claus smiling as he descends from the sky?
Martin Peers, New York Bureau Chief of The Information
You'd think we have enough places to find recipes — cookbooks, websites, the amazing New York Times cooking app — that AI-based chatbots couldn't compare. But that's not the case. Some of my favorite cooking recipes aren't easy to find. Take Rendang beef as an example, which is a spicy Malaysian dish. The recipe I found online was good, but the interface had too many ads, making it unreadable.
So I decided to try Google Bard, now renamed Gemini, and asked it: "So you have a recipe for Rendang beef." Yes, I made a typo — I meant to say "Do you have...?" but I found that Google Gemini could still understand.
It provided me with two versions of the recipe: one using "homemade spicy sauce" and another using pre-made curry paste. As a snob who avoids any pre-made products, I naturally chose the first one. Although I was missing a key ingredient from the online recipe, the final result turned out to be excellent! Even better, when I asked it to recommend good side dishes, it found several options for me, including a stir-fried vegetable dish. Amazingly, I happened to have all the necessary ingredients, including shrimp paste which we rarely use.
The dish turned out to be as excellent as rendang beef, though with one side effect - our home smelled like shrimp paste for the next few days (that's just how it is). But it was totally worth it.
Sofiia Shvets, Co-founder & CEO of Claid.ai I'm trying to eat less unhealthy food. That's my goal for this year. Searching for recipes on Google is a nightmare. You have to scroll through endless pages, often reaching the fifth page just to find a recipe, all while being bombarded with display ads — it's terrible.
Now, half of my searches on ChatGPT are related to recipes and food. When I'm cooking, I often struggle with how to use random leftover ingredients — like chicken, noodles, and tomatoes. What can I make with these? So I ask ChatGPT to create a recipe based on these ingredients. If I'm missing something, I can ask, "Can I substitute this for that?"
It has truly expanded my culinary horizons: I'm from Ukraine, but I love Asian cuisine, even though I don't have much experience cooking it. My understanding of sauces has definitely improved — for example, combining sesame oil, brown sugar, and soy sauce creates an incredibly delicious flavor. Alessio Fanelli, Partner at Decibel Partners & Sarah Castillo, former Group Business Lead at Staffbase
Not long ago, we moved from San Francisco to Redwood City, California, and have been renovating our house.
Now, we could spend time watching YouTube videos to figure out how to do things, but you know, that means watching the entire video. And you can't have a contextual conversation with a video—asking follow-up questions—unlike chatting with a chatbot. "How do you plan a garden bed?" and "Can I use gravel instead of a garden bed?" or "Is the gravel I have enough to lay a path in my garden?" Or, when we wanted to install a recessed medicine cabinet in the bathroom and the hole we made was a bit too large, ChatGPT suggested we "use wood shims, foam support rods, or even small wooden blocks to fill the gaps." Of course, we didn’t know how to install support rods either, so that required further clarification.
You could try searching for this kind of information on Google, but the advice you find—if it exists at all—is usually buried under piles of irrelevant text, much like recipe websites where you have to scroll through 13 paragraphs before finding anything useful.
Margaret Jennings, Product Lead at Mistral AI This month, moving to Paris for a new job left me emotionally drained, and I didn't have any friends with similar experiences to advise me. Having a large language model guide me through this process turned out to be an unexpectedly comforting relief.
It created a timeline for me, detailing what to do during the months, weeks, and days leading up to the move. Some tasks were purely logistical: it suggested what types of boxes to use for packing, which documents I should keep handy, and how to change my phone plan.
There were also more personal elements, like reminding me to bring souvenirs that would remind me of home. I even asked it where in Paris I should move based on my personal profile and past living history - and I ultimately followed its recommendation. It feels like talking to an expert, one who won't judge me for asking silly questions.
Will Manidis, Founder of ScienceIO
It's hard for me to meet up with my best friend from college, so every four years we make a point to do something quirky together. This time, we decided to take a road trip, driving from Florida to Texas over a weekend. Google wasn't much help in this matter. After all, no one has ever written "Goop Guide: Florida Panhandle," right? Strangely enough, ChatGPT handled this task perfectly. (Note: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop once launched a city travel guide app called "Goop City Guides").
Our prompt was: "Plan a three-day road trip from Houston to Pensacola, Florida, with special attention to swamps, the first season of True Detective, and other mysterious oddities. Make the itinerary unpleasant."
It meticulously planned a scenic driving route with suggested stops. We visited the Tabasco sauce factory ourselves – it was unbelievably empty. We went to Gulfport, Mississippi and Shreveport, Louisiana. We stopped in Belmont, Texas and spent some time in Lafayette, Louisiana. It found us many burned-down churches that were apparently True Detective filming locations. I previously thought about discovering the secrets of the American soul, and we have indeed achieved that goal.
CeCe Cheng, Founder and CEO of mental health platform ShareWell
I recently used ChatGPT to plan my trip to India. I landed in Delhi and then had to travel to Jaipur four days later to attend a friend's wedding. I had three free days in Rajasthan and wanted to see as many attractions as possible. The cities are quite far apart, so I needed to use my time most efficiently. ChatGPT suggested I drive through Jodhpur and Pushkar on my way to Jaipur. I was already interested in Jodhpur but hadn't heard much about Pushkar. Little did I know, it's actually a very famous pilgrimage site. While I could have discovered this place through my own research, it felt great to get the answer with just a simple question.
