3 Things AI: Issue #3

[2026 - Week 2]

Welcome to Issue #3 of 3 Things AI - a weekly note where I share three practical or interesting ways I used AI this week.

This week, I used AI to help me learn new skills and hobbies (especially useful for “adult onset” interests), I conquered a stubborn PDF, and I tried to do something I’ve never done before - build an app.

My biggest takeaway from this week is that despite the fear, hype and worry that is coming along with AI technology - most of which is reasonable and expected - these tools do provide a lot of agency for everyday people. Maybe you want to start a home cleaning business and need a simple landing page on the web, or your kid wants to make money raking leaves and needs a place for customers to sign up, or you want to learn how to sew clothes for your grandkids - you can use AI tools to guide you through these complex processes so you can actually do the thing you’ve been talking about, and in much less time. They can mentor you, provide tailored instructions, and they don’t get tired or frustrated at all your pesky questions. New tools for a new year!

Have you ever wanted to pick up a new skill or a hobby, but then realize you just don’t know anyone who can teach you the basics? Maybe you want to sew, knit, fish, hunt, or some other new activity. Some people have a grandma or an uncle or someone in their life who can impart their hard-earned wisdom, but many of us don’t. We end up breaking the sewing machine or standing on the side of a lake with no fish but multiple cranky kids. YouTube can teach you a lot, but it’s not very tailored to your circumstances. AI tools like ChatGPT are a real game changer here.

This week I wanted to try ice fishing. 15 years living in Northern Vermont but I have never done it. I got a small kit of gear from a neighbor years ago, so all I needed was directions on where to go and what to do once I got there, and most importantly, why I’m doing these specific steps. It’s this “why” factor that I’m missing in most of my “adult onset” hobbies, that previously only a mentor can teach you. What are the fish doing at this time with this weather? Why would I fish this depth versus that depth? When do I quit and go home?

I prompted ChatGPT with my experience level (none), told it that people were ice fishing on nearby Mallets Bay (so I knew it was safe), a screenshot of the local weather forecast, and asked for a simple guide to my day. It gave me an overview of the possible fish to catch, where to find them under the ice, beginner techniques including safety tips and a targeted plan for the afternoon given the weather conditions. My plans got sidetracked by life so I’ll report back next week on how it went, but at least I have a plan!

Will this ever fully replace learned skills or elder wisdom? Doubtful. But it can be difficult to impossible to find that level of mentorship, so I encourage you to use it and try to learn a new skill or a hobby with your own personalized assistant.

Anyone who works with PDF documents knows this pain. If you want to search a PDF for specific words and/or copy and paste the text so you can quote it or use it in another document (Microsoft Word or Google Doc, etc.), sometimes it works, but often they are locked down or perhaps scanned and impossible to extract. There are lots of tools out there to try and tackle this but using AI may be the quickest and easiest. I run into this problem in my work all the time, but you may run into this at home with legal docs, contracts, estimates, and so on.

I was reviewing a dense PDF document that had been publicly filed by an electric utility with its state commission. It was impossible to copy any of the text or convert the PDF into a Word doc. I only needed two key paragraphs (out of dozens of pages) so I just took a screenshot of the page, loaded it into ChatGPT and asked it for all the text.

Nailed it! It got one word wrong out of ~200, so less than a 1% error. I definitely recommend reviewing these outputs as that can add up if it’s a larger document.

Simple hack but hope it helps!

Ok, this one’s a bit more technical but the crazy thing is I’m not - I have never built a website or an app and I cannot code. I heard about a tool called Replit where you can use natural language prompts (just like we’re using in ChatGPT) to have the tool create a simple but functional website or app.

So just using the free version I told it I wanted to create a site where regular people who needed to buy firewood could request their amounts and types and dates and delivery instructions and then pool those together with other interested buyers in the same general area (e.g., South Burlington). These “wood pools,” organized by preferred date and location, could then be presented to local suppliers who would bid a price, with the idea that a bulk buy would lower the price per cord for all buyers. The best price would be selected and the supplier would then confirm the delivery date and all buyers would get their orders dropped at their locations. Details like payments, and delivery, and stacking etc. are not a concern now as it was just a concept to test.

Result: mind blown. Replit created a site within minutes and then I was able to ask and prompt to fix this or change that until I had a very functional site where users could fill out form requests and the tool would pool the orders. The supplier side is in there but actually making that work would be the next step - but that could manually be done in the short term and just let the app help create a group of buyers.

So this is amazing. You can now create an app or a website with no skills. Are there challenges down the road? Sure, but you can also use AI in the tool plus AI outside the tool as a copilot to solve some or most of those. Great start.

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If you have feedback, questions, or an AI tool you’re enjoying, just reply. I’m always curious what others are using.

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