AI Tuition and Coaching for Personal Use

Why the noise is louder than the risk

There is a great deal of fear about AI, and a fair amount of it is being sold by people who have made their money out of AI. Fear travels further than an explanation does. What gets left out is the plain part: what it is genuinely useful for, what it costs, and what it will not do.

You do not have to take my word for the pattern. Glens in Scotland were flooded to make electricity for the cities, and the lamp lighters went out of work the day the electric light arrived. Both were real losses to real people, and neither one stopped anything. The water came anyway. The lights came on anyway.

You cannot fight progress, and there is no prize for being the last one to it. What you can do is be early, and being early is mostly a matter of somebody sitting down with you and showing you what to try.

It is more than a vending machine

Most people I meet have tried AI once. They asked it a question, got an answer that was either brilliant or nonsense, and stopped there. That is using a workshop as a vending machine.

A vending machine works on a coin: you put a question in, you get a bag of crisps out, and it has forgotten you before you walk away. This is not that. It can hold the whole picture - your bills, your dates, the thing you are trying to sort out - and it keeps it, so the second question is easier than the first. Ask it one question and you get one answer. Show it your situation and it can work through it with you.

That is the thing worth learning, and it is not difficult. It is a habit more than a skill, and it takes an hour with somebody who already has the habit.

What we cover

In one session, or across a few. It depends what you want out of it.

Which tool suits which job

They are not all the same, and they are not all worth money. We go through what each is good at, where it falls down, and which suits the job you actually have. I will tell you plainly which ones I rate and which I would not spend on, and why. Which ones by name is a conversation rather than a line on a page, because the answer moves and the best tool for your job is not always the famous one.

When to pay, and who you are paying

Free is generous now, and plenty of people are paying a monthly subscription for something they could get for nothing. We look at what the money actually buys, when the paid version is the right call, and how to stop paying for what you have stopped using.

Your own money

The household: what comes in, what goes out, the direct debits nobody remembers agreeing to, the energy bill that crept up in the spring. This is what I use it for myself. It is a pile of figures that needs a straight answer, not an evening with a calculator and a bad temper.

Diet and day-to-day wellbeing

Planning meals you will actually cook, keeping track of what you are eating, and keeping a record of how you are doing - how you slept, how you felt, what changed - so a pattern shows up instead of a vague feeling. This is the other one I do myself, and like the money it works as a habit rather than a one-off.

The everyday admin

The letter you have been putting off, the form with three pages of jargon, the appointment that needs making, the trip that needs planning. The small jobs that sit at the back of your head and never quite get done.

Your own documents

A lease, an insurance policy, a set of accounts, a long letter from the council. It will read the whole thing and tell you what matters. You check the parts it pulls out - and you will know which parts to check, because you know your own business.

How it works

One to one, on your own laptop, phone or tablet, at your own table. I come to you - Dingwall and across the Highlands. No jargon, no assumed knowledge, and no faster than you want to go. You drive it; I sit beside you and show you.

It is coaching rather than a course. We start with what you are trying to do - the bills, the letter, the meal plan - and work out from there. No syllabus, and nothing to keep up with.

£25 an hour. There is no package to buy and nothing to sign up to: you book an hour, or a few, and stop when you have what you came for.

If you have tried AI before and given up on it, bring that with you. It is usually one small thing that went wrong, and it is usually fixable in ten minutes.

Who it is for

• People who tried it once and got nonsense back, and have not been near it since.
• Anyone paying monthly for something they are not really using.
• Anyone who would rather be shown than read a manual or watch a video.
• Anyone with a pile of their own admin - bills, forms, paperwork - who would like a hand starting on it.

Book a session

Tell me what you would like to get out of it, and we will take it from there.

Or telephone 07584 625282. Room 3, 20A Tulloch Street, Dingwall, IV15 9JZ.