Extract insights, not just information

Welcome to Prompt, Tinker, Innovate—my AI playground. Each edition gives you a hands-on experiment that shows how AI can sharpen your thinking, streamline your process, and power up your creative work.

This week’s playground: Use AI to extract meaning, not just information

Why this matters

We’ve all been there: buried in a 30-page report, trying to pull out a few key stats for a presentation or make sense of the main argument. But too often, we either miss the good stuff—or can’t connect the dots fast enough to use it.

AI can help you not only find relevant data points, but also explain why they matter, how they support the main idea, and what they reveal when viewed together. That’s insight you can actually use—to shape content, clarify your thinking, or build a sharper case.

Use case spotlight: AI for pulling the right threads

It’s not about speed—it’s about substance.

Whether you're prepping for a pitch, writing a piece, or digging into a dense research paper, you don’t just need facts. You need the right facts, with clear meaning and strategic relevance.

AI tools can help you extract:

• Critical stats that strengthen your story

• Surprising contradictions worth exploring

• Patterns that unlock deeper understanding

Your AI experiment: Try this prompt

👉 Time to tinker: Copy and paste the prompt below into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or your favorite AI tool. Then feed it a long report, research doc, or even a dense email thread. It’s perfect for surfacing what matters most.

📝 Prompt: "Extract the important data points from this document. For each one:

1. Clearly state the specific data point or statistic

2. Explain why this information is significant

3. Describe how it relates to the document’s main purpose

4. Note any connections between data points that reveal deeper insights"

Paste in your document after the prompt—or upload a file if your AI tool supports it.

💡 Pro tip: Want to make it even more useful? Try these refinements:

• “Group the insights into themes like performance, sentiment, or risk.”

• “Highlight any contradictions or shifts over time.”

• “Summarize which three insights are most actionable.”

What did you discover?

Did AI help bring clarity to the chaos? Did it surface a connection you hadn’t seen before?