Esther Dyson, investor and founder of the nonprofit Wellville
As an investor, I constantly meet new people and look for ways to learn about their backgrounds before meeting them. I input prompts to AI, asking it to write a very short biography of someone I'm about to meet, preferably including family background if possible. I always want to know: What do your parents do? Where did you grow up? Because everyone's understanding of 'normal' is different. Knowing how someone perceives 'normal' is extremely useful.
What I mean is, my father's boss was Robert Oppenheimer. Not everyone has that kind of experience. Google isn't very useful for this task - if I use Google Search to look up someone's introduction, I get 18 website links rather than a typically somewhat coherent brief biography.
Justin Fineberg, Founder and CEO of Cassidy Being an entrepreneur is hard. Recently, I've started using AI as a personal therapist and career coach, especially when facing specific challenges at work—I'm somewhat of a workaholic. What I particularly like about using AI is that unlike with human therapists, I can ramble randomly and throw out disjointed thoughts without consequence.
Every morning when I arrive at the office, I typically start by chatting with ChatGPT or Inflection's Pi about my daily tasks, priorities, and challenges. Then I ask the chatbot to summarize my workload, helping me organize my thoughts at the start of the day. This practice has genuinely helped me feel more confident when beginning my workday.
Joanne Jang, Product Lead for Model Behavior at OpenAI When I'm dealing with a task I've been procrastinating on — the kind I really don't want to do — I like to go to my car, turn on ChatGPT's voice input mode, and discuss and brainstorm with it about what I need to write.
For example, when trying to write a job description for a position I need to fill. If I tell ChatGPT about it, it will give me prompts like "Tell me about your team." I'll start chatting casually, then circle back to have it consider specific factors.
After we've thoroughly discussed everything, I'll ask it to summarize our conversation, and that already provides a great starting point for writing the job description. All I have to do is drive and answer questions, approaching the task in a different way than I would normally find difficult. During my travels, I found it incredibly useful to upload non-English menus or supermarket signs for translation. This was particularly helpful during my trip to Greece last October, where English menus weren't always available.
On a more personal note, I recently got engaged and needed to hire a wedding planner. I received a contract from one planner in PDF format and uploaded it to ChatGPT for analysis, as I was completely unfamiliar with such documents.
I explained to ChatGPT that this was a wedding planner's contract and asked: 'Can you break this down into simpler parts? Are there any points I should pay special attention to? Does anything seem unusual about this contract?' The response was extremely helpful. It suggested negotiation points, provided recommendations for clarifying payment schedules, and advised me to consider adding a force majeure clause — just in case something unexpected happens. I find models truly marvelous—not just our own, but all existing ones. I'm glad we're not the only players in this field. Many are creating solutions for specific purposes, even in Mexico. I joked with my fiancée that if we delayed our wedding plans, we might not need a wedding planner or ChatGPT to analyze contracts—we could have a dedicated AI wedding planner.
Stefan Weitz, former Senior Director of Search at Microsoft
I started by feeding ChatGPT 30 to 40 of my own articles or interviews. I instructed it: 'This is me—please understand and mimic my voice.' Now, I use it for everything—literally everything. Whether it's articles, blog posts, or letters to avoid fines, I let ChatGPT do the writing, and the results are usually about 97% accurate. I just need to tweak a few words here and there before it's ready to use.
Another way I use ChatGPT is for preparing proposals. Once, I needed to pitch a collaboration idea to a prominent figure in the tech industry. This person is quite well-known, and the large language model helped me understand them—their motivations, what they care about, and their past achievements.
That was a wonderful few hours of back-and-forth dialogue with the large language model, and it undoubtedly made my proposal much more compelling. Rachel Weissman, Co-founder and CEO of Potential AI
I studied art in college, and even now I still use charcoal to draw in my free time. I enjoy practicing abstract expressionism — I visualize shapes, let them settle within me, and allow what needs to emerge to surface. Sometimes I feel I don’t fully understand my own work. So I take photos, upload them to ChatGPT, and let it analyze them.
Before that, I would often ask my friends, "What do you think this means?" Using AI for analysis is somewhat like combining art critique with art therapy. It essentially tells me what it thinks my artwork signifies, and I see it as an expression of my existence. This is a profound and wild experience. For instance, it helped me realize that one of my paintings, where my eyes are beneath a bird, actually represents my fear of being judged. A significant part of my core dialogue with AI revolves around using it to foster broader human understanding and discovery.
Sarah Nagy, co-founder and CEO of SeekAI
I'm the typical nerd who loves progressive rock, and I adore Steve Howe, the guitarist of the band Yes. One of my favorite guitar solos is his performance in the song "Starship Trooper." I play guitar and wanted to challenge myself. One day, on a whim, I asked, "Can ChatGPT write a guitar solo?" So I had it generate a guitar solo in G-sharp major, in the style of Yes's lead guitarist. It immediately produced the sheet music, and it was actually a pretty cool guitar solo. I thought it was completely original, but who knows? Maybe it just plagiarized a Katy Perry song that I hadn't heard before.
