A hand-picked set of places to actually use AI, get better at prompting, and think about where all of this is heading. Kept honest and reasonably short — things stay on this page only while they earn their spot.
Assistants & tools worth using
- ChatGPT — The default all-rounder for writing, reasoning and everyday questions. A solid first stop if you only keep one.
- Claude — Careful and nuanced on longer tasks: writing, analysis and code. Good when tone and judgement matter.
- Gemini — Google’s assistant, tightly woven into Search and the Workspace apps you may already use.
- Grok — xAI’s assistant, built into X, with a looser and more conversational streak than most.
- Perplexity — More answer engine than chatbot: research questions with live sources and citations you can check.
- Microsoft Copilot — The same class of assistant, tied into Windows and Microsoft 365 where a lot of work already happens.
- Mistral — Le Chat — A fast European assistant built on Mistral’s open-weight models. Worth knowing if data location matters to you.
- DeepSeek — A capable, cost-efficient assistant built on strong open models, popular for reasoning and code.
- Midjourney — For images. Still a benchmark when you want striking, stylized results rather than literal ones.
- ElevenLabs — For voice: lifelike text-to-speech, narration and audio, including voice cloning.
Get better at prompting
- PromptGarden (our network) — A field of original prompts, each one explained: why it works and when to reach for it. Sow smart prompts, reap fresh results.
- 1000prompts.net (our network) — A growing, browsable library of ready-to-copy prompts for thinking, writing, research and getting work done.
- The Prompt Engineering Guide — A thorough, free reference that runs from the basics to advanced techniques, with examples throughout.
- Learn Prompting — Structured, beginner-friendly courses you can work through step by step. A gentle on-ramp.
- Anthropic Prompt Library — Ready-made, expert-built prompts straight from the people who make Claude.
- OpenAI Prompt Engineering Guide — OpenAI’s own official best-practices, useful well beyond ChatGPT.
- Awesome ChatGPT Prompts — A large, much-copied community list of starter prompts to adapt for your own use.
Think about where it’s going
- Import AI — Jack Clark’s weekly roundup of the AI research and policy worth paying attention to.
- aiciety (our network) — Our own essays on how AI is reshaping society: slower, deeper reading than a quick prompt. We are on the way to aiciety.
- One Useful Thing — Ethan Mollick’s newsletter on living and working with AI: practical, grounded and refreshingly hype-free.
- AI Snake Oil — Narayanan and Kapoor’s clear-eyed, skeptical counterweight to the hype, with the receipts to back it up.
- Simon Willison’s blog — A builder’s running notes on what these tools can and can’t actually do, updated almost daily.