You’re probably sick of hearing about AI.<\/p>\n
Everyone’s talking about ChatGPT. Your LinkedIn feed is full of “AI experts” who discovered it last Tuesday. And you’re wondering if you’ve already missed the boat.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I want you to know: You haven’t missed anything.<\/strong> In fact, you’re right on time.<\/p>\n Let me tell you a story that’ll change how you think about artificial intelligence\u2014and your place in it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Picture this: New Hampshire, summer of 1956.<\/p>\n A young computer scientist named John McCarthy is about to do something that will change the world. He invites a small group of mathematicians and engineers to Dartmouth College for a summer workshop. The goal? To explore whether machines could actually think. Not “process.” Not “calculate.” Think.<\/strong><\/p>\n At the time, computers filled entire rooms. They could barely add numbers, let alone have a conversation. The idea that they might one day simulate human intelligence was laughable. But McCarthy wasn’t laughing. He was Irish-American\u2014his father immigrated from County Cork\u2014and he had that particular Irish combination of optimism and stubbornness that makes people do impossible things.<\/p>\n He called his workshop the “Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.” And just like that, AI got its name<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Here’s why this matters to you: AI didn’t start with a billion-dollar budget. It didn’t begin in a Silicon Valley boardroom. It started with a handful of curious people asking, “What if?” Sound familiar? That’s exactly how small businesses are using AI today.<\/p>\n Book a free AI Discovery Call and find out where AI can save you time and money.<\/p>\n Book Your Free Call<\/a>\n <\/div>\n Here’s something most people don’t know about McCarthy: He wasn’t trying to build robots to replace humans. He wanted machines to handle the repetitive, tedious parts of thinking<\/strong> so humans could focus on creativity, strategy, and connection.<\/p>\n Read that again.<\/p>\n That’s not science fiction. That’s exactly what AI does for small businesses today. Think about your typical week. How many hours do you spend writing the same emails over and over? Creating social media posts? Updating spreadsheets? Formatting proposals? Taking meeting notes? These aren’t creative tasks. They’re not strategic. They don’t require your unique expertise. They’re just… necessary. And exhausting.<\/p>\n McCarthy’s vision was simple: Let machines handle the mechanical thinking so humans can do the human thinking.<\/strong> Seventy years later, that vision is finally real. And it’s available to you for free.<\/p>\n Most people think AI is new. They’re wrong. AI has been around for 70 years, but it’s only now\u2014in the last two years\u2014that it’s become accessible to people like you and me. Let me break down the timeline:<\/p>\n 1950s-1960s: The Logic Era<\/strong> Early AI was all about rules. Researchers built programs that followed “if-then” logic to mimic decision-making. They created a chess program that could evaluate moves mathematically. It proved machines could simulate thought\u2014at least in narrow domains.<\/p>\n 1980s-1990s: Expert Systems<\/strong> AI moved into industries like medicine, finance, and manufacturing. Companies built “expert systems” that captured human expertise in software. But progress was slow. Computers were expensive, and data was scarce.<\/p>\n 2000s: The Internet Changes Everything<\/strong> Then came Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Suddenly, companies had access to massive amounts of data\u2014and the computing power to analyze it. AI shifted from rule-based logic to machine learning<\/strong>\u2014systems that could learn patterns without being explicitly programmed. This is when AI got good at search results, product recommendations, and speech recognition.<\/p>\n 2010s: AI Goes Invisible<\/strong> This decade, AI became part of daily life\u2014and most people didn’t notice. Netflix knows what you want to watch. Spotify curates playlists that feel personal. Amazon predicts what you’ll buy before you know you need it. AI stopped being science fiction and became infrastructure.<\/p>\n 2022-Today: The ChatGPT Moment<\/strong> November 2022. OpenAI releases ChatGPT to the public. Within 5 days, it has 1 million users. Within 2 months, 100 million users. Why? Because for the first time, anyone\u2014not just developers\u2014could use AI to create<\/strong>. Write an email, draft a blog post, analyze a spreadsheet, generate a business plan. This is the moment that changes everything for small businesses.<\/p>\n See the pattern? The entire 70-year arc of AI has been about making it more accessible. From research labs \u2192 to expert systems \u2192 to big companies \u2192 to everyone with a smartphone \u2192 to creative tools anyone can use. The barriers have been dropping consistently, and we’re now at the point where the barrier is basically zero.<\/p>\n Take the 2-minute AI Readiness Quiz and get a personalised recommendation.