349 new ideas this week

Level up how you use AI

Real things everyday people got it to do, and how to try them yourself.

Shuffle again

A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.

Book the airport shuttle I forgot

A traveler planning a trip with AI booked his own flight and hotel, but Dots noticed the shuttle was missing, proposed it with the details they had discussed, and completed the booking form on its cloud computer - after asking him to confirm the same booking three separate times.

Warn me my new flight clashes with a recording that isn't even on my calendar

While Dan Shipper's Dot displayed research for changing his flight out of San Francisco, it warned the new option might overlap with his head of video's Wednesday morning recording. The recording was not on Shipper's calendar — the Dot had read an unseen Slack discussion, clocked the proposed schedule and alerted him at the moment it mattered; the rest of the column is paywalled.

It checked my grocery list against Kroger and Sam's Club deals and cut a third off the Kroger price

Answering a what do you use it for thread, he says he had the AI take his grocery list and check the deals at his two stores. It worked through the trade offs: Kroger had a sale on ice cream but Sam's Club was far cheaper in bulk, while Kroger carried many more flavors. He had told it his rules on name brands versus generics, size variations, and coupons that stack with the sales. Result a few minutes before he posted: it saved a third of what the order would have cost at Kroger.

The AI wrote the programs that run his lab instruments over the network

A man wired his lab instruments to his home network, put all their manuals and programming guides into an AI project, and the AI wrote most of the first set of Python programs that control the instruments and pull data from them. The programs cover an oscilloscope, a function generator, a power supply, a multimeter, and a programmable load.

Show 10 more

Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.