DEV Community: 熊钊

From Dialog Box to Cyber Assistant

熊钊 — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:04:21 +0000

Translated from Chinese.

Preface

After getting into AI, I realized there are many types — or more precisely, under different packaging, AI comes in so many forms that it's overwhelming. So in this article, based on my own experience, I'll provide a user‑perspective classification of current AI tools for your reference.

I believe the value of AI lies in collaboration and productivity. Therefore, I roughly divide the AI tools I frequently use into four categories: Chat AI, Tool AI, Search AI, and Agent AI.

Chat AI is like a knowledgeable, sharp‑minded colleague who is a bit wordy and not good with their hands. It can think with you, but when it comes to taking action, it can't get the job done.

Tool AI is like the notebook, drawing board, or toolbox on your desk. It usually works only in a specific vertical domain and has very little conversational functionality.

Agent AI is a knowledgeable, sharp‑minded, concise assistant that can also get work done for you.

Search AI is like a folder that organizes all your files for you, making them easy to find.

Chat AI

Form: Usually a relatively clean dialog box. Open it and you can start talking. Different companies' AIs have different language styles.

Market positioning: This type of AI is the most popular, most common, and has the lowest barrier to entry. Doubao, Grok, ChatGPT, and the Copilot Chat I use all fall into this category. They generally have little hands‑on ability (can't read/process files or generate files); the best they can do is generate images. But that doesn't mean they are useless — you can ask one to check the weather or crawl the entire web for information, for example: "What are the popular conversational AIs on the market, and what are their reputations?"

How to choose: Most people never push AI to its limit. The differences you can feel are mostly in the manufacturer's language style settings (warmer vs. cooler tone), the logic for handling problems (prioritizing reasoning vs. retrieval), and capability boundaries (whether it can generate light documents, context length, companionship features, safety‑restriction differences, etc.). Then there are price and ecosystem. For example, I'm a Microsoft ecosystem user; by paying a bit more I get Copilot, unlocking chat functionality, Tasks capabilities, and Copilot integration in other apps within the ecosystem.

Summary: Chat AI has a low barrier to entry. For most people, there's no huge gap in capability — the biggest difference lies in the conversational experience, unless you are a deep user like me. You should choose based on the style you like (more companion‑like vs. cooler, more talkative vs. less talkative). So if you don't have a strong urge to learn about AI, every platform actually offers some free quota. You can try them out — even use 10 free queries from one platform and 10 free queries from another — hop from one to the other and enjoy the benefits for free.

Tool AI

Form: Specializes in a specific vertical domain, such as video generation, image generation, or code generation. The advantage is that it understands your language in the direction of its own capability, making the information more focused. But its chat functionality is weak — how can a tool chat?

Market positioning: There are many types of this kind of AI. My Copilot embedded in Excel falls into this category. Why is Tool AI the type most likely to replace humans? Because they reduce the "execution barrier" in a vertical domain directly to zero. In the past, you needed to master 80% of Excel functions to complete a complex spreadsheet, or years of artistic skill to storyboard a short drama. Now, you only need clear input. It's not taking away your job — it's taking away the premium that used to go to those "who only mastered basic execution tools but lack structured thinking."

A colleague of mine used to spend 7 out of 8 hours writing code, and still might produce buggy, messy code. Now he spends 1 hour explaining clearly what he wants, then takes it easy. He writes code faster, with fewer bugs. At the same time, AI‑generated short dramas have already reduced the market demand for short‑drama actors.

How to choose: Look at how relevant it is to your work. I work with spreadsheets often, so I don't need image or video generation tools. I use Copilot inside Excel to get most of my work done. Copilot in Excel has cut my spreadsheet‑related work time by at least 70%.

Summary: Choose this type of tool based on your needs — you don't have to have one. But it is the category that truly gives you the immediate feeling that "AI is gradually replacing humans."

Search AI

Form: Usually embedded inside a search engine. It summarizes based on what you search for, giving you more efficient results.

Market positioning: This type of AI often goes unnoticed — because it doesn't converse with you; it just summarizes. You think you haven't given any instruction, but when you type something and hit Enter, it's already activated.

How to choose: There's not much to choose — it depends on which browser you use. You wouldn't switch browsers just for one feature. Moreover, it usually can only summarize the content it finds — if the search results are messy (e.g., ads, misinformation), the summary will be messy too. Don't worry too much about this choice. It's unlikely you would abandon a browser you're comfortable with just because another one has this feature.

