Everyday AI: Table of Contents
All seven chapters and every section. Chapters marked free sample are included in the sample PDF.
1Why AI, Why Nowfree sample
- 1.1The Fastest Adoption in History
- 1.2A New Literacy
- 1.3The Hype and the Shift
- 1.4What This Book Promises
2What Is AI and an LLM?free sample
- 2.1Four Words, Nested Inside Each Other
- 2.2The One Task: Guess the Next Piece
- 2.3Why It Sounds So Sure When It Is Wrong
- 2.4Does It Remember Me?
- 2.5From Answering to Acting: Agents
3Meeting the Tools
- 3.1The Big Three
- 3.2Free Versus Paid
- 3.3Reading the Menu
- 3.4More Than Words: Showing the Machine
- 3.5The Prompting Toolkit
- 3.6When the Tool Can Act: Agents and Web Search
- 3.7Which Tool for Which Job
- 3.8A First Conversation
4Reading and Research with AI
- 4.1Summarize, Then Interrogate
- 4.2Reading at Your Level
- 4.3Memory Versus Grounding
- 4.4Three Ways People Actually Use This
- 4.5The One Rule
5Writing with AI
- 5.1The Blank Page Problem
- 5.2The Model as Editor
- 5.3Prompting Is Writing
- 5.4Keeping Your Voice
- 5.5Three Ways Writers Actually Use This
- 5.6The Carpentry and the Cabinetmaker
6Learning and Problem-Solving with AI
- 6.1The Tireless Tutor
- 6.2Learning With the Machine, or Letting It Do the Homework
- 6.3Solving a Hard Problem
- 6.4Checking the Work Without Being Fooled
- 6.5Three Ways People Actually Learn With This
- 6.6The Bill Comes Due, or It Doesn't
7Limits, Hallucinations, and Responsible Use
- 7.1Why Hallucinations Happen
- 7.2Bias, and the Average of the Internet
- 7.3When You Cannot Believe Your Eyes
- 7.4When the Machine Can Act
- 7.5What Happens to What You Type
- 7.6Integrity, Broadly Understood
- 7.7Staying in Charge
- 7.8Where This Is Heading
- 7.9Where to Go From Here
Index
This listing is generated directly from the book’s own typeset table of contents, so it stays in step with the manuscript. The book also carries a list of figures and the index shown above. Front matter is absent for a mechanical reason rather than an editorial one: it is numbered in roman numerals, and the generator that reads the book’s contents file keeps only entries with an arabic page number.
How the seven chapters fit together
The book is three movements, not seven separate essays.
Chapters 1 and 2 are the grounding. Why this is worth your time, and what the machine actually is. Nothing is asked of you but attention. These are the two chapters in the free sample.
Chapters 3 through 6 are the skills. Chapter 3 puts the tools in front of you and introduces prompting as a craft. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 then apply it to the three things most people actually want help with — reading and research, writing, and learning and problem-solving — one chapter each. Each closes with three worked examples of how people use this in practice, most of them citing published reporting or research, and each carries a When It Goes Wrong sidebar showing a genuine failure and the check that catches it.
Chapter 7 is the counterweight. Why hallucinations happen, where bias comes from, what synthetic media does to “reading critically”, what happens to the text you paste in, and what changes when the model can act rather than only answer. It closes with a practical checklist for staying in charge.