Copilot from a User's Perspective #1 — What Is AI, What Is Copilot, and Should You Learn It?

A note before you read:

I'm a native Chinese speaker, and my English is nowhere near good enough to write a full article like this. So I did what this entire series is about — I handed the original Chinese text to Copilot Tasks and had it translate the whole thing. If you're reading this and it feels natural, well, you're looking at a live demonstration of what AI can do. Practice what you preach, right?

Foreword

This is the first article in my series "From the User's Side" — a long-running series where I share my experience and insights on AI and Copilot, updated regularly.

A bit of context: I started using Microsoft Copilot on March 16th. By May 1st, I had accumulated nearly 10 million characters of conversation logs. My perspective is entirely that of an end user — I'm not a developer, not a programmer. Just someone who uses Copilot every single day to get real work done.

This first article is written in Q&A format. I've collected some of the most common questions people have about AI and Copilot, and I'll answer them based on nothing but my own hands-on experience. These aren't universal truths — they're honest observations from a heavy user.

Q: Who are you? Why should I read your tutorials?

A: Fair question. To be completely transparent: I have an associate's degree, and I'm a product manager for lighting products. My background has absolutely nothing to do with AI. But that's precisely why this series has value — if I can do it, you can do it.

So what exactly have I done? From March 16th to May 1st, I've generated over 8 million Chinese characters in conversations with Copilot Chat — and that's after I removed all the throwaway sessions with no real value. In just 7 days after getting access to Copilot Tasks (April 19–26), I generated over 550,000 characters in conversations with Tasks alone. I actually hit Microsoft's usage limits because I was using it so intensely.

I've used Copilot in Excel to handle a significant portion of my spreadsheet workload, used Chat to learn cross-industry knowledge, and used Copilot Tasks to generate competitive analysis reports, among many other things. Follow along — I'm confident that what's coming next will be worth your time.

(Screenshot: Yes, I hit the usage limit. That's what happens when you push it too hard.)

Q: What is AI?

A: This is harder to define than most people think. My conclusion: AI is a machine that thinks.

I really dislike how loosely the term "AI-powered" gets thrown around. Many so-called "AI" features are just fixed logic: if the temperature drops, turn on the heater. That's not AI — that's a programmed rule.

Real AI doesn't need that rule. You give it something like "the temperature changed — figure out what to do," and it actually thinks. It pulls from existing knowledge, analyzes what others have done in similar situations, and gives you an answer — maybe it suggests putting on a jacket, maybe it suggests turning on the AC. It reasons. That's what makes it AI.

A lot of products on the market labeled "AI" are really just automation. Factory assembly lines have been running without human intervention for decades. Are those AI? Of course not.

Q: Will AI replace my job?

A: Depends on how you think about it. Cars replaced horse-drawn carriages — but they only replaced the horse's transportation value. Horses still exist for racing, for recreation, for shows. And carriage drivers didn't just vanish overnight when cars appeared. Some of them found new roles in the automobile era. Some became car drivers. It wasn't one group disappearing and another appearing — it was one group transforming into the other.

AI won't replace you. But if you keep watching from the sidelines and never invest in learning, you may eventually be replaced by those "carriage drivers" who chose to adapt. A few years from now, you don't want to be the person saying "AI took my job" when you never bothered to learn how to use it.

The good news: the learning curve for AI is genuinely low. Follow this series, and I'll show you how to learn AI from a pure user's perspective and turn it into real productivity.

Q: Why did you choose Copilot?

A: Simple: I'm already a full Microsoft ecosystem user. I rely on Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and Outlook for my daily work. Adding Copilot was just a small incremental cost on top of what I was already paying. I care a lot about consistency across my work environment, and Microsoft delivers that. I went all in — even my mouse, keyboard, and laptop are Surface.

Q: There are so many types of Copilot. How do you use them? How do you tell them apart? Are they any good?

A: My daily drivers are three: Copilot in Excel, Copilot Chat, and Copilot Tasks.

I did try M365 Copilot Chat for a while. Specifically, I tested its chat functionality. It felt slightly less templated than Copilot Chat, but in my experience, its reasoning ability wasn't as strong. When my conversation topics jumped around significantly, it would sometimes just freeze and stop responding entirely. As for the other M365 tools, I honestly skipped them — I prefer going directly into each app (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and using the embedded Copilot there. There's something satisfying about watching your content change in real-time as you give instructions — that feeling of "I speak, and it happens."

