AI · First steps
How to start using artificial intelligence today
Pick a free assistant, tell it who you are and ask for help with a real task from your week. In 30 minutes you'll know whether AI works for you.
To start using artificial intelligence you don't need a course, an expensive computer or a second language. You need a phone, an email account and a real task that takes up your time today. The best-known assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot) have free versions, understand many languages and respond by text and, in several cases, by voice. The first step is small: open one of them and ask for help with something you'd have to do this week anyway.
People who start by asking "tell me a fun fact" are quickly disappointed. People who start by asking "help me write the message I've been putting off for days" understand right away what it's for.
Why AI is not a chatbot
A chatbot is that customer-service robot that always gives the same answer and tells you to "press 1." Today's AI is a different conversation: it listens to your context, works from your words and gives you back a draft that you correct until it sounds like you.
In Bairo's view, "AI is not a chatbot, but an extension of your consciousness." It isn't a laboratory thesis. It's his way of saying that the tool is worth what you bring to it: your question, your story, your decision.
Step by step today
- Choose one assistant and stick with it for a month. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot work in the browser and have phone apps. All of them ask you to create an account. Which one matters less than learning one well.
- Create the account with your own email and, if you like, turn on two-step verification. Don't use someone else's account.
- Introduce yourself in the first message. The AI doesn't know who you are. Copy and adapt:
Hi. I'm [your name], I'm [age] years old, I work in [what you do]
and I've never used artificial intelligence. I want to learn by using it
on real tasks. Talk to me simply, without technical terms, and ask me
questions when information is missing.
- Bring a real task. It can be writing a difficult note, organizing the month's shopping list, understanding a bill, setting up a study routine. Example:
I need to write a message to [person] about [subject].
I want to be polite but firm. What happened was: [tell it in 3 lines].
Write two short versions, one more formal and one lighter.
- Have a conversation; don't accept the first answer. Say what you didn't like: "shorter," "less formal," "remove that sentence," "explain it as if I were 12." The second and third versions are usually much better.
- Ask the AI to teach you how to use the AI. It sounds obvious, and it works:
Based on what I've told you about my routine, suggest
5 tasks in my week where you could help me.
For each one, write the exact request I should make to you.
- Write down what worked. Keep the requests that worked in a notes app. In two weeks you'll have your own instruction notebook.
- Try voice and camera. Several assistants let you speak instead of typing, and send a photo of a document, a bill or a product. For people who find writing hard, that changes everything.
A simple rule for the first month: one task a day, fifteen minutes. The goal isn't to become an expert. It's for the tool to become a habit.
How Bairo did it
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says he didn't know how to code when he decided to build what he had seen for his own life. A Colombian in Brazil since 2002, he had already tried to bring artificial intelligence into a business years earlier, was told it wouldn't work and gave up. Years later, the technology became a trend.
The second time, he didn't give up. He sat down in front of the computer and spent six months without leaving the house, developing, writing and learning to build with the tools of his own time. Out of those months came the foundation of the platform and the artificial intelligence of CEASA Bank, a financial platform for agribusiness.
No one starts at month six. He also started on day one, one question at a time.
Precautions
Before pasting anything, remember that what you write may be stored: don't include passwords, card numbers, other people's ID numbers or someone else's test results; check in another source every fact, number or law the AI gives you (it makes mistakes with great confidence); don't treat the answer as a medical consultation or legal advice; and be wary when it repeats stereotypes, because it learned from human texts and inherited our biases.