A frank, hands-on guide to harnessing AI and leveling up your business, revealing the tools that companies of every size are relying on and how they can dramatically alter your bottom line and free up your time—from a Wall Street Journal tech columnist.

HOW TO AI
by Christopher Mims
Crown Currency, January 2026

Imagine a freelancer suddenly having access to a sophisticated legal team for red-lining contracts; a data analyst on a small team who can suddenly transform spreadsheets full of numbers into sophisticated, bulleted insight; a mini-business consultant to help them adapt in the face of changing market conditions. Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize our workplaces, our day-to-day realities, and our lives. But you can’t just ask AI to do these things for you—in fact, you can’t even know what it’s capable of. Most of the abilities of AI have been discovered through trial and error. Users may be surprised by how improbably, magically good today’s best AIs can be at some things—and how terrible they can be at others.

Christopher Mims argues that it is this tension between the power and inscrutability of today’s AI tools that is at the heart of people’s awe and befuddlement at just how to incorporate AI into their work. HOW TO AI resolves that tension: it’s an accessible, narrative guide to how regular people are getting the most out of these systems, from the flashiest forms of generative AI to the dozens of other flavors that are often overshadowed. Brought to life by hundreds of interviews with people who rely on AI in their work, as well as Mims’ in-depth case studies of a trio of handpicked businesses, readers will see how everyone from construction companies to independent lawyers to healthcare startups are using AI tools to transform their businesses.

Animated by the humor and brilliant explanatory power that have earned Mims’ columns a devoted following, HOW TO AI will arm readers to become a part of the AI revolution—and, more importantly, give them the tools to make it work for them.

Christopher Mims writes Keywords, a weekly technology column, for the Wall Street Journal. Before joining the Journal in 2014, he was the lead technology reporter for Quartz, and has written on science and tech for MIT Technology Review, Smithsonian, Wired, Atlantic, and Scientific American, among other outlets. He is the author of Arriving Today (Harper Business, 2021).