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How to Learn AI

· 3 min read
Kam Lasater
Kam Lasater
Builder of things

Several friends have asked me recently how to learn AI. Here's my honest answer: start using it. For anything. And everything.

Todo Today: use ai, use ai, use ai

1. Pay for the best model​

Get a paid subscription on a state-of-the-art model. I'm talking the $100+ tier from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. Use the top tier model available. My recommendation right now is Claude with Cowork. Don't cheap out here — the difference between free and paid tiers is night and day, and this is an investment in yourself.

2. Ask it to do everything​

Ask it to do crazy hard stuff. Ask it to do easy things. Ask it to do anything and everything. You will be surprised at what it can and can't do, and the only way to build that intuition is by throwing everything at it. The more you use it, the faster you develop a sense for what works.

3. Install the desktop app​

Get the desktop app installed and have it do any work you are doing. Make it part of your daily workflow, not a separate thing you go to occasionally. The more integrated it is into how you work, the more you'll learn.

4. Default to AI first​

Default to trying with AI for anything and everything. Before you Google something, before you open Stack Overflow, before you ask a coworker — try AI first. You'll be wrong sometimes about what it can handle, but you'll learn faster this way than any other.

5. Read the output​

Read the output. Read the output. I said it twice on purpose. Don't just copy-paste blindly. Actually read what it gives you. This is where the real learning happens. You start to understand how it thinks, where it's strong, where it hallucinates, and how to work with it better.

6. Retry liberally​

Small realignments and corrections are fine, but if you aren't happy with where a conversation is going, retry the whole conversation. Jump back to a previous message. Don't try to fix a bad trajectory with 10 more messages — start fresh with a better prompt. Your time is more valuable than the AI's.

7. Use dictation​

Turn on dictation and just say everything that is in your head about what you want. Don't worry about structure or clarity. Ask the AI to structure the ask or reform it into the output you want. Speaking is faster than typing, and you'll often communicate more context verbally than you would bother to type out.

8. Let it interview you​

State a goal and tell it to ask you questions to clarify. Have it continuously update a planning doc on your computer. This is an incredibly powerful pattern — you might not know exactly what you want, but you know it when you see it. Let the AI pull it out of you through questions.

9. Use AI to critique AI​

Don't be afraid to take its output and use it as input in a different chat. Have it critique its own work. Find weaknesses. Use one conversation to generate and another to evaluate. This gives you a much more robust result and teaches you to think critically about AI output.

10. Be a monkey at the keyboard​

Try everything. Mash buttons. Experiment wildly. There is no manual for this — the people who are best at using AI are the ones who just tried a ton of stuff and built intuition through sheer volume of experience. You can't break it. Go nuts.