John Luttig, Partner at Founder's Fund
I wrote my wedding vows in the form of a poem and used ChatGPT to solve some half-rhyme issues that had stumped me—though I probably shouldn't share that publicly; it was a relatively personal passage. I promised my wife that I would only use AI to polish the poem and that I would definitely put in the loving effort to write it nearly to completion myself. Arpan Shah, Partner at Pear VC
For a long time, I've been asking my mother in India to share some recipes with me—dishes she used to make at home and the ones she prepares when I visit. She has always been hesitant—she isn’t very comfortable writing in English.
So the next time I go home, I plan to have her write everything down. My idea is to take photos and then use AI to translate them. I’ve already tested it with some Hindi text. If I can only get one recipe, it would probably be her Gujarati bread—the spices are crucial for this flatbread. You need to know the exact recipe. Saumil Patel, Co-founder of EchoLayer
My wife and I both enjoy playing board games, but sometimes we're not entirely sure about the exact rules – modern board games can be incredibly complex! Recently, we encountered this situation while playing Spirit Island, which is one of the most complicated games I've ever played. With expansions included, a full game session can take 4-6 hours to complete.
During our game nights, whenever we're uncertain about a specific rule or game setup, we simply take photos of the relevant board game components and ask ChatGPT whether we're playing correctly or how we should proceed with the game. I know people don't usually associate AI with board games—given that board games are typically meant to take you away from technology—but it really works, even though none of us won Spirit Island when we first started playing. The game won—we were rookies—and the island was overrun by invaders.
Peter Hunt, CEO of Dagster
When I moved from San Francisco to the suburbs of Boston in 2022, I wanted to quickly understand how this new place operated: Were taxes going up or down? What was the deal with new real estate projects? What did the school board here actually do? You often hear people say local newspapers are dead, and I realized this is actually true where I live. In a suburban area with millions of people, there's only one newspaper. Due to the pandemic, city council discussions moved to Zoom, with recordings uploaded to YouTube. I started experimenting with an app using the OpenAI API—back when it was just GPT-3—to process all meeting transcripts, summarizing voting results and key debate points.
It turned out to be quite useful. At one point, I noticed trees in the neighborhood being marked with "x" symbols and didn't know why. After checking the summaries, I discovered those trees were scheduled for removal. This way, I could stay updated on developments while avoiding the lengthy bureaucratic process.
Evan Buhler, Generative Counsel Lawyer A few years ago during a flight around Lunar New Year, I had a conversation with my seatmate about Chinese zodiac signs. Being born in the Year of the Rooster, we discussed how zodiac signs, much like Western astrology, can reflect certain personality traits.
Recently on a whim, I crafted prompts to make AI adopt the characteristics associated with my zodiac sign - being detail-oriented, organized, persuasive, and observant - to serve as my 'inner voice', conscience, and provide me with insights on various matters.
I particularly enjoy hearing its perspective on minor or moderate frustrations in my life. It offers fresh angles - similar to discussing dating situations with friends. Of course, you wouldn't actually quit your job just because your zodiac persona suggests it. Elad Gil, Investor
I use AI at home in several ways. I use it to create new artworks with my children — new Pokémon characters. I've tried using it to investigate family diseases and to get music recommendations.
I've found it particularly useful for gardening advice: when to plant what, and what spots on plant leaves mean. Last fall, it was really helpful when I was planting peas and broccoli. Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mighty Networks
I asked ChatGPT to list 100 different types of professional fitness companies. It showed me how many successful professional fitness companies and chain brands are out there, with products and services that have strong ambassador programs. My reaction was, 'This is amazing.'
ChatGPT is like a goldmine, revealing how vast a market can be. Now, I have a list of fitness programs to try when I visit different cities. Michelle Fang, Headline Venture Scout
In Asian countries, there's a popular trend called personal color analysis. It analyzes your skin tone, hair color, and eye color to ensure they harmonize well with your clothing and makeup. Of course, this is unique to each individual, so you can find many consulting services that offer this for a few hundred dollars. I'm not particularly fond of that approach.
I took a photo of myself, used a free online tool to find the hex color code matching my skin tone, and then asked ChatGPT, "Hello, here's the hex color code of my skin; do you know what color scheme would suit me best?" I also included my hair and eye colors. It told me I belong to the Autumn color palette — warm, earthy tones — and provided me with color suggestions for clothing and makeup. In terms of clothing, its suggestions are very specific, such as terracotta, burnt orange, olive green, and mustard yellow. For cosmetics, it recommends using earthy-toned blushes and nail polishes, rich lip colors, and bronzer and gold highlights.
It's like having a personal stylist available anytime, and unlike services that cost hundreds of dollars and are only available for a few hours, I can continuously receive ChatGPT's advice. I was previously struggling with whether to buy a new bag, and I could directly ask ChatGPT, 'Does the color of this bag suit my skin tone?'