AI Basics for Business Owners
What AI actually is, what it's good at, what it's terrible at, and when it's worth using in your business.
“AI is not magic. It's pattern recognition on steroids that occasionally hallucinates and confidently tells you things that aren't true. Treat it like a brilliant intern who makes stuff up.”
What you'll learn
AI excels at: summarization, classification, content generation, customer service triage, data extraction, and pattern recognition across large datasets. Use it for tasks that are time-consuming but low-risk.
AI is terrible at: tasks requiring real reasoning, math (surprisingly), accurate factual recall without sources, understanding nuance, and making high-stakes decisions. Never trust AI for legal, medical, or financial advice without human review.
The 80/20 rule of AI: AI can do 80% of the work in 20% of the time. The last 20% needs human judgment. Don't expect perfect output — expect a draft that saves you hours.
Risk management: never put customer PII into public AI tools, always review before sending, establish an AI usage policy, and train your team on AI literacy.