How I Went From Knowing Nothing About AI to Using It Every Day

Let me tell you something embarrassing.

There was a time I spent almost two full days trying to solve one maths question. Not because I was lazy. Not because I did not care. But because I was stuck, alone, with no one around to help and the only tool I had was Google, which gave me something close to the answer but never quite right.

Two days. One question

That is what life looked like before AI came into it.

The Old Way of Doing Things

Before ChatGPT, before any of this, I was an engineering student figuring things out the hard way.

When I did not understand something, I had options but none of them were fast. I could ask a friend and hope they were available. I could check with my tuition teacher. I could look at a senior’s notes. I could dig through books. Or I could spend hours on Google, jumping between websites, collecting pieces of information from here and there, and trying to stitch it all together myself.

It worked. Eventually. But it was slow, and it was frustrating, and it depended on other people being around when I needed them.

That maths question is the one I remember most clearly. It was a compulsory question for my grand test something I could not skip. I was at home, alone. No friends nearby, no tutor to call. Just me, my books, my old notes, and Google.

I spent close to two days on it. I found something useful on Google, enough to get through it, but the solution was not fully accurate. I knew that. And I submitted it anyway because I had no other option.

Maths was my favourite subject. That day, sitting with that one unsolved question for two days straight, I genuinely thought about giving it up.

Chemistry Was Even Worse

If maths had its bad days, chemistry was a different kind of nightmare altogether.

Every time I heard the word chemistry, something in me just shut down. I would think skip it, avoid it, deal with it later. My marks showed it. The concepts felt impossible to hold onto, no matter how many times my teacher explained them. I would ask for a simpler explanation, get one, and still feel like it was going over my head.

I passed, but just barely. And I always carried this quiet feeling that I was not good enough for it.

I tell you this not to be dramatic but because of what happened later, when I tried those same concepts again after discovering AI.

Thermochemistry. Rutherford’s model. Things that used to make my brain go blank.

I asked AI to explain them. Not in a textbook way. In my way, at my level, with examples that made sense to me.

And they clicked.

That is the part that still gets me. Not that AI is magic it is not. But it has the patience that no teacher, no matter how good, can always have. It will explain the same thing ten different ways until one of them lands. It does not get tired of your questions. It does not make you feel slow.

If AI had existed when I was struggling through chemistry, my marks would have looked very different. I am certain of that.

The First Few Weeks Honestly, I Just Talked to It

When I first started using ChatGPT, I was not using it for anything productive.

I was just talking to it.

“Bhai, how are you?”
It would answer. I would ask something else. It would answer again.

I know that sounds like a waste of time. But for me, it was the beginning of understanding what this thing actually was. I was testing it. Seeing how it responded to normal conversation, to random questions, to things that had nothing to do with studying or work.

I used it so much in those early days that I actually hit the free limit. I remember sitting there, waiting for the limit to reset, thinking okay, this thing is real. Real enough that I used up its entire daily allowance just chatting.

When the limit reset, something shifted in my head. I thought if I am going to use this much anyway, I should actually use it for something that matters.

That was the turning point.

The Day I Stopped Depending on Other People

There is a specific memory I have from when I was learning SEO.

At the time, I had a friend who was really good at it. Every time I hit a problem I could not solve, I would go to him. He was patient, he helped me but I was completely dependent on him. If he was busy, I was stuck. If he did not know something, I had nowhere else to go.

Same with coding. When I had errors I could not fix, I would go to my mentor or a senior. Again dependent on someone else’s availability, someone else’s mood, someone else’s time.

AI changed all of that.

Not overnight. But gradually, as I started asking ChatGPT the questions I used to save for other people, I realized I did not have to wait anymore. I could ask at midnight. I could ask the same thing three times with different wording until I understood it. I could ask follow-up questions without worrying that I was taking up too much of someone’s time.

Digital marketing is the clearest example. Nobody taught me digital marketing. I had no mentor in that field, no course I completed, no expert friend I could lean on. I watched videos, did my own research, and every single time I hit a wall which was often I went to ChatGPT.

That is how I built that skill. AI did not give it to me. But AI made it possible for me to build it on my own.

The Morning ChatGPT Was Down

There was one day I do not remember exactly when where ChatGPT was not loading. Server issue, most likely.

I sat at my computer, stared at the screen, and felt something I had not expected: stuck.

Not dramatically stuck. But stuck enough that I noticed it. The small things I handled myself. But the bigger tasks, the ones I had come to rely on having a thinking partner for those just sat there, unfinished.

That was the day I fully understood that this was not just a tool I occasionally used. It had become part of how I work.

Now, when I turn on my computer, the first thing I do is open Google and type only C. ChatGPT appears in the suggestions before I even finish typing. I press enter. It opens. Whether I have something specific to do or not it is just open, the same way some people always have a notebook nearby.

Something Important I Want to Be Honest About

I want to say something clearly, because I think a lot of people get this wrong.

I do not give AI 100% of my work and just copy what comes back. I never have.

Not because I do not trust it but because if I did that, I would stop growing. My skills would stop developing. And if AI ever became unavailable, I would have nothing to fall back on.

What I do is use AI for guidance, suggestions, ideas, explanations. I take what it gives me, think about it, apply it myself, and learn from the process. The final work is mine. The thinking is mine. AI just makes the process faster and fills in the gaps I cannot fill alone.

I have seen people go the other way hand everything to AI, take the output, submit it, repeat. They are not building anything. They are just outsourcing their own development. And that, to me, is one of the real dangers of this technology that nobody talks about enough.

Use it to grow. Not to avoid growing. That distinction matters more than anything else.

What Knowing Nothing Actually Looks Like

Here is what I want you to take from my story if you are right at the beginning.

Knowing nothing does not mean you are behind. It just means you are at the start.

I knew nothing about AI when I first heard the word. I thought it was a future concept like quantum computers, something that sounded impressive but would not be relevant in my lifetime. I dismissed it. I ignored it for months after seeing it mentioned in a video late at night.

Then a friend showed me a screen in a hospital. And everything changed.

The gap between knowing nothing and using AI every day was not intelligence. It was not technical skill. It was just exposure and curiosity the willingness to open it and try.

Where Things Stand Now

My daily work looks nothing like it did before 2023.

Research that took hours now takes minutes. Concepts I could not crack after weeks of trying made sense the first time I asked AI to explain them differently. Skills I thought I needed a mentor for, I built on my own. Tasks I used to outsource to designers, developers, or more experienced friends I handle myself now.

Not because I became smarter. But because I have a thinking partner available at any hour, with unlimited patience, that never makes me feel stupid for asking.

If you are reading this and you still have not taken AI seriously I get it. I was exactly where you are. I thought it was complicated, or paid, or not for someone at my level.

None of that was true.

The only thing standing between knowing nothing and using it every day is the decision to actually open it.

That part has always been yours to make.