<\/p>\n Take the Quiz<\/a>\n <\/div>\n In every workshop I run, I do something simple: I ask someone in the room to share a problem. Something repetitive that wastes their time. Could be “I spend 3 hours every week writing product descriptions” or “Creating social media content takes forever” or “Every proposal I write starts from scratch.”<\/p>\n Then we solve it. Live. Using AI. Usually in under 10 minutes.<\/p>\n The reaction is always the same. First, silence. Then: “Wait, that’s it?” Yes. That’s it. Because AI isn’t magic. It’s not complicated. It’s not reserved for tech companies. It’s a tool, like email or Google Sheets. And once you see it work\u2014on your problem, in your words, producing your output\u2014everything changes.<\/p>\n There’s something fitting about AI having Irish roots. Because the Irish approach to problems is pragmatic, not academic. Resourceful, not dependent on massive budgets. Experimental, not risk-averse. Focused on solving real problems, not impressing people.<\/p>\n McCarthy embodied this. He wasn’t interested in theory for theory’s sake. He wanted to build useful things. And that’s exactly the mindset you need to succeed with AI. Not perfection. Not understanding every technical detail. Just: What’s the next problem I can solve?<\/strong><\/p>\n McCarthy’s journey started with one question: “What if machines could think?” Your journey starts with a different question: “What’s one task I do every week that AI could handle?”<\/strong><\/p>\n Not ten tasks. Not a complete business transformation. One task. Maybe it’s writing weekly social media posts, summarizing client meetings, creating email responses, generating blog ideas, analyzing sales data, or drafting proposals. Pick one. Spend 10 minutes testing whether AI can help.<\/p>\n If it works, you’ve just bought back hours every month. If it doesn’t, you’ve lost 10 minutes. That’s the entire risk.<\/p>\n Here’s what that summer workshop at Dartmouth teaches us: You don’t need permission to start.<\/strong> McCarthy didn’t wait for perfect conditions. He didn’t wait for massive funding. He didn’t wait for certainty. He gathered a few smart people and asked, “What if?”<\/p>\n That’s all innovation ever is. Not grand visions. Not five-year plans. Just: “What if I tried this?” Your AI journey can start the same way. Not with a consultant, not with a massive budget, not with a complete understanding of how it works. With one small experiment. One task. One question.<\/p>\n Now you know where AI came from. You know it wasn’t built for tech giants\u2014it was built by curious people asking bold questions. You know the barriers have collapsed. And you know the same technology that powers Google, Netflix, and Amazon is available to you right now.<\/p>\n So what’s stopping you?<\/p>\n Usually, it’s one of three myths: “AI is too expensive,” “AI will replace my job,” or “AI is too technical.” In the next post, I’m going to destroy all three myths. Because once we clear away the noise, you’ll see exactly where to start.<\/p>\n But before you go, remember this: AI didn’t start in Silicon Valley. It started with an Irish-American asking, “What if?” Today, that question has evolved: “What if AI could give me back my time?”<\/strong><\/p>\n The answer is simpler than you think. And it starts with one task.<\/p>\n So here’s my challenge: Before you read the next post, pick one repetitive task you do every week. Just one. Write it down. Because in the next article, we’re going to solve it together.<\/p>\n See you there.<\/p>\n P.S.<\/strong> – McCarthy once said AI is “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” Today, I’d define it more simply: AI is software that handles repetitive thinking so people can focus on what matters.<\/strong> That’s the real legacy of the Irish origin story\u2014not just a name or a conference, but a way of thinking about how technology should serve humans, not replace them.<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/strong> what AI can do for Irish businesses today<\/a>, the myths holding Irish business owners back from AI<\/a>, and AI consultancy built specifically for Irish businesses<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You’re probably sick of hearing about AI. Everyone’s talking about ChatGPT. Your LinkedIn feed is full of “AI experts” who discovered it last Tuesday. And you’re wondering if you’ve already missed the boat. Here’s what I want you to know: You haven’t missed anything. In fact, you’re right on time. Let me tell you a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiwithkelso.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It All Started with an Irish Guy and a Crazy Idea<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Stop wasting time on manual work AI should be handling<\/h3>\n
What McCarthy Actually Wanted AI to Do<\/strong><\/h2>\n
From Chess Boards to ChatGPT: The Journey That Made AI Accessible<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Not sure where to start with AI?<\/h3>\n
The 10-Minute Proof<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Irish Spirit of AI<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Where Your AI Journey Actually Starts<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Real Lesson from 1956<\/strong><\/h2>\n
What Comes Next<\/strong><\/h2>\n