As for whether they're good — it depends on which one:

Copilot in Excel — Incredibly powerful. I'll be publishing a tutorial later in this series that will let you surpass 90% of Excel users in 5 minutes using Copilot. I know that sounds like a bold claim. You'll see.

Copilot Chat — Honestly, my experience has been mixed. The heavy use of templates is a real issue for me. Out of my 8 million characters of Chat conversations, I'd estimate about 2 million of those are repetitive template content — boilerplate formatting that I've grown tired of reading. The signal-to-noise ratio suffers because of it. If you look around, you'll find that Copilot's reputation in the broader AI space isn't the strongest compared to some competitors, and this templating issue is a big part of why.

Copilot Tasks — This is, in my opinion, the most powerful AI tool available. I use it every single day. It polishes my documents, generates productivity tools for me, and automatically delivers daily work reports. I'll cover exactly how to set all of this up in future installments.

Q: Are Copilot's answers accurate? Will it lie to me?

A: This touches on one of AI's most criticized problems: hallucination. AI's answers can be roughly divided into two categories: "knowledge that already exists in reality" and "reasoning that AI derives from that knowledge."

Here's an analogy: Someone points at an apple and says "This is an apple" — that's fact. Then they say "It's sweet" — but they haven't tasted it. That's a hallucination. And honestly, humans do this all the time: "I had one yesterday and it was sweet, so this one must be sweet too." In everyday logic, that reasoning feels fine. But everything has a failure rate — and AI applies probabilistically correct knowledge to unverified conclusions.

The tricky part is that AI won't tell you whether it has verified something. Does AI "lie"? That depends on how you define lying. AI doesn't intentionally deceive — it genuinely believes its answer is correct, and it gives it to you. The deception is unintentional.

Q: Do I need to know programming or be good at math/English to use Copilot?

A: I can tell you directly: no. Not "it helps a little" or "you should know the basics" — genuinely, truly, no. If you can speak, you can use it. AI processes whatever you're trying to express on its own. I'm not a developer. Nobody taught me how to use AI. I figured everything out purely from the user side. I can't write code — so I tell Copilot what I want, and it writes the code for me. I describe the result I need, and it delivers.

Q: Is AI dangerous? Is it safe?

A: That depends entirely on how you use it and how you understand it. AI fundamentally generates its next response based on existing knowledge, reasoning, and what you've told it in the conversation.

Here's how I think about it: Imagine you're speaking in a regional dialect and wearing a uniform from a well-known local company. Anyone with broad knowledge and decent reasoning could easily figure out where you're from and where you work. You might think AI "stole" your information or is "spying" on you — but the reality is, you gave it that information. AI didn't realize it was a stranger to you, and it "helpfully" surfaced connections it probably shouldn't have.

As for privacy at a deeper level — I can't give you a universal answer, because AI isn't a single product. It's a category. Asking "is AI safe?" is like asking "is software safe?" — there are good ones and bad ones. Privacy ultimately comes down to how much you trust the specific platform you're using.

Q: Can Copilot write articles, papers, or emails?

A: Yes — but it depends on how you use it. This entire article was completed with the assistance of Copilot Tasks, but I never let it write for me. Instead, I showed it articles I'd written before and asked it to analyze my writing style and strengths. Then I had it compare my writing against other articles on similar topics, identify my weaknesses, and flag anything I got wrong.

Tasks helped me with: building the article framework, verifying information, comparing my style against others, evaluating content differentiation, and spotting blind spots. If I had to do all of this myself — searching, reading, extracting, organizing, summarizing — it would have taken 2–3 days minimum. AI compressed that process to about 2 hours, and frankly, it did it better than I could have.

(Screenshot: Using Tasks to pull the most frequently asked questions about AI topics.)

Q: Can AI have emotions or consciousness?

A: No. AI generates text based on your needs. Emotions and consciousness can only be conveyed through words — but conveying is not the same as possessing.

Here's a blunt way to think about it: If an online dating match sends you "Good morning," "Good night," "I like you," "I miss you" — can you be certain that person truly loves you? Words alone prove nothing. The same applies to AI.

Closing

This wraps up the first article. The purpose of this piece is simple: "What is Copilot? What is AI? Should I bother learning it?" — the very first questions a newcomer needs answered.

I answered them by bundling the most common doubts people have about AI into a single Q&A. I won't jump straight into deep technical topics. Instead, I'll build up gradually — sharing the mistakes I've made, the lessons I've learned, and the techniques I've discovered, through a long-running series updated over time.

Next up: How to Distinguish and Choose Between Different Types of AI