Get relevant and reliable answers by formulating better prompts
By Andrew Burlone
August 11, 2026
Artificial intelligence is already built into our phones, searches, and work tools. To make it genuinely useful, you do not need to be a computer expert: above all, you need to learn how to make a clear request, verify its responses, and protect your personal information. Every day, one person checks the time of the next bus, another polishes a delicate email, and a student prepares review questions. These tasks can involve artificial intelligence, often without us even realizing it. The question is therefore no longer whether AI is part of our lives, but how to use it wisely.
AI is already integrated into many tools: search engines, spelling and grammar checkers, music suggestions, and route recommendations. Generative AI adds another possibility: on request, it can produce text, images, or code. It does not “understand” the world as a person does; rather, it generates responses based on patterns learned from very large collections of data.
Perhaps the best analogy is an extremely fast and willing intern. It can save you valuable time, suggest an excellent first draft, and produce an elegant version of a text. But it can also invent a reference, misunderstand an instruction, or answer confidently when it does not know the answer. You therefore need to give it a clear assignment—and carefully review its work.
Think of AI less as a mysterious brain than as a slightly inexperienced but highly enthusiastic intern: fast, inventive, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes catastrophically wrong.
The good news is that you do not need a degree in computer science to benefit from it. Instead, you need to acquire a few everyday skills—the digital equivalent of learning to ride a bicycle or parallel park on a busy main street. Think of AI less as a mysterious brain than as a slightly inexperienced but highly enthusiastic intern: fast, inventive, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes catastrophically wrong. Your role is to learn how to communicate with it, supervise it, and avoid giving it the keys to your entire life.
Asking better questions
The first skill is the art of asking a good question, sometimes called “prompting.” A vague instruction will generally produce a vague response. “Write something about garbage collection” is likely to result in generic text. By contrast, the following wording produces a much more useful result: “As the communications manager for a condominium building, write a friendly 150-word reminder, in French and English, about tomorrow’s garbage collection, for the building’s residents.”
AI works better when it has context. State the purpose, intended audience, language, tone, length, format, and any important constraints. You can also provide the key points and ask it not to add anything that is not included. This approach is useful in very ordinary situations. For a leak in a building, try: “Rewrite this email in a firm but polite tone, in fewer than 200 words.” To announce a cultural event: “Turn these points into a clear press release, including a headline and three social media excerpts.”
Use cheerful skepticism
The first result is not necessarily the right one. Ask for a second version, make it shorter, specify a word to avoid, or say that the text should preserve your voice. AI is a drafting and editing tool; it does not replace your editorial judgment. AI’s main pitfall is its ability to sound convincing. A well-written answer is not proof. Names, dates, figures, quotations, links, legal decisions, medical information, and financial advice should be verified with a reliable source, ideally an official or primary one.
‘AI has no lived experience, but it draws on context and does a perfectly adequate job when given clear instructions—and a rather poor one when left to its own devices.’
Adopt a form of “benevolent skepticism.” Treat an answer as you would advice from a friendly stranger: it may be helpful, but it deserves to be checked before it guides an important decision. A brief routine is enough: note the proper names and figures; confirm important facts on an official website; then ask the tool which parts of its answer may be inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated. This final question guarantees nothing, but it can highlight areas of uncertainty and help direct your verification.
For a diagnosis, tax return, contract, estate matter, or investment, AI can help you prepare questions or summarize a document. It should not, however, be your sole source of advice. Consult a qualified professional and the official documents that apply to your situation.
Let AI do the boring bits
Use AI to save time on the tasks you already do, rather than inventing new ones just because the technology exists. Start with the small annoyances: that long municipal document you keep saying you’ll read? Paste it into an AI tool and ask for “a clear, neutral 200‑word summary, plus three bullet points explaining what this means for residents.” Overwhelmed by school emails or community newsletters? Ask for a one‑paragraph digest “in plain language for a busy parent.”
