How Do I Start With AI? A Simple Foundation for Parents, Kids, and Anyone Feeling Behind

All right, I'm back from New York and I'm back with a different kind of video.

I've traveled the country, done presentations for many different groups, and spoken at events. The question I get more than any other is: how do I start with AI?

I realized this after using OpenClaw at an event in Fort Lauderdale. I showed it on stage, then someone came up with a question about my portfolio. I asked the bot inside OpenClaw, got an answer, pushed it further, and by the end it felt like a three-way conversation between me, the other person, and the bot. That made me realize I'm probably taking the foundation for granted.

So this is not a how-to video. This is a how-to-start video.

I got my son going mostly in this way, and I think the people who have been most successful have followed this route. I'm going to show you how I went through it so you can do it too.

If you commit one weekend, and push through the challenges, some of you might do this in one day, some in five or six hours spread across two days. That is not a lot of time to get to the point where you can finally embrace AI. It will change you as a person.

If you don't want to do it yourself but you want your kids to do it, send them this video. Send it to family members too. I'm going to try to make it simple.

The first point is this: feeling behind is the starting point, not the problem. The real issue is that AI has moved so far and so fast that people don't know where to begin. It's true that you don't need to know much coding anymore, but you do need a foundation.

For that foundation, you need a path. You need a plan. Once you start using it, confidence and momentum unlock curiosity. You begin to come up with new ideas just by moving forward.

Before I launched my YouTube channel, the first thing I did was go on Coursera. If you check my LinkedIn certifications, you'll see four or five different Coursera courses. A lot of that material is free, some of it is paid, but it lets you learn in a school-like setting at your own pace, with practice exams and tests.

The reason Coursera mattered to me was simple: I wanted to understand the computer. A lot of us think we understand it, but we really don't.

One of the courses I completed was Programming for Everyone: Getting Started with Python. It was completed on June 13, 2024. I launched my YouTube channel in late July or early August of 2024. So only a couple of months earlier, when I basically only had basic chat skills in AI, I took that course.

What did it teach me? How to install Python and write my first program, literally around five lines. Using a cooking analogy, it's like learning how to turn on the oven, use the knife, and understand what chopping means. That's the foundation everyone should know.

It's very basic, and with that one course alone, in my opinion, you probably have enough of the basics for what you need today. You're not going to become a coder, but by learning how to install Python, open the terminal, write your first program, and run it, you stop feeling blind around the machine.

So that's step one: understand the computer.

The next step is to work with intelligence.

We are past the chat stage. That's the most important thing I want you to hear. We are at the stage of action.

I want you to stop thinking only about chat and start thinking about co-work for intelligence. It's a co-pilot. It's not just asking AI questions. It's letting AI help you work.

This becomes critical for simple tasks like organizing folders, creating notes, doing research, writing summaries, and building workflows. Once you realize how to use it, it starts to feel like a partner.

I used it for something personal: organizing my father's estate after he passed away last year. I'm still in the final stages of probate. I kept all the information in one folder on the computer: estate bank accounts, bills we paid, the house sale, asset sales, everything.

Then I told it: go into this folder and create a spreadsheet of all the inflows and outflows from the bank statements. I hadn't highlighted anything. I had just downloaded the statements and put them in the folder. Everything was in one place. I connected that folder to co-work and simply said: go do what you need to do.

That is your first experience of action. That is your first experience of a co-pilot. That is your first real understanding of what the agentic world can do for you.

It makes taxes easier. It makes every saved document more useful. One folder becomes like a database.

So think of it this way: first there was chat. Now there's co-work. And then there's code.

Co-work means selecting a folder, giving the AI access to it, and letting it operate inside that context. For example, for my thematic portfolio service, I keep technical sheets in a folder. Once the folder is connected, the AI has access to all the names and technical signals.

I can tell it: you're an expert technical analyst, especially good at finding trend changes. Analyze these files and highlight the 10 stocks out of the 100 most likely to be showing signs of a trend change. Give me a thorough analysis of the index as a whole and tell me whether the internals are showing alarming signs.

