🧩 What would I even use AI for?

In 1968 a chemist at 3M named Spencer Silver set out to invent a very strong adhesive. What he got was the opposite, a weak, sticky adhesive that held paper and then peeled off clean. By every target he'd set, he'd failed.

He spent five years showing it to anyone at 3M who'd look. People started calling it his solution without a problem.

By the end of this you'll:

What finally cracked Silver's glue open wasn't a better sales pitch. It was a colleague named Art Fry, who kept losing his place in his hymnal at choir practice. He had a small, specific, personal annoyance. He remembered the glue. Post-it Notes.

The invention had existed for years. What was missing was somebody with the right problem.

ChatGPT is in that stage for a lot of people right now. You've probably been shown what it can do, write a poem, plan a trip, summarize an article. And you thought: that's clever, and I don't need any of it.

That's not you failing to get AI. That's a hymnal problem. Nobody has matched it to the thing that actually annoys you yet.

When people say prompt, all they mean is what you type in. It's a request, in ordinary sentences. There's no special wording and nothing to memorize.

Here's the same request, shaped three ways. Read them and notice which one makes you sit up.

If you deal with letters you don't fully follow:
"Here's a letter from my insurance company. Explain what it's actually asking me to do, in plain English, and tell me if there's a deadline."

If you write things and get stuck at the start:
"I want to write a note to my neighbor about the fence. I'm annoyed but I don't want to be rude. Give me three openings, from gentle to direct."

If you research before you buy:
"I'm looking at two hearing aid brands. List what people actually complain about with each, and tell me what you're not sure about."

Same tool, three different lives. → Pick the one closest to yours, swap my details for your real ones, and send it. That's the whole of it.

The swapping is the part that matters. Change the insurance company to your own, the fence to whatever you're actually writing about, the hearing aids to the thing you're actually weighing up. A request shaped to somebody else's life gives you an answer shaped to somebody else's life.

One thing worth knowing: ChatGPT will answer confidently even when it's wrong. It's more like a keen assistant than a reference book. So use it where you can check the answer easily, and for anything involving money, health, or a legal deadline, treat what it says as a starting point and confirm it with the actual source.

Pew Research found that about four in ten adults aged 50 to 64 now use chatbots, and fewer still at 65 and over, with use climbing in every age group they measured since 2023. So it's neither "everyone but you," nor a young person's toy.

More telling is what people say they want it for. When AARP asked adults over 50 which AI features appealed to them, the ones that came out on top were practical: translation at 74 percent, safety monitoring at 71 percent, and learning a new skill at 67 percent. People aren't drawn to it in the abstract. They're drawn to the bit that solves something real for them.

Try one shaped to your life and you'll likely get one useful answer and one that misses. That's a normal result, and it tells you more about where this thing helps you than a month of reading would.

Skip it and nothing's lost. The tool will still be there. It just stays somebody else's glue a while longer.

Try Factor, America's #1 ready-to-eat meal delivery service.

Made from ingredients you recognize. Whole food. Nothing unnecessary. Let’s eat real.

Get 50% off your first Factor box + Free Breakfast for a year *1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year while subscription active.

Try Factor Now

This is how I support this newsletter.

If the request above didn't land, or you'd rather get your bearings first, my AI Confidence Checklist is a free download. Nothing to buy, yours to keep.

This is one of my free guides. There is nothing to buy, and it is yours to download and keep.

Talk soon,
Bob

A short story from my place, about the dog who gets me out the door every morning at 78 – no sales in it.