AI is currently the hottest trend, just like Taobao used to be before—completely the same. Many people haven't realized it yet. A common feature of all hot trends is that ordinary people can participate at zero cost—no need to spend a penny. Once you get started, you can become instantly wealthy. Today, I mainly want to talk about how ordinary people can seize the AI opportunity and how they can use AI to create wealth.

First, seizing the AI trend doesn't mean you need to develop code—that's a game for big capital. The only way for ordinary people to participate is to learn how to turn AI into your "digital assistant." You need to make AI a patch on yourself, filling in your skill gaps and amplifying your output capacity. Next, I will combine practical steps to tell you how to use AI:
Step one: Be a "player" first, build AI intuition
Don't start by digging into technical principles—that will just discourage you. The best way is to start playing and experience AI's capabilities and boundaries. See if it can help you handle those annoying trivial tasks. For example, 1. Content creation: Don’t just stare at a blank page; you can let DeepSeek, Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT help you analyze the logic behind viral content, then craft your own viral copy in your style. 2. Visual delivery: Don’t bother learning Photoshop; use Midjourney to generate images for your articles directly. You'll feel a sense of satisfaction like, "I used to spend 3 days on this, now I can get a draft in 3 minutes." The first step is to establish a basic understanding of AI and practical operation, letting it integrate into your career.
Step two: Learn to ask questions—that is, train your ability to give "military orders." The strength of AI depends on how solid your logic in your mind is. If you ask like an idiot, it will give you garbage. Practical advice: define roles for it. Don’t ask "What should I do?" Instead, give it a definition, for example, "You are now a senior xx expert with 10 years of experience. Based on XX logic, help me analyze xx's xx." You can break down a big task into A, B, C. For example, if you want to write a professional article, break it into: 1. Gather information—2. Extract pain points—3. Rewrite catchy phrases. This operational process trains your engineering thinking, which is also what we mentioned earlier as a mathematical mindset.
Step three: Build an "intelligent agent workflow" to achieve "violent expansion" of personal capabilities. This is the key to transforming from an executor to a "one-person company" architect. AI guru Andrew Ng also mentioned that the future trend for ordinary people is "intelligent agent workflows." Simply put, treat AI as an employee, give it a series of clear instructions, and let it automatically complete a full task process. You can start by linking small tasks: for example, ask AI to first gather news in a certain field, then summarize it, and finally generate a social media post based on the summary.
Building your own "intelligent agent" sounds high-end, but it can be very simple. For example, you can organize your own "prompt library" for repetitive tasks like writing weekly reports, making plans, or coding, forming fixed instruction templates to let AI do it with one click. First, try solving practical problems in your work and life with AI. Think about the most tedious and time-consuming parts of your work or life, and try to optimize them with AI. For example, use AI to automatically fill out reports, look up information, or handle emails.
Practical tools include: search tools like Perplexity, writing tools like DeepSeek, and chaining tools like n8n for publishing on platforms like Weibo.
Step four: Create value with AI and realize monetization. Once you're proficient in using AI to improve efficiency, you can try turning it into a source of income. First, use AI to boost your main job—improve your work efficiency by 10 times. For example, designers quickly generate images with AI, programmers use AI to assist coding, and operators generate content in bulk. The time saved is value. Second, develop side businesses with AI skills—offer paid services like "AI ghostwriting," "AI drawing," or "AI short video production" on platforms like Xianyu or freelance sites. Lastly, create content with AI: start an account to document your learning and usage process, share your experiences and tips, and grow from a beginner to an expert, or use AI to help you write professional industry content.
In summary, if you want to seize the AI trend, follow these steps: first, be a "player" and build AI intuition; then learn how to ask AI correctly; next, try building an intelligent agent workflow to automate your work; finally, create value with AI and monetize it. All trends ultimately aim to enhance your abilities and generate income—you need to use AI to make money. This trend has already begun; 2024 is the year of intelligent agents. Use AI to improve efficiency—whether in work, side businesses, or specific areas like copywriting and monetization efficiency.