Welcome to the World of AI

The Goal

By the end of this chapter you will know what AI is, what it can and cannot do for you, and how this book will take you from your first question to your own projects. You will also write down one personal goal that you will carry through the book.

Before we start: who is talking to you

My name is Martin Hoffmann. For most of my working life I have made films, including international documentaries such as Rhythm Is It. I live in Kenya.

AI came into my life early, and for a very personal reason. I was a good student, but I have dyslexia. For years, every letter and every important message I wrote had to be corrected by someone else before I could send it. With AI, for the first time, I could correct my own writing. That was my first real benefit from AI, and a lasting one: all that daily practice has made my dyslexia much milder over the years. It also made me curious. I started testing what else these tools could do: first research for my projects, then audio, images, and now video — scenes that once needed a whole crew.

Today I use AI every day. I often show my drafts to a second AI and ask for its critique. When you are deep inside a piece of work, solving one small problem after another, you easily lose sight of the whole. A second view, from a person or from an AI, helps against that.

I am not going to promise you that AI will make you rich. I will show you how to use it well, how to check what it tells you, and how to turn it into real value for your life and work.

In Part V you will meet my co-author, Amb. Bramwel W. Kisuya. He has worked with cooperatives for more than thirty years: as a lecturer of cooperative philosophy at the Cooperative College of Kenya, as education and training officer in Kenya’s savings and credit movement, and as Kenya’s Ambassador to Spain, where he led the first official visit to the Mondragon cooperatives. He is the author of The Power of Values-Based Cooperatives for Workers. He will show you something AI alone cannot give you: how people build strength together.

Meet Faith and Kevin

Two people will learn alongside you in this book.

Faith Wanjiru is 20 and lives in Nairobi. She finished secondary school last year and is looking for work. She has a smartphone, a limited data bundle, and a lot of determination. She is quick with apps, but she has never used AI for anything serious.

Kevin Wafula is 31 and lives in Bungoma. He runs a small shop with an M-Pesa agency and trades maize on the side. He knows his customers by name. He has heard about AI on the radio and thinks it is “for people in offices”.

You will watch them try things, get stuck, make mistakes and improve. Their mistakes are there so you don’t have to make them yourself.

Understand: what AI actually is

When people say “AI” today, they mostly mean tools you can talk to in normal language. You type or speak a question, and the tool answers in full sentences. These tools are called AI assistants or chatbots.

Here is the most important thing to understand from the start: an AI assistant does not know things the way a person does. It has learned patterns from a huge amount of text. When you ask it something, it produces the answer that most likely fits your question, word by word. Chapter 2 explains how this works.

This has two consequences:

• It is very good at language. Explaining, summarising, drafting, translating, rewriting, brainstorming, structuring your thoughts.
• It can be confidently wrong. If it doesn’t know something, it may still produce an answer that sounds right. Experts call this a hallucination.

Think of AI as a very fast, very well-read assistant who never gets tired — but who sometimes invents things and never tells you when. You stay the boss. You decide what is useful and what is true.

What AI can do for you — and what it can’t

Three myths we can drop right now

“AI is only for experts and people in offices.” You need a phone, a data bundle and the ability to ask a clear question. Everything else you will learn in this book.

“AI knows everything.” It doesn’t. It is a tool that predicts language. You will learn to check its answers in Chapter 7.

“AI will take all the jobs.” AI changes work. Some tasks disappear, new ones appear. The people who gain most are those who learn to use it well and combine it with skills AI doesn’t have: trust, local knowledge, relationships, judgement.

Which tools you can use

You don’t need to pay to start. Several AI assistants have free versions that work in a phone browser or as an app.

Checked: October 2026. All four are available in Kenya, free, with an Android app. Free limits and features change often, sometimes several times a year — the online library on Missing Linkk Learn shows the current details.

A note on data: text conversations use very little data. Sending photos, voice messages or asking for images uses much more. If your bundle is small, start with text.