Summary: This type of AI is usually free; it's just a feature enhancement that search engines add to their own browsers. It is the only type of AI that "doesn't invite you to participate" — all others involve some interaction with you. Moreover, it is a "non‑reasoning, summarizing AI." To some extent, it can avoid the hallucinations caused by reasoning, which is one reason Perplexity is well‑liked.

Agent AI

Form: This type of AI is usually more than just a dialog box. It connects to your email, calendar, browser, cloud storage, and other tools. You can tell it, "Check tomorrow's meeting schedule for me and send an email reminder to my colleagues." It will then look through the calendar, write the email, and send it — rather than giving you a block of text for you to do it yourself. Some agents can even execute tasks in the background and notify you when they're done. It possesses the closed‑loop ability to autonomously break down tasks and call external tools.

Market positioning: If Chat AI is a colleague who only offers ideas, then Agent AI is an assistant that actually gets work done for you. This is currently the fastest‑growing and most closely watched direction in AI, because it solves the problem of moving from "talking" to "doing." There are already many consumer‑grade agent products on the market. For example, the Copilot Tasks I use, OpenAI's ChatGPT with Agent Mode, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude have all introduced agents. In China, ByteDance's Coze lets you build your own agents (the previous ones bring the food to your table; this one is more like giving you a kitchen). There are plenty of tutorials online, and the barrier to entry is not too high.

However, this track is still very early. In practice, stability, accuracy, and the ability to handle complex tasks are far from the point where you can "completely let go." I often encounter misunderstandings, operation failures, and situations that need correction. So today's Agent AI is more like an intern that needs supervision, not a fully trustworthy veteran. But even so, it is already a big step ahead of Chat AI — at least it's willing to take action.

How to choose: Choosing an Agent AI is more complex than choosing Chat AI. Its core value isn't "how well it chats," but "what it can connect to and what it can operate." You need to see which of your daily tools it can integrate with. A Microsoft ecosystem user will find Copilot Tasks smooth; a Google ecosystem user will go with Gemini. This isn't grocery shopping — it's buying a phone. You really need to choose carefully based on your habits.

Summary

Agent AI is the most worthwhile AI tool to learn about right now. Tool AI is just a single point; Agent AI is the whole plane (though in vertical domains, it may not offer a better experience than Tool AI). It is the only category that can most fundamentally change "how humans collaborate with AI." It is still very young, and the experience is not yet mature. When choosing, don't look at whose experience is more mature — look at how well it fits your work. Even if you tell me Google's experience is the best, I wouldn't give up the Microsoft ecosystem for it.

Above are the four types of AI tools classified from a user perspective. The fastest to experience is Chat AI; the most intuitive way to feel the changes of the AI era is through Tool AI. But if you are willing to spend time learning and adapting, the efficiency gains from Agent AI are something the other three categories cannot match.

However, Agent AI often has a relatively high barrier to entry, and you may not be clear about its capability boundaries. Jumping in recklessly will only lead to unnecessary expenses. Later, I will write specific practical cases so everyone can directly experience how AI helps with productivity.

Medium：@dskeke

After 11.5M Words of Hands-On AI, Here's What I Learned

熊钊 — Tue, 26 May 2026 15:30:06 +0000

Translated from Chinese.

Preface

I only have a junior college degree, and I work as a lighting product manager — a field completely unrelated to AI. Yet that is precisely where the value lies: if I can do it, so can you.

From March 6, 2026, when I first encountered AI, until now, I have deeply experienced Copilot Chat, with over 10 million Chinese characters of interactive text. I have also deeply experienced Copilot Tasks, with over 1.5 million Chinese characters of interactive text. At the same time, I have conducted extensive interactions on both Gemini and Deepseek. This has given me a very deep hands-on understanding of AI.

Currently, I use AI extensively in my daily life, and it effectively improves my work efficiency. If you are interested in these aspects, you can follow me.

What Is AI? A Machine That Thinks

My conclusion is this: AI is a machine that thinks. You can understand AI as "a person who can think and has extremely broad knowledge." It can turn you into a "beginner" in a field within ten minutes, and a "knowledgeable person" in that industry within an hour. For example, I spent an hour understanding the wedding industry chain: ceremonies, wedding dresses, wedding photos, wedding planning, hotels… which parts are essential needs, and which are "IQ taxes."

