Last week I had the genuine pleasure of presenting an Introduction to AI at the Huron Rotary Club, and I want to start by saying thank you. The room was full, the questions were sharp, and the conversation kept going long after the formal part was over. That is exactly the kind of energy that makes presenting fun, and exactly the kind of community engagement that makes Huron the place it is.

For anyone who could not make it, or who wants a quick reference of what we covered, here is the recap.

What We Covered

The Basics: LLMs, Machine Learning, and What "AI" Actually Means

We started at the foundation. What is a large language model, what is machine learning, and where is the line between "AI" and the automation that has been quietly running in our lives for decades. The short version: traditional software follows rules a person wrote, and modern AI learns patterns from massive amounts of data and then predicts what comes next. That sounds simple, but it explains almost everything that feels surprising about ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the rest.

You Are Already Using AI Every Day (and Probably Do Not Know It)

This was the section that got the most "wait, really?" reactions. We talked through the AI that is already embedded in everyday tools:

  • The spam filter that quietly catches 99% of the garbage in your inbox.
  • The navigation app that estimates your arrival time based on traffic patterns it has learned from millions of other drivers.
  • The photo app that recognizes faces and groups your kids' pictures automatically.
  • The autocomplete in your text messages and email that finishes your sentences for you.
  • The fraud alert on your credit card that decided in milliseconds that the charge in another state probably was not you.

None of that is new. What is new is that the same kind of intelligence is now available as a tool you can talk to directly, in plain English, and ask to do real work for you.

Prompts and Prompt Writing

We spent a healthy chunk of time on prompts because this is where most people leave value on the table. A one line prompt gets a one line answer. A structured prompt gets a useful one. The simple pattern that works in almost every situation:

  • Role. Tell the AI who it is. "You are a marketing copywriter for a small Ohio law firm."
  • Task. Tell it exactly what to do. "Write a follow up email to a prospective client who scheduled a consultation."
  • Context. Give it the facts. "The client mentioned they are dealing with a probate issue and want to understand the timeline."
  • Format. Tell it how you want the answer. "Three short paragraphs, warm but professional, no jargon."

That four part pattern turns a generic chatbot reply into something you can actually send.

A Few Real Examples

We walked through live examples of the kinds of work small business owners and professionals are already doing with AI in 2026:

  • Drafting a customer email in seconds and editing it instead of writing from scratch.
  • Summarizing a long PDF or contract into the three things you actually need to know.
  • Turning a recorded meeting into a clean set of action items with owners and dates.
  • Generating first draft social media posts you can refine in your own voice.
  • Asking for help thinking through a decision when you do not have a colleague to bounce it off of.

The point was not "replace yourself with AI." The point was "give yourself an extra hour back every day."

Where This Is All Going

We closed with a look at where the next 12 to 24 months are headed for small and medium businesses. The big shift: customers are not just searching anymore. They are asking. They open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews and ask "who is the best estate attorney in Erie County?" and get a recommendation back. If your business is not built to be readable and citable by those AI assistants, you are invisible to a growing share of qualified buyers. That is the topic I am looking forward to digging into next time.

What Is Coming Next

I would love the chance to come back and go a layer deeper. The next session would focus on how small businesses can actually leverage AI to grow, including the alphabet soup that has come out of the AI search world: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), AIO (AI Optimization), and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). They are related but distinct, and they are the practical playbook for showing up when customers ask AI assistants for recommendations in your industry.

If anyone from the club wants to read ahead before then, we have written a plain English primer on Answer Engine Optimization that covers the foundation. And if you want to see what an AEO first build looks like in practice, the case study we put together for the Huron Yacht Club shows the same playbook applied to a local membership organization right here in town.

Thank You Again

Genuine thanks to the Huron Rotary Club for the invitation, the warm welcome, and the great questions. Service organizations like Rotary are part of what makes this town work, and getting to spend an hour with that group was a real privilege.

If you were in the room and want to keep the conversation going, or you missed it and want to hear about the next session, please drop me a line. Always happy to talk shop, AI or otherwise.