How this book works

Every chapter follows the same method. You will use it for small tasks at the start and for whole business plans at the end:

1. Define the goal — What do I want to achieve?
2. Understand the tool — What can it do here, and where are its limits?
3. Apply the method — How do I use it in practice?
4. Verify the result — Is it correct, complete and useful?
5. Create value — How do I use the result in my life or work?

Most lessons contain the same boxes: an explanation, an example with Faith or Kevin, an exercise, a prompt you can copy, a checklist, and a real task. The prompts are tested and updated regularly. The newest versions are always on Missing Linkk Learn.

Each box has its own small icon, so you can find your way when you flip through the book. The chapter illustrations and the photographs that open each part were created with AI image tools. The diagrams were built with Claude as vector graphics, so their text can be updated and translated.

See It in Action

Faith opens an AI assistant on her phone for the first time. She types:

what is AI

She gets a long, general answer about computers, machine learning and the history of technology. It is correct, but it doesn’t help her. She almost closes the app.

Then she tries again, and this time she tells the assistant who she is and what she wants:

I am 20, I live in Nairobi and I’m looking for my first job. I only have a smartphone. Explain in simple words how AI could help me find work. Give me three examples I can try today.

This time the answer is short and practical: help with her CV, preparing for an interview by practising questions, and writing a polite message to a company. Faith has just learned the most important lesson of Part I: the more you tell the AI about yourself and your goal, the more useful the answer.

Kevin has a different first experience. A customer asks him what maize sells for this week in Bungoma. He decides to ask AI:

What is the price of a 90kg bag of maize in Bungoma today?

The assistant answers with a specific number in Kenyan shillings. It sounds very sure. Kevin is impressed — until he checks with two traders at the market. The real price is quite different.

The AI didn’t lie on purpose. It has no access to today’s market in Bungoma, so it produced a number that sounded plausible. Kevin has just learned the second lesson: AI is a strong helper for thinking and writing, but not a source of local, current facts. He still uses it the same afternoon — to write a clear WhatsApp message to his customers about his new stock.

Try It Yourself

Open any AI assistant and have your first short conversation. Ask three things:

1. A question about something you already know well. Check how good the answer is.
2. A request to explain something you don’t understand, “in simple words”.
3. A request to write a short message for you — for example to a friend, a customer or a teacher.

Notice where the AI was helpful, and where it was vague or wrong.

Copy & Paste Prompt

Fill in the parts in [brackets], then paste the prompt into your AI assistant.

I am [age] years old and live in [town], Kenya.
Right now I [study / work as ... / run a small business selling ... / am looking for work].
I want to understand how AI could help me with [your goal].

Please give me 5 concrete ways AI could help me.
For each one:
- explain it in one or two simple sentences
- give me one example of what I could type into an AI assistant

They must work on a smartphone with a limited data bundle.
If you are not sure about something specific to Kenya, say so clearly instead of guessing.

Improve the Result

The first answer is rarely the best one. Continue the conversation:

• “Make it simpler.” or “Explain number 3 in more detail.”
• “Which of these could earn me money? Be realistic.”
• “Answer in Kiswahili.”
• “I don’t have a computer. Which of these still work for me?”

You don’t need to start again. The AI remembers the conversation and builds on it.

Check Your Work

• Did the answer fit my situation, or was it general?
• Did it contain facts, numbers or prices? Have I checked them somewhere else?
• Did it say when it wasn’t sure?
• Is there at least one idea I can actually try this week?

Apply It: your goal for this book

Write down one goal you want to reach with the help of AI. Keep it real and concrete.

• Faith writes: “Find my first paid work within three months.”
• Kevin writes: “Find two new customer groups for my maize business.”

Write your goal on paper or in a note on your phone. We will come back to it in Part III and Part IV.

Key Takeaways

• AI assistants are tools that work with language. They predict answers; they don’t know things the way people do.
• They are strong at explaining, writing and structuring. They are weak at current, local facts.
• The more you tell the AI about yourself and your goal, the more useful the answer.
• Always check facts, numbers and prices yourself. You stay responsible.
• You can start today, on your phone, for free.