This post is an ongoing curation of the essential AI products for an average person. It will not include more niche tools that may be excellent but would not be needed for daily usage by most people. The list will be short to start but I expect it to grow over the coming years. I will be ordering it by ranking from most necessary to least.

1. ChatGPT (or other LLM)

As the technological innovation of our generation, I believe chatGPT will go down in history books next to the printing press, the industrial revolution, and the internet as fundamental game changers for humanity. Similar large language models (LLMs) like Claude by Anthropic, Google’s Gemini, or Elon Musk and X’s Grok may be compared in a future post, but the important part here is to have any LLM at your disposal. I believe chatGPT has the best product out of the competitors currently but any of them may suffice if you have a preference. Either the free model or the 20 dollar monthly subscription for the advanced models could work depending on your budget.

• What It Does
  • Answers questions, brainstorms ideas, and can help draft emails, essays, or social posts.
  • Learns context from your conversation and refines answers over time.
• Why It’s Helpful
  • Great for quick research, creative brainstorming, or writing assistance without waiting for a human response.
  • Can simplify complex topics or generate outlines to jumpstart any project.

It will be absolutely indispensable moving forward. The intelligence of a post-graduate level of training speedy output within seconds at your service for 20 dollars per month is an offer too good to pass up for most people.

We will have more ChatGPT specific posts moving forward.