It would be to really understand how AI works—and figure out how to use it more in my daily life.

Blog Post Draft – Writing Prompt: What New Skill Would You Like to Learn?

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If I had to pick one new skill I want to learn right now, it would be to really understand how AI works—and figure out how to use it more in my daily life. I don’t mean just typing a question into a box and seeing an answer. I want to understand what’s happening behind the scenes, why it responds the way it does, and how I can use it thoughtfully.

I’m still learning, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far. AI, or artificial intelligence, is like a robot brain that learns by noticing patterns, but it doesn’t “know” anything the way we do. I think of my own brain as a huge library. Every time I learn something, I add a new book. AI has its own massive library, but instead of reading like a human, it’s taught to study millions of examples, looking for patterns rather than memorizing every word.

How does it learn? From what I understand, AI is trained through a process that’s a lot like learning by trial and error, only on a massive scale. It’s fed enormous amounts of information—books, articles, websites, pictures, you name it. But it doesn’t read like we do. It breaks that information into pieces it can understand, turning words and images into patterns it can work with. Then it makes guesses, checks if those guesses match what it has learned, and adjusts when it’s wrong. It repeats this millions or billions of times, gradually recognizing patterns and “learning to read” well enough to answer questions or make predictions. I still don’t fully understand all the math behind it, but it’s incredible to see the results.

When you ask AI a question, like, “What should I do if a black bear approaches me in the forest?” it doesn’t go back to all the original sources. It searches the patterns it has already learned, identifies the subject, the setting, and the action, and pulls together the patterns that match best. It’s like a super-fast librarian flipping through millions of books and grabbing the right pages instantly. In the bear example, it combines what it knows about black bears, human safety, and wilderness behavior to produce advice like: stay calm, don’t run, speak softly, back away slowly, and only use bear spray if necessary. It pieces together the answer from patterns it has studied rather than any one source.

One of the things I’ve found most useful is how AI has helped me as an art collector. I love collecting 19th century and early 20th century American oil paintings from listed artists. In the past, I had to rely on years of experience, dozens of reference guides, and appraisers to identify artists and value pieces. Now, all I have to do is upload a picture of the painting along with shots of the signature, texture, and style. AI can usually identify the artist and give an approximate appraisal value, which is a huge help. Over the last year, I’ve been able to find 23 valuable paintings on internet sales sites like eBay from sellers who didn’t know the artist or couldn’t even make out the signatures. It’s amazing to see what I can discover this way, and it has completely changed how I approach collecting.

It’s incredible how fast AI can do this. The electricity in the computer circuits moves close to the speed of light, but that’s only part of it. The real speed comes from trillions of tiny switches—transistors—turning on and off almost instantly, like a supercharged assembly line flipping billions of switches a second. That’s what lets AI generate answers in what feels like the blink of an eye.

I’ve also learned that AI doesn’t really think like we do, and it sometimes makes mistakes. People call these “hallucinations.” This happens when it tries to fill in gaps where it doesn’t have enough patterns or the training data was confusing. It’s a reminder that AI is smart, but it’s not perfect, and I still need to use my own judgment.

Even with what I’ve learned so far, I can see how AI could help me in life beyond art collecting—organizing daily habits, improving writing, or researching other interests more efficiently. Understanding how it’s taught and how it finds patterns makes me more thoughtful about how I use it. I’m far from an expert, but every day I pick up something new, and it feels like discovering a skill that grows with me, helping me see things differently and work smarter, not harder.

Learning AI isn’t just about programming. It’s about understanding patterns, predictions, and how information is processed. It’s like learning a new language—except the language is math and logic—and the more fluent I become, the more I can use it as a partner to think with, research with, and explore the world with. I don’t know it all yet, but every small insight feels like a step forward, and I’m excited to see where this learning takes me.