AI also makes an excellent drafting partner. Write your email, grant application, or article as you normally would, then ask for help: “Please edit this for clarity and concision, keeping my tone friendly and professional,” or “Translate this into French, in a natural québecois style.” For family life, AI can generate practice questions for an exam, brainstorm lunchbox ideas, or explain fractions three different ways. The trick is to anchor it to real problems you already have, not to chase futuristic fantasies.
Guard your secrets
There is, however, one area where we must resist AI’s endless appetite: our privacy. A basic AI skill is knowing what information should never be pasted, unedited, into a friendly-looking text box. Anything containing banking information, health records, legal documents, confidential work material, or details about other people’s lives deserves careful handling. When in doubt, strip out names, addresses, account numbers, and identifying details before asking for help with wording or structure.
Ethics sneak in here, too. If AI helps you write, design, or translate, it’s courteous—and often necessary—to remain transparent about that help, especially when others will rely on the information. Avoid using AI to impersonate someone, to plagiarize, or to flood local conversations with polished but empty text. Your community already has enough character; the goal is to enhance it, not drown it in generic output.
‘Treat every AI output the way you would treat advice from a charming stranger at a dinner party—interesting, possibly useful, but desperately in need of verification.’
If all of this feels like a lot, you can approach learning AI the way you might explore a new city: one small area at a time. At first, try pasting a long article and ask for a summary. Next, take a clumsy email you were going to send and ask AI to make it clearer. Also try a translation task, English‑to‑French rewrite or vice versa. Then, ask AI to explain something you don’t quite understand—a new policy or a historical event—in under 200 words.”
At the end of that week, the chances are good that you’ll feel a bit more capable and a bit less tired in the face of all the text and decisions modern life insists on throwing at you. Everyday AI skills are, at heart, human skills: asking clear questions, thinking critically, protecting what matters, and experimenting playfully.
AI tricks and safety habits
- Ask for a “translation plus tidy‑up.”
Take a short email you’ve written in English, paste it into an AI tool, and ask: “Please correct this, then translate it into natural Québec French, keeping my friendly tone.”
• - Turn long reads into a digest.
Copy a city notice, school newsletter, or council document and say: “Summarize this in 150 words, in plain language, and give me three bullet points on what this means for residents.”
• - Upgrade your everyday emails.
Before sending a tricky message—to a landlord, condo board, volunteer group—ask: “Rewrite this to sound firm but polite, under 200 words, in Canadian English.”
• - Get a kid‑friendly explanation.
Paste in a passage from a textbook or article and try: “Explain this as if I’m 12, with one short example,” or “Turn this into five study questions and answers.”
• - Plan like a personal assistant.
Tell AI: “Here are my tasks for the week,” list them, then ask: “Group these into priorities for each day and suggest a simple schedule for a busy professional.”
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Three things you should never divulge
When using AI tools, keep safety in mind and remember these three things you should never disclose:
- Secrets about you
Anything that could unlock your life: ID or passport numbers, full home address plus phone, bank or credit card details, passwords or security answers.
• - Secrets about your work
Contracts, client lists, internal reports, unreleased plans, or anything your employer would not happily see on a public bulletin board; strip names and identifiers first.
• - Secrets about other people
Health details, legal troubles, gossip, or contact information about friends, family, neighbours, or colleagues—if you wouldn’t email it to a stranger, don’t offer it to an AI.
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Final thoughts
If people everywhere cultivate these skills together, technology becomes less a looming storm cloud and more a shared toolkit. Students can get better explanations, not shortcuts; retirees can stay connected without drowning in jargon; busy professionals can reclaim a sliver of time from their inboxes.
In the end, AI is not a destination but a daily practice: a set of human choices about how we ask, check, share, and decide. The tools will keep evolving, but the advantage will belong to those who stay curious and communicate clearly, using AI to extend their abilities without ever replacing their judgment.
Feature image: Gerd Altmann – Pixabay
Articles by Andrew Burlone
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Andrew Burlone, co-founder and editor-in-chief of WestmountMag, started his media journey at NOUS magazine. His interests include journalism and communications, with a particular appreciation for architecture, culture, visual arts, and contemporary social issues.