Then I walk away and do something else.

In one example, it told me that between April 19 and April 20 the index looked stable on the surface, but under the hood there was a lot going on. The percentage of names above the 20-day moving average fell from 91% to 73% to 48% while the index itself was still above the 20-day moving average.

That's how I use it. But you could do this with anything: taxes, family paperwork, receipts, business records, photos, anything you save into a folder and want to organize or analyze.

Coursera teaches you what the piano keys are. Co-work is when you actually start playing.

That first class might take six to ten hours, depending on how basic it is. You go in, do the class, listen to a few tutorials, take the exam, and you're done. If you want certification, it may take longer. That certification can matter if you want to show that you're AI native on LinkedIn, if you're out of work, or if you want a better job.

The third step is to build something.

Chat and co-work are action, but code is where you start building.

My son built a game for his girlfriend's birthday. It doesn't matter what you build. Build a recipe app. Build a travel app for a family trip to Italy. Build something that organizes plans, meeting points, or logistics for everyone in one place.

Confidence grows when you go through this progression: understand the machine, use co-work on something personal and important, and then build something.

Everyone I know who has built something is proud of it. They send it to me. Many of them are highly educated but had never coded anything before.

I showed an example from my turbulence model work. Behind one app there might be 500 or 600 lines of code, but all I typed was a natural-language prompt asking Claude Code to act like an expert quantitative finance developer for complete beginners, explain everything clearly, and build a ready-to-run Python system.

That entire prompt came from a chat with Claude where I asked it to generate the prompt for Claude Code.

The system then said: I'll build you a complete production-ready system.

This is why it has become so easy. The only reason I don't recommend starting there immediately is that you may run into moments where you want to understand what you're looking at. A basic Python class helps you understand indentation, structure, and other fundamentals, even if you never manually fix the code.

And if something doesn't work, you can go back and say: it didn't work. That's how good the systems have become.

After those three steps comes extra credit: OpenClaw and Hermes.

You don't have to do this, but I would. This is where you get your own personal assistant. If you've made it through the first steps and you can say you downloaded OpenClaw or Hermes onto your machine, spent an hour or two setting it up, and got it running, your confidence will be through the roof.

You'll be doing something that, in my view, less than 1% of people on the planet are doing.

These tools act like the version of Alexa people always wanted, except they actually know your information in a much deeper way. They can access the data files you give them. I upload all my thematic portfolio information there so I can have a conversation with it.

Alex Finn is a good place to start for tutorials. He has videos on OpenClaw and Hermes, and you can find plenty of tutorials on YouTube if you search for them.

The point is that anyone can do this. I did not have computer skills when I started this AI journey. Your kids are probably already more comfortable on computers than I was when I began.

Then Visser shows the kinds of outputs you can get.

One example is a daily briefing from his OpenClaw assistant. He asks it to scrape the internet every morning and find newly released YouTube videos about AI that might interest him.

Another example uses his thematic baskets. He asks: based on yesterday's close, how many names in each basket closed below the 20-day moving average? Then later in the day he asks it to rerun the same process on the latest close. If yesterday five of seventeen names were below and today eight of seventeen are below, then the technical breadth is breaking down.

This is what AI gives you once you've learned how to play the instrument. Then creativity sets in. Then curiosity sets in. You don't need to know everything before you begin.

The confidence you gain will make you want to use it every day, teach your kids, and exchange ideas with other people.

So here is the final message: people don't need a perfect tutorial. They need to start now.

The point is not to master AI today. The point is to start.

I want to hear how it goes for you. If you run into trouble, leave a comment and I'll try to help.

For subscribers, I'll later do a more detailed walkthrough of how I use co-work with all the files in one folder.

But for everyone else, remember the sequence:
Understand the machine.
Work with your bot.
Use co-work with intelligence.
Let it save you massive amounts of time on taxes, organization, and admin.
Build something small, even if it's just a spreadsheet.
And then, as a bonus, build your own bot and let that unlock your curiosity.

I'll see you Sunday morning at 8:30. I just wanted to get this out while it's fresh.