ChatGPT & AI Assistants
How ChatGPT-style assistants work, what they are good at, and how to use them calmly.
46 stories (22 articles · 24 videos)
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A few good first pieces before you browse the full feed.
6 min readYour first hour with ChatGPT: a click-by-click walkthrough
A guided sixty-minute tour of ChatGPT — from signing up to your first real win. Every button, every setting that matters, in order.
New to AI
6 min readChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot — which should a beginner pick?
Four mainstream AI assistants, picked apart in plain English. A non-technical guide to choosing your first AI based on what you already use and what you actually want from it.
New to AI
7 min readPicking the right model for the job: a 2026 decision cheat sheet
Which model to reach for, by task type. GPT, Claude, Gemini, the reasoning models, and the open-weights options — sorted by what they are actually best at, with simple decision rules.
BeginnerMore in this topic
13 min readThe 2026 LLM stack: models, inference, tooling, and trade-offs
A working architect's view of the 2026 LLM stack — the model tiers, inference providers, orchestration layers, evaluation tooling, and the trade-offs that actually matter when shipping production AI. Everything you wish someone had laid out before you started.
Advanced
6 min readAI for travel, recipes, and life admin
The low-stakes, high-frequency wins that turn AI from a curiosity into a habit. Real prompts for trip planning, meal planning, household admin, and the small decisions that eat your week.
New to AI
6 min readAI as your personal editor: fix any writing in under a minute
Three small prompts that turn any AI into a careful, fast editor — without it rewriting you into someone you are not. One pass each for clarity, tone, and grammar.
New to AI
7 min readUsing AI to read long documents, contracts, and PDFs
Drop in a 40-page document and get the parts that matter — the decisions, the risks, the things you would otherwise miss. A practical workflow for using AI to read what you do not have time to read.
New to AI
6 min readAI vs Google: when to search, when to ask
Search and AI assistants are not interchangeable. A practical guide to which tool fits which question — with side-by-side examples and the cases where you should use both.
New to AI
6 min readUsing ChatGPT to write emails you actually want to send
Most AI emails sound like AI. A practical workflow for using ChatGPT to draft, sharpen, and finish the emails you would actually press send on — without the robot smell.
New to AI
7 min readChatGPT Voice mode: talking to AI like a friend
Talking to AI feels strange for about ninety seconds, then it becomes the most natural interface there is. A practical guide to voice mode — what it is great at, what it is bad at, and how to actually use it.
New to AI
8 min readCustom GPTs and Claude Projects: reusable assistants with knowledge files
Anything you do with AI more than twice is a candidate for a Custom GPT or Claude Project. A practical guide to building reusable, file-backed assistants — when to use which, and the patterns that compound.
Beginner
7 min readCustom instructions and memory: set up your AI once
Spend ten minutes once and stop re-explaining yourself to ChatGPT every conversation. A practical guide to custom instructions, memory, and projects across the major AI tools.
Beginner
6 min readYour first "Custom GPT": a personalised assistant in 10 minutes
Build a personalised AI assistant — your own tutor, recipe helper, or work coach — by filling in a form. No code, no setup, ten minutes.
New to AI
6 min readFree vs paid ChatGPT: what the upgrade actually buys
A jargon-free comparison of free ChatGPT, ChatGPT Plus, and ChatGPT Pro — what changes when you upgrade and how to tell if you actually need to.
New to AI
6 min readHow AI generates answers: the mental model that makes prompting click
AI does not think the way you do. It generates likely continuations from context. A plain-English mental model that, once it clicks, makes every prompting tip in the world easier to understand.
New to AI
11 min readMulti-tool workflows: combining ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Notion
Most people use one AI tool for everything. Intermediate users orchestrate four or five — each for the part it does best. A practical guide to building multi-tool workflows that compound.
Intermediate
6 min readPrivacy 101: what ChatGPT remembers, sees, and shares
An honest look at what AI assistants actually do with your data — what is stored, what is used for training, what the privacy settings really mean, and the three changes worth making today.
New to AI
6 min readThe seven things you can ask ChatGPT on day one
The blank input box is the hardest part. Seven copyable prompts that turn an empty conversation into a real win on your very first day.
New to AI
6 min readSharing images with AI: what you can (and shouldn't) upload
Modern AI can read photos, charts, screenshots, and handwriting almost as easily as text. A practical guide to what works, what doesn't, and the thirty-second privacy checklist before you upload anything.
New to AI
7 min readThe ten AI myths holding you back
The persistent beliefs about AI that keep otherwise sharp adults from even trying it. Each one addressed honestly — with what's true, what's exaggerated, and what to do about it.
New to AI
6 min readWhat AI actually is (and isn't): a no-hype primer
AI in 2026 means one specific thing for most people — and it is not what the movies told you. A plain-English explanation of what is really going on, what it does well, and what it does not.
