The Appendices
Eight practical resources that extend the book
Understanding AI goes beyond the 23 chapters.
The book explains how to work with AI, how to ask better questions, how to learn and create with it, how to check its work, and how to keep your own judgment at the center.
The eight appendices give you resources to use those ideas.
Some are reference guides. Some are practical tools. Some are collections you can return to whenever you need them. And some point to projects you can try yourself.
A — Choosing an AI Assistant
There is no single AI assistant that is best for every person or every task.
This appendix helps you think about what matters when choosing an assistant, from capabilities and cost to the kinds of work you want it to handle.
A practical reference for choosing the right tool for the job.
B — Connecting AI to Your Information
AI can become much more useful when it can work with information you already have.
This appendix looks at the ways AI can connect with documents, files, services, and other sources of information—and the questions you should ask before giving an AI access to them.
Useful information. Appropriate access. Your decision.
C — The Global AI Assistant Marketplace
The AI marketplace is much larger than the few assistants most people hear about every day.
This appendix provides a broader look at the companies, assistants, models, platforms, and regional markets shaping AI.
A reference for seeing the bigger picture.
D — AI Assistant Features: What They Can Do
AI assistants can do far more than answer questions.
This appendix provides a quick reference to the capabilities you may encounter—from conversation, research, and documents to images, coding, voice, data, connected services, and other emerging capabilities.
A guide to what is possible.
E — Analytical Frameworks You Can Use With AI
AI can give you an answer. It can do something more useful, too: help you think through a problem.
This appendix brings together structured approaches you can use with AI for decisions, comparisons, risks, scenarios, and other forms of analysis.
Ways to give your thinking structure.
F — 150 Prompts and Great Follow-Up Questions
Good AI conversations rarely end with the first answer.
This appendix contains 150 prompts organized by purpose, followed by a collection of great follow-up questions that can help you clarify, challenge, improve, and extend an AI response.
A resource to keep close at hand.
G — Projects From This Book and Beyond
The best way to discover what AI can do is to use it for something that matters to you.
This appendix offers project ideas drawn from the book, along with additional possibilities for learning, creating, organizing, preserving, and solving problems with AI.
Choose an idea—or find one of your own.
H — Glossary of AI Terms
AI comes with its own vocabulary.
This appendix provides concise explanations of terms used throughout the book and commonly encountered when working with AI.
A quick reference when you encounter an unfamiliar term.
More Than a Reference
The appendices are meant to be used, not simply read once.
Return to them when you are choosing an assistant, looking for a way to approach a problem, searching for a prompt, starting a project, or wondering what a term means.
And because some AI information changes quickly, the companion website will extend selected appendix material with information that can be kept current.
Want the complete book?
The appendices are included with the book.