Six months of teaching myself AI

• I don’t write code. Since April 2026 I have learned AI by picking a real question each month and trying it myself, mostly with free tools.
• I check claims before I repeat them, including claims from AI.
• Some things didn’t work, and two are still unfinished. They are on this page too.

Run a small business? The for a business lines are for you, and there’s a first-month plan at the end.

• Apr 2026
  the starting point

  Which laptop do I need to learn this?

  tried

  Bought one, tested it with my real work for three days, and returned it for a bigger one.

  learned

  Measure with your own work before you trust any estimate, AI’s included.

  for a business

  Buy inside the return window and test before you commit. The full story: the test that overruled AI.

• May
  private answers

  Can my own notes answer questions with no internet?

  tried

  Loaded my notes into a free app that runs a small AI model on the laptop, with nothing sent online.

  learned

  Simple lookups worked. Questions that joined two facts got confident, wrong answers.

  for a business

  A cheap chatbot over your company files can sound right and be wrong. Test it on questions you already know the answer to.

• Jun
  build it smaller

  Can I make a simpler version myself?

  tried

  With AI’s help, built a small offline tool: it finds the five most relevant notes, then asks a mid-size model to answer from them only.

  learned

  Good enough for “what did we agree?” questions. The answer is only as good as the notes it finds.

  for a business

  Tidy, well-named documents matter more than the AI on top of them.

• Jun
  check the claim

  Can a laptop really run a 200-billion-parameter model?

  tried

  A post going round said yes, and listed even bigger models. I checked each claim against real download sizes.

  learned

  Half true. One model of that size fits, squeezed hard. The bigger ones in the post don’t fit at all.

  for a business

  Viral AI claims are often partly right. Ask which part, before you spend money on it.

• Jul
  what stays private

  Which work should never leave my laptop?

  tried

  Set up one app that can switch between online AI models and models running on my own machine.

  learned

  My rule now: general thinking goes to online models, which are better at it. Anything with names, figures or confidential details goes to the model on my laptop.

  for a business

  You don’t have to choose between useful AI and data protection. Split the work by how sensitive it is.

• Aug
  free alternatives

  Is there a free, private version of the tools I pay for?

  tried

  Installed an open-source alternative to Google’s NotebookLM and pointed it at models on my laptop. Also a free tool that turns web pages and documents into clean text for AI.

  learned

  It works, with more setup than the paid version.

  for a business

  Free and private is possible. Budget time for setup, or someone who can do it.

• Oct
  new skills

  Can I make music, pictures and 3D?

  tried

  Had AI write music as a score that free instrument sounds play. Drafted songs with ACE-Step, a singing model that runs on the laptop. Made painted stills for Light Left On with ComfyUI, about half a minute each. Installed Blender and connected it to Claude, to start learning 3D. Tried Fish Audio, an online tool, for AI voices.

  learned

  Local tools are good for drafts. For the finished song I still use an online tool, because it sings with more feeling.

  for a business

  Draft in-house for free, and pay only for the final version you put in front of customers.

  

  My Fish Audio test: a 60-second feedback role play using SBI (Situation, Behaviour, Impact). Fictional script; AI-generated voices.

  How I picked the voices: testing AI voices →

• since May

  An AI assistant I message from my phone

  I wrote a step-by-step plan to run one safely in a sealed box on the laptop. I haven’t finished the build.

• since Jun

  Actually running the 200-billion-parameter model

  I worked out that it should fit. I haven’t run it yet, so I don’t claim it works.

• next

  Same question, three ways

  One question put to a model on my laptop, an online model and a small model on an ordinary laptop, with the answers side by side. Most learners and small businesses use ordinary laptops, so that is the comparison that matters.

• start from a real question

  Not “learn AI”, but “can my notes answer this without the internet?”

• try the free version first

  Most of the tools here are free. I pay when a free tool falls short.

• check, don’t trust

  Posts, sales pitches and AI answers get the same question: does it hold up when I try it?

• write it down

  Every attempt gets a short note: what I tried, what happened, what I would do next. That is where this page came from.

• say what didn’t work

  The wrong answers and unfinished builds taught me as much as the ones that worked.

More learning in public: choosing the laptop and a year of hi-fi decisions. The same habit with cameras: I learn by trying things. The tools I use and am trying: toolkit.

You don’t need a powerful laptop or any coding to start. What carries over is the method: one real question at a time, free tools first, check the answers, write down what happened. Here is a first month done the same way.

• 1 · pick one task

  Start from a weekly annoyance

  Replying to quotation requests, writing a job ad, summarising a supplier contract. One real task, not “learn AI”.

• 2 · sort your information

  Two piles, before you type anything

  Safe to share: public information and general questions. Never goes in: customer names, prices, payroll, NRIC numbers, anything under NDA. Use only the safe pile for the first month.

  Someone senior in the company should know the PDPA well and keep that knowledge up to date. Every organisation is already required to appoint a Data Protection Officer. A one-day course like PDPA for Everyone is a practical place to start. For whoever holds the DPO job, the three-day Practitioner Certificate in Personal Data Protection goes further, into the day-to-day work of protecting data.

• 3 · try it free

  One well-known assistant, two weeks

  Use the free version on that one task only. Don’t buy anything yet.

• 4 · test it

  Five questions you already know

  Ask it five things you know the answer to and count the wrong answers. That number tells you how far to trust it.

• 5 · write it down

  A one-page log

  What you asked, what came back, time saved, mistakes. Ten lines a week is enough.

• 6 · decide

  Keep, pay or drop

  At the end of the month, decide. Pay only when the free version falls short, and use trials you can cancel.

• 7 · next task

  Then pick the next one

  When a task needs the private pile, look at business plans that protect your data, or a model that runs on your own computer. That is the point to get help setting it up.

Two more things. Ask your staff first: some of them are probably using AI already and know where it helps. And expect some failures. Write them down; they show you the limits faster than the successes do.