New to AI
6 min readWhy AI gives confident wrong answers: a beginner's guide to hallucinations
AI does not lie the way a person does. It can generate fluent false specifics because plausibility and verification are different jobs. Here is what is going on, why it happens, and how to avoid being burned.
New to AI
211 minutesDeep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT
Andrej Karpathy. This is the clearest end-to-end explanation on YouTube of what an LLM actually is — pretraining, tokenization, SFT, RLHF, reasoning RL, tool use, hallucinations — at the level of detail an engineer needs to reason about model trade-offs. Watch it once and the "GPT-class vs. open-weights vs. reasoning model" decisions in the article stop feeling like brand choices and start feeling like training-recipe choices.
Advanced
40 minutesAndrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)
Y Combinator. Karpathy's AI Startup School keynote frames LLMs as a new kind of computer — utility, fab, and OS rolled together — and argues for "partial autonomy" products with a human-controlled leash. It is the cleanest articulation of the stack-level mental model the article assumes: that you are picking inference vendors and tooling for a programmable substrate, not a chatbot.
Advanced
10 minutesLearn 80% of Perplexity in under 10 minutes!
Jeff Su. Jeff opens with the spectrum the article hinges on — ChatGPT and Gemini at the "creative" end, Perplexity and Google Search at the "accurate, real-time, sourced" end — and then shows you the third option in action. The Olympics-medals comparison in the middle is the cleanest "this is when you ask a chatbot, this is when you Google" demo we've seen. After watching, you'll have a third tool in your search routine and a working rule for picking between the three.
New to AI
26 minutesIntroducing GPT-4o
OpenAI. This is the May 2024 keynote where ChatGPT's real-time voice mode was first demoed. Mark Chen does the breathing-exercise demo, Barrett Zoph does the math-tutor demo, and then they switch to real-time Italian–English translation. Twenty-six minutes of "ah, that's what they mean by talking to AI like a friend." The model and capabilities shown have only improved since.
New to AI
3 minutesTwo GPT-4os interacting and singing
OpenAI. Two instances of voice mode talking to each other, one of which has camera access to describe the room. Three minutes long and the most efficient way to internalise what makes voice mode different from old "press the microphone, wait, listen" interfaces — interruption, tone, music, real-time vision, all in one clip.
New to AI
12 minutesHow To Create Custom GPTs - Build your own ChatGPT
Skill Leap AI. Walks through the GPT builder exactly the way the article describes — name and description, conversation starters, instructions, knowledge files, capabilities, and access settings. Uses a real example (an AI knowledge assistant fed with the creator's own scripts) so you see what good knowledge-file content looks like in practice.
Beginner
13 minutesI Switched 50% of My AI Work to Claude, Here's Why
Jeff Su. The Claude Projects chapter (starts around 04:46) is the clearest short explanation on YouTube of project-level vs chat-level context — illustrated with a product marketing example where one project document feeds many chats with different briefs. Pairs naturally with the article's argument that Projects and Custom GPTs solve the same problem in slightly different shapes.
Beginner
131 minutesHow I use LLMs
Andrej Karpathy. Skip to the "ChatGPT memory, custom instructions" chapter at 1:53:29. Karpathy shows what he actually has in his own custom instructions, talks about when he tells ChatGPT to remember a fact versus letting it auto-capture, and notes the trade-offs — closer to the article's "set it up once with intent" framing than most beginner walkthroughs.
Beginner
36 minutesEvery ChatGPT Feature In 37 Minutes
Tina Huang. The personalization, memory, and custom instructions panels are walked through inside a wider tour of every ChatGPT feature, which is the right framing — these settings only pay off when you also know what they're configuring (projects, GPTs, scheduled tasks, voice, etc.). Use it as a guided tour while you actually open Settings → Personalization in another tab.
Beginner
15 minutesIs ChatGPT Plus Worth it? Here's My Updated Review for 2025
Ryan Doser. Ryan walks through every feature actually gated behind the $20 tier — usage caps, advanced voice mode, image and Sora limits, custom GPTs, the reasoning-model tier — and contrasts it with current free alternatives like Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The view count is on the lower side because the topic is narrow, but this is the cleanest current side-by-side that doesn't dissolve into hype, which is why we picked it over the louder "Plus changed my life" videos.
New to AI131 minutesHow I use LLMs
Andrej Karpathy. A follow-up where Karpathy actually sits in front of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and uses them like a power user. Watch this after the article and his "Intro" — you'll see the mental model put into practice in real time, including the small choices (which model, which mode, when to paste vs upload) that separate frustrated beginners from people who get useful answers on the first try.
