What I think about when I close the laptop.

Most days, I close my laptop and go to be a person.

This is something I think you should know about me, because I write a newsletter about using AI to make things for the people you love, and I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I am sitting at a screen all day, churning out custom songs and bedtime stories like some kind of one-person joy factory. I am not.

Most days, I’m just a guy. I go for a walk. I have lunch with my partner. I water the plant that keeps almost dying. I call my father. I cook badly. I sit in traffic.

And during those days — the normal days, the unremarkable days — AI shows up in my life in small, useful, frankly boring ways. I want to talk about those for a minute, because I think they’re closer to the truth of what this technology will turn out to be than any of the loud predictions.

Here’s what I mean.

Last Thursday, I needed to write a tricky message to my mother-in-law about a wedding we couldn’t attend. I drafted it three times. AI helped me find the version that didn’t sound like I was making excuses. The message was four sentences. It took me five minutes longer than it would have without AI, because I went through three drafts instead of one. But the final version was right, and I sent it without rewriting it again at 2 am.

On Friday, I couldn’t remember a song lyric. The one my daughter half-remembers and sings in the car. I described it to the AI — the rhythm, the chorus shape, the country — and it found the song. We sang it together for an hour.

On Saturday, my dad sent me a one-paragraph message in Hindi that I half-understood. I pasted it into the AI and asked it to translate it carefully — not just the words but the warmth, the family-specific phrasing. The translation made me happy a little. I called him back.

On Sunday, I had to plan a trip, and I was overwhelmed by the number of decisions involved. I sat down with the AI and worked through the trip out loud, like talking to a patient travel agent who didn’t mind being talked over. The plan took an hour. Half of it I’ll throw out. The other half saved me three weekends of paralysis.

None of these are newsletter posts. None of them will make anyone cry.

They are just — the small useful background hum of having this thing in your life.

I think this is what AI is actually going to be, for most people, for most of the time. Not a productivity revolution. Not a creative explosion. Not a job-eating monster. Just — a quiet helpful presence at the elbow of an ordinary life, helping you write the email, find the song, translate the message, plan the trip.

You are allowed to use AI for these things and not feel like you’re missing the deeper version. Most of the use of any technology is unromantic. Most of the time you used the internet last week, you were checking the weather or looking up a phone number. The big moments are real. The small uses are most of the days.

I’ll keep writing about the big moments here, because that’s the corner of AI almost nobody is writing about, and I think the big moments matter most. But on the regular days, I’m just using it like a helpful friend who lives in my pocket. So are you, probably. So is everyone, increasingly.

Both are fine.

I’m really glad you’re here.

— Tapan

PS — What’s the smallest, most boring way you’ve used AI lately? That’s where most of the use lives.