The Big Idea
At almost every workshop, someone catches me during the tea break and asks, "Can ChatGPT do this?" or "Does Copilot know about that?" My answer is always the same.
Just ask it.
AI chat tools are good at talking about themselves. They can tell you what they can do, what they cannot, what they need from you, and when they are about to make something up. But you have to ask. It does not volunteer.
This is a small habit that changes how useful AI becomes to you. Once you start asking the AI what it can do, you stop waiting for a teacher or a tech-savvy friend to tell you.
The Mindset Shift
Most of us learned to use the internet through Google. You type a few keywords, you get a page of links, you click the best one. That is a search-engine mindset. It is about finding.
An AI chat tool is different. You are not searching, you are instructing a helper. It works more like explaining a job to a new assistant than typing into a search bar. The more context you give, the better it does. You can describe your situation in whole sentences. You can paste in a document. You can ask a follow-up. You can say, "no, do it differently."
Stop searching. Start guiding.
The shift sounds small. In practice it changes what you can do on your own, without waiting for help.
Why This Works
AI chat tools have read an enormous amount of text, including their own documentation, help pages and user guides. They know, in a fairly reliable way:
What they can do. Writing, summarising, translating, explaining, tutoring, image understanding and more. If you ask, they will list it.
What they cannot do. They cannot access your real-time location. They cannot read your email unless you paste it in. They usually cannot open a link unless you have a special tool turned on. They will tell you.
What they need from you. If you ask "can you help me with my rates notice", a good AI will ask to see the notice, or ask what exactly you want to know.
Where they are likely to get things wrong. Ask "how confident are you in that answer" and most AIs will tell you honestly.
AI tools are mostly honest about themselves but not always correct. They can be out of date about their own new features. If an AI says "I cannot do X", and you read somewhere else that it now can, try it anyway. Do not take the AI's word as final, but do take it seriously.
Worked Examples
Here are six things people have asked me whether an AI can do. In each case, the answer is the same: ask the AI. These are real examples of what the AI is likely to say back.
Yes, I can help with that. To do a good job, it would help to know a few things: how many people are you feeding, roughly what is your budget for the week, are there any foods you or your family do not eat, and do you have a freezer and an oven or just a cooktop? If you do not want to answer all that, I can start with a sensible plan for two adults cooking with basic equipment, and you can tell me what to change.
Yes. It is a notice from your energy retailer telling you that your concession has not been applied to your account for the last two bills. It says you need to contact them within 30 days to have the concession backdated, otherwise you will only get it from the date you call. In plain terms: you are probably owed money back. The quickest action is to phone the number at the top of the letter and ask them to backdate the concession. I can draft what you could say on the call if you want.
I can usually help you troubleshoot it, yes. I cannot see your network, so I will need to ask you some questions as we go. To start: is the Wi-Fi showing as connected but nothing loads, or can you not see your network at all? And is this on one device or all of them?
Yes, this is something I am genuinely good at. Tell me what job you are going for, and paste the job ad if you have it. I will ask you questions the way a real interviewer would, one at a time, and give you feedback on each answer before we go to the next. We can also practise specific things you are worried about, like how to answer "tell me about yourself" without rambling.
I can listen to audio you upload to me, yes, and I can transcribe it and tell you what is in it. What I cannot do is listen live while you speak, or call someone on your behalf. If you want to try: record the voice message, save it as a file on your phone, and attach it to a message to me.
Good question, and the honest answer is usually no. By default I do not carry memory between separate conversations. Each new chat starts fresh. Some AI tools have a memory feature you can turn on, but it is off unless you switch it on. If you want me to pick up where we left off, paste in what we covered last time and I will work from that.
Notice the pattern. In every case the AI does three useful things: it answers the "can you" question honestly, it tells you what it needs from you to actually help, and it offers a next step. You get those things for free just by asking.
Four Starter Questions to Ask Any AI
Any time you pick up a new AI tool for the first time, or you are not sure what it will do with a job, open with one of these. They work for Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or any other chat AI.
- "What can you help me with?" A plain overview, in the AI's own words.
- "What can't you do?" The limits, honestly stated, before you waste time.
- "What do you need from me to do a good job on this?" Turns the AI into a collaborator instead of a guesser.
- "How confident are you in that answer?" Catches made-up answers before they become mistakes.
These are not clever prompts. They are just conversation. That is the point.
The Take-Home
You do not need a course, a manual, or a tech-savvy friend to find out whether an AI can help you with something. You need to open the app and type the question in plain English.
The AI will tell you yes, no, or "here is what I would need to do it". That is the whole skill.
The AI is not an oracle you query. It is a helper you direct.
Once that clicks, digital literacy stops being a thing other people have and becomes something you can build, one conversation at a time.
Glossary
- Prompt
- The question or instruction you type into an AI.
- Context
- The background you give the AI (your situation, a pasted document, what you are trying to do) so it can answer well.
- Follow-up
- Asking the AI to change or extend its answer; AI chats are a back-and-forth, not a single search.
- Memory
- An optional feature in some tools that lets the AI remember things between separate chats. Off by default in most tools.
- Hallucination
- When an AI states something false as if it were true; this is why "how confident are you?" is a useful question.