New to AI
60 minutes[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models
Andrej Karpathy. A founding OpenAI engineer giving the cleanest hour-long explanation of what an LLM actually is, in plain English. The "psychology of an LLM" section is exactly the mental model the article is trying to install — why these models hallucinate, why they're good at vibes and bad at counting, why prompting is closer to coaching than coding.
New to AI131 minutesHow I use LLMs
Andrej Karpathy. Karpathy spends explicit chapters on "Be aware of the model you're using, pricing tiers" and "Thinking models and when to use them," then keeps switching between ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity throughout the rest of the walkthrough. It is the closest thing to watching the article's cheat sheet applied live by someone with strong opinions about when each tier earns its keep.
Beginner
17 minutesThe New, Smartest AI: Claude 3 – Tested vs Gemini 1.5 + GPT-4
AI Explained. Older than the article (March 2024), but the methodology is what's useful: a single careful reviewer running the same hard tasks — OCR, theory of mind, instruction following, math — through three frontier models side by side and showing exactly where each one cracks. The model names are dated, the framework for comparing models is not.
Beginner
4 minutesLive demo of GPT-4o vision capabilities
OpenAI. Four minutes of someone holding up a handwritten linear equation to the camera and ChatGPT tutoring them through it without giving the answer. It is the clearest, shortest demo of "the model can actually see what I'm showing it" and frames the use cases the article recommends — handwritten notes, simple math, captured documents — better than any walkthrough we found.
New to AI
34 minutes"Generative AI" is not what you think it is
Acerola. A developer-essayist works through the "AI is just slop / AI is magical / AI is theft" trio of myths with patience and code on the screen. If the article's myth #4 or #7 ("it's just plagiarism," "it's just plagiarism but for art") nagged at you, this is the video that earns the right to disagree with you.
New to AI
12 minutesWhat We Get Wrong About AI (feat. former Google CEO)
Cleo Abram. Cleo Abram walks through both the "it will kill us all" and "more profound than fire" extremes, asks Eric Schmidt the awkward questions, and lands on a sober middle. The framing — "we're living inside a trolley problem" — is exactly the spirit of the article: neither dismiss the technology nor catastrophise it, just understand what it actually is.
New to AI
36 minutesAndrew Ng: Opportunities in AI - 2023
Stanford Online. Andrew Ng, one of the people who actually built the field, talking plainly about what AI is good at, what it isn't, and where the realistic opportunities sit. A useful counterweight to social-media takes — same calm, no-hype tone as the article, just with more depth on the "where is this actually going" question.
New to AI
8 minutesLarge Language Models explained briefly
3Blue1Brown. The cleanest eight-minute mental model of an LLM on YouTube. Grant Sanderson walks through "next-word prediction," parameters, training, and reinforcement learning from human feedback without ever drifting into hype. Watch it right after the article and the phrase "AI is just autocomplete on steroids" stops being a slogan and starts being a useful shorthand.
New to AI
19 minutesEvery AI Model Explained
Tina Huang. A calm 19-minute map of the major model families — OpenAI's GPT line, Anthropic's Claude, Google's Gemini, plus the open-source players — and which tier inside each family is worth your time. After the article tells you "pick one and stick with it for a month," this video tells you what the dropdown menu inside that one is actually offering. Honestly opinionated without being a hot take.
New to AI
10 minutesWhy Large Language Models Hallucinate
IBM Technology. Martin Keen sorts hallucinations into four named buckets — sentence contradictions, prompt contradictions, factual errors, nonsense — and walks through each on a lightboard. After the article gives you the why, this video gives you a vocabulary for spotting the type of mistake in the wild so you can decide how much to trust a given answer.
New to AI
36 minutesChatGPT with Rob Miles - Computerphile
Computerphile. A long, calm sit-down with AI-safety researcher Rob Miles on why a model that's trained to predict plausible text will always, structurally, sometimes invent facts. Recorded in early 2023, but the underlying mechanism it explains hasn't changed and the framing is still the cleanest way to internalise "it's a fluency engine, not a truth engine."
New to AI36 minutesEvery ChatGPT Feature In 37 Minutes
Tina Huang. A patient, sidebar-by-sidebar tour of the current ChatGPT app. Useful when the article gets you logged in and you want someone to point at every icon and tell you what it does — voice mode, custom GPTs, projects, memory, the lot — without skipping straight to "advanced prompting."
New to AI
39 minutesChatGPT Tutorial: 35 Tips I Wish I Knew Sooner
Matt Wolfe. Recorded in late 2025, so the screens still look like the screens you'll see today. The first third — plan comparison, account setup, dialling in your settings — is exactly the click-by-click ground the article covers, and the back half (projects, canvas, files, branching) gives you a preview of what's actually behind each menu item before you go exploring.
New to AI