What is AI for? Advantages and list of things AI can do for us that are useful

by Stélio Inácio, Founder at Jon AI and AI Specialist

What is AI For? A Tool for Your Mind

Like we said before, AI is a tool. This is perhaps the most important concept to grasp. Throughout human history, we have invented tools to offload physical labor and overcome our physical limitations. When we wanted to move a heavy rock, we invented the lever. When we wanted to travel faster than our legs could carry us, we invented the wheel, and eventually, the car and the airplane.

AI is a new kind of tool, but it follows the exact same principle. The only difference is that it's designed to offload intellectual labor. It's a tool to augment and accelerate our thinking.

Instead of spending 20 minutes of your own mental energy trying to think of clever names for your new flower shop, you can ask an AI. In seconds, it can act as your personal brainstormer, giving you 15 creative names and even explaining the reasoning behind each one ("'Petal & Post' suggests a delivery service, while 'The Urban Stem' sounds modern and chic"). You're not replacing your intelligence, but you are outsourcing a specific mental task to a specialized tool to get a first draft, to get unstuck, to save time.

The Advantages of Using an "Intelligence Tool"

Using AI as a mental tool gives us several powerful advantages:

Incredible Speed: AI can read, summarize, or generate text at a speed that is simply impossible for a human. It can draft an email or a report in seconds, not minutes or hours.
Defeating the "Blank Page": We all know the feeling of staring at a blank screen, not knowing where to start. AI is the ultimate cure for writer's block. It can provide a first draft, an outline, or a list of ideas that you can then shape and refine.
Massive Scale: A human can analyze a few dozen customer reviews to find common themes. An AI can analyze ten thousand reviews in the time it takes you to read one, and tell you that 15% of customers complain about the "difficult setup process."
Personalization: AI can act as a personal tutor that explains quantum physics in a way a 10-year-old can understand, and then immediately re-explain it for a college student. It tailors its output to your specific needs.

What Kind of "Thinking" Can We Offload to AI?

So, what are some of the practical, everyday mental tasks we can hand over to AI? The list is growing constantly, but here are some of the most common and useful things AI can do for you right now:

Creativity & Content Creation

Brainstorming: Generate ideas for anything - business names, party themes, gift ideas, plot points for a story.
Composing Text: Write a first draft of an email, a cover letter, a blog post, a social media caption, or a thank you note.
Rewriting & Rephrasing: Take a clumsy paragraph you wrote and make it more professional, more casual, or shorter.
Creative Writing: Co-write a poem, song lyrics, a short story, or a script.

Summarization & Learning

Summarizing: Read a long, dense article, a scientific paper, or a business report and give you the key bullet points.
Explaining Complex Topics: Act as a personal tutor by explaining concepts like "black holes" or "blockchain" in simple terms.
Language Translation: Instantly translate text from one language to another with remarkable accuracy.

Planning & Organization

Creating Itineraries: Plan a detailed 7-day vacation to Italy, complete with restaurant suggestions and travel times.
Making Plans: Create a personalized workout routine, a weekly meal plan based on your dietary needs, or a study schedule for an exam.
Organizing Ideas: Take your messy brainstormed notes and structure them into a coherent outline for a presentation or project.

Quick Check

Based on the lesson, what is the primary purpose of AI as a tool?

A) To replace human creativity and make all decisions for us.

B) To offload and accelerate intellectual tasks, much like how cars offload physical travel.

C) To prove that machines can be more intelligent than humans in every way.

Recap: What is AI for?

What we covered:

AI is fundamentally a tool for our minds, just as engines are tools for our bodies.
Its main purpose is to offload, assist with, and accelerate intellectual work.
Key advantages include speed, scale, overcoming creative blocks, and personalization.
We reviewed a long list of tasks AI can help with, from brainstorming and writing to planning and learning.

Why it matters:

Viewing AI as a "thought partner" or an "intellectual lever" removes the fear and mystery. It allows us to see it as a powerful utility that can make our lives easier and more productive, rather than a strange, alien intelligence.

Next up:

A good tool is used for the right job. A hammer is great for nails, but terrible for washing windows. In the next lesson, we'll discuss the other side of the coin: When not to use AI.

Jon AI Services