📚 What AI Actually Is - And What It Isn't 🤓 Post 1 of a 20 Post series

This post is not about ICM, it's about learning the AI systems you are using in the ICM space.

If you are new to ICM and you are looking to learn the structure and how to apply it, please see the posts below: (They will serve you well)

1️⃣Jakes Van Clief's Welcome: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/welcome-to-clief-notes-heres-where-to-start-2?p=f8f85a09

2️⃣Mira Bradsaw's collection of getting started: https://www.skool.com/cliefnotes/clief-notes-gems-for-starting-in-icm?p=0385cbf9

|---------------------------------Let's Begin---------------------------------------| 👇

📝Note: This post is not for people already working in the space, it's not for people who understand AI, it's for the people who are sitting in silence, watching the rest of us do those things.

🚦So, let's get started with real talk about what AI is here.

A lot of smart people are quietly carrying around one perceived embarrassing question, what actually IS this "AI" thing everyone keeps talking about?

If that is you, drop the embarrassment right now. You are not behind; we are all on the frontier of this thing called AI.

The word AI has been stretched to mean everything and nothing, and there are many reasons for it, I will name the three reasons I see that create the most fog:

1️⃣People rushing to break into AI before they get it.

2️⃣People holding one piece of the puzzle like it is the whole thing, then screaming "I'm right!".

3️⃣People who just want to sell you something.

If you notice a pattern, so did I and it's not the AI, it's the people pushing it!

None of them are trying to make YOU capable. And that is why I love

@Jake Van Clief

and his team for creating a community which actually is!

Today I start a journey to help remove the fog. 👇

The one-sentence version: AI is software that "LEARNED" to spot patterns from a huge pile of examples and uses them to make a good guess about something new. 💡

The magic word is "learned." Normal software follows rules someone typed out by hand. AI got shown a mountain of examples and found the patterns itself, the same way you can recognize a friend's handwriting without anyone ever writing down the rules. You've seen it enough before to recognize the patterns.

The picture that makes it click for me is the autocomplete on my mobile phone. 📱

Your phones autocomplete suggests "minutes" after "I'll be there in five" because it has seen that phrase a thousand times. The AI in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini etc., is that exact idea, scaled up to almost everything humans have ever written.

You ask it something, and it guesses the most likely next words, one at a time, it does this so well that it reads like a real person wrote it, and it's designed to present the findings to YOU because AI is confident its 100% right, and just like any other guess, sometimes it's not.

So, hold this picture about AI being a very well-read guesser, it will serve you well on your journey to learning about and applying AI into what you do every day 🧠

What that makes it GREAT at

✅ Turning your messy notes into a clean email
✅ Explaining a confusing letter in plain English
✅ Ten name ideas for your business, in seconds

What it is NOT (say it with me)

⚠️ Not a mind. It does not "understand," it matches patterns.
⚠️ Not a search engine. It is guessing likely words, not looking facts up. (Unless you ask for FACTS)
⚠️ Not always right. A confident answer is still a guess. CHECK IT.

💡Why this matters so much:

The second you see AI as an instrument that best guesses instead of an all-knowing oracle, you stop being intimidated by it AND you stop being fooled by it.

You can see it as a tool, and tools are meant to be learned before you use them.

Once you learn the patterns AI is TIED too, you ask better questions, you provide better context, and you check its work. You start to learn the system, teach the machine, and stay the author!

That is the whole foundation. 🏆

📝Your homework today (5 minutes)

Open the free ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini models, or whatever model you are currently using, and give it a REAL job, not a test question.

💡Try: "You are a friendly marketing helper. I run a small [your business] in [your city].

Write me three short, warm Instagram/Facebook/Insert your preferred platform here captions to encourage engagement and drive business for me this week, under 40 words each, no hashtags, sound like a real person."

Once you are done, I want you to "Push Back" on the output.

Follow up prompt: "What did you assume about my business? What did you assume a real person sounds like? How do I help you make it sound like me? What things can I provide to help you to align your output, with my business, for my original request?"

💡Now, notice the difference, not just in what AI gave you, but in what you gave AI.

When it's done, correct it and run it again, this is the first lesson you will level up from in AI, it's almost never the AI, it is almost always the way we ask for things, and what supporting facts, templates, and tools to we provide AI with to get it right.

That is YOU driving the tool. 💪

1️⃣This is post one of a brand-new beginner series, Uncomplicate AI: A Series for the Rest of Us.

2️⃣0️⃣There are twenty post total coming aimed at helping the beginner to become genuinely capable.

You can find these articles on all of my socials, and some deep dives on my Substack!

https://substack.com/@builtbybas (I write a lot of posts, and I will post the deep dives here)

www.linkedin.com/in/basiliso-rosario (I am always happy to connect here!)

Please don't forget to follow me on Clief Notes! Bas Rosario

We learn together, we grow together, we win together! 🤓💪🏆

35 comments

📚 What AI Actually Is - And What It Isn't 🤓 Post 1 of a 20 Post series