About The Simplest Beginner’s Guide to AI
What this is, and who it’s for
The Simplest Beginner’s Guide to AI is a free Substack for ordinary, non-technical beginners who find AI confusing, overwhelming, or hard to start. It’s the companion to the Kindle book series of the same name. Every post explains one simple, practical idea in plain English, so you can start using AI in everyday life without having to get technical.
If AI has ever felt too hard, too confusing, or just not for you, you’re in the right place.
Maybe you’ve tried ChatGPT, or another tool like it, and got something strange or useless back. Maybe you started a course or a video and quietly gave up. Maybe you’ve begun to wonder whether everyone else gets it and you just don’t.
Why AI feels confusing for beginners
Here’s the part nobody tells you: it wasn’t you. Most AI help is written for people who are already half-comfortable with it. It skips steps. It assumes you know what to ask and how to judge the answer. When you get lost, that’s not a sign you’re slow. It’s a sign the help was built for the wrong person.
So this is built for you.
No jargon. No hype. No steps skipped. The idea is simple enough to hold in your head. You don’t need a clever prompt. You just explain your situation the way you’d explain it to a helpful person. Here’s what’s going on. Here’s the hard part. Here’s what I want. Then you keep talking until it’s useful.
What you’ll get from each post
Each post does one small job, and only one. It might clear up something that’s been worrying you, explain a single idea in plain words, or hand you one sentence you can type the next time you open AI. Nothing overwhelming. Nothing that needs you to already understand it.
Where to start
If you want the fuller path, it’s in the Kindle series of the same name. It starts with the first book, Just Start Talking, and walks you from your very first message all the way to setting AI up so it remembers you. Every post here works on its own, though, whether you’ve read a word of the books or not.
If that sounds like the help you’ve been missing, subscribe and each new post will turn up in your inbox, one simple idea at a time. And if someone you know has quietly given up on AI, this might be worth passing along.