If you searched for this content yourself, you would be drowned in the noise of fragmented information across the internet. In contrast, AI can help you integrate and build structured knowledge in a short time. Throw these questions at AI, go back and forth a few times, and you will feel the efficiency of learning with AI.

But we must also be careful: not everything that looks smart is AI. Although many things online claim to be "AI-powered," some are just fixed logic — for example, turning on the heater when it gets cold. That is just a program. AI, on the other hand, does not require you to write rules. You only need to say, "the temperature has changed, you should take corresponding measures." It will think for itself, integrate knowledge, and then tell you whether you should put on clothes or turn on the air conditioner — both are possible.

It can think — that is the real AI. Much of what is called AI on the market today is essentially just automation. Food assembly lines could operate automatically decades ago. Would you call that AI as well?

Will AI Replace My Job? Transform into a "Car Driver" of the New Era

Many people worry that AI will become so powerful in the future that it will replace them. But in fact, history has already presented us with such an era many times — for example, the advent of the steam engine, the automobile, and automation. Society still progressed, and the population continued to grow.

Take the transition from the horse-drawn carriage era as an example. The automobile replaced the "carrying value" of the horse, not the horse itself. Nor did carriage drivers disappear the moment cars appeared. Instead, some of them transitioned into becoming car drivers.

AI will not replace you. But it will be used by those willing to learn to replace "the you who does not learn." A few years from now, if you only complain that "AI took away my job" — what does that have to do with AI? AI has an extremely low learning cost and improves very quickly. There is no need to feel too much pressure. Starting to learn now is not late at all.

Learning AI: How You Express Yourself Matters More

From my experience and journey, I can tell you directly — learning AI has nothing to do with knowledge of programming, math, English, or similar subjects. Using AI well requires more of an ability to express yourself, rather than specific domain knowledge. Over‑relying on deterministic thinking, when facing large language models with emergent and fuzzy properties, becomes a self‑limiting constraint.

As long as you can speak, AI will break down and process your requests on its own. I cannot write code. I only tell it, "I want this effect," and it can achieve it. This may sound a bit mystical right now. AI is not a magical dragon — it cannot fulfill your wish of "give me 1 million dollars." But if you say, "give me a picture of a dog," AI can still do that.

Is Using AI Safe? How to Balance Efficiency and Security

Here we need to discuss how AI works. AI generates content based on: the information you provide + world knowledge + reasoning. If you reveal too much and are overly vigilant at the same time, you will perceive it as dangerous.

You are wearing the uniform of a well‑known local company, speaking the local dialect. If you also casually mention your commuting route and how long it takes, a person with strong reasoning skills could even accurately guess which residential complex you live in. You think they are "watching you," but in fact, all that information was voluntarily provided by you.

As for privacy concerns, that varies by platform. AI is a category, not a single product. Security depends on the platform you choose. Just like cloud storage, social media apps, or even mobile phones — who can be 100% certain they will never be attacked? The main point I want to make is that AI is just one form of software. If you are truly very worried, the best approach is simply not to give AI any important information.

Are AI's Answers Accurate? Understand the Boundary Between Restructuring and Inference

Many people who lack independent thinking treat everything AI says as gospel. In reality, the way (text‑based) AI works can be roughly divided into two types:

Restructuring and summarization — this is the most basic capability. The information here all comes from existing knowledge. AI is merely performing a summary.
Inference and guessing — this is AI's core capability. It makes guesses and inferences about phenomena based on existing knowledge and patterns. But it is only inference, not reality.

Example: I buy a bag of apples. AI thinks about this bag of apples.

Restructuring and summarization: This bag of apples weighs 2 kg. It contains 10 apples. 9 are ripe, and 1 is not yet ripe enough. This is a summarizable reality.
Inference and guessing: These apples are all sweet and taste good. This part is entirely inference and guessing. Because no one has tasted them — even if one apple is sweet, there is no way to guarantee every single apple is sweet.

Regarding control over AI's information, users must have their own standard of judgment. If truly unsure, ask AI to provide the source of the information.

Conclusion: Understand the Car Before the Streets Are Full of Cars

AI is truly a beneficial tool of our time. It is very useful and very quick to learn. In the future, its importance may become as great as the internet's. And right now, AI is still in its early stages. If you want to learn, now is a very good time.

Just like the earlier example of the horse‑drawn carriage and the car. When you see a car, you should already consider learning about it — not wait until the streets are full of cars before you think about acquiring knowledge related to them.

Medium: @dskeke