RozAI: AI Literacy Without the Jargon

Roz, रोज़ Hindi (noun) - Everyday

This was the conversation between me and my dad a month ago,

(Here are some Telugu transcripts translated into English)

Dad: Arey edhaina manchi resource untey choodu ra AI nerchukodaniki
(Hey, find me a good resource to learn about AI)

Me: Okay, daddy nenu choosi cheptanu

(Okay, daddy let me find some)

Dad: Nerchukovali ra AI gurinchi improve avvali

(I have to learn AI, I need to improve)

I saw his eagerness to improve and learn, adding to that there's a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out) out on the internet.

I quickly made a quick google search as usual and found some, but none of them I found are simple enough, they are either too technical and most of the content in them are not even needed in day to day activities. So I thought: "Why don't I build one?", So I rolled up my sleeves and started working on it.

Background

My dad is a mechanical engineer, running his own contracting firm, has a decent exposure to internet, messaging tools, social media and has good English skills.

When I looked around, there are people with similar skill-sets right in my family (my uncles and aunts). I'm a computer science graduate and been coding and building stuff from almost 10 years, it is also my responsibility to teach and simplify stuff for people, I did that back in school when I worked as a Tutor, a TA (at UWM). Let's dive in.

I initially sent out a form across my family circle to know what are the expectations and what are people afraid of.

A quick glance at the results of the survey -

• Barriers

  • Don't know where to start

  • Lack of time

  • Lack of Confidence

  • Too Technical

• Digital Literacy

  • Most of them are comfortable with basic tasks (use a smartphone, search the internet for information, basic troubleshooting, install and signup for apps)

  • Most of them could follow instructions, but struggle when problems

• Security and Privacy Concerns

  • Personal Information

  • Deepfake/Scam anxiety

Philosophies

There are a certain philosophies I considered before I started building the application -

• The users shouldn't probably visit the app again
  Yes, This website is for empowering people and remove their fear for tech/AI. So if done right, they would probably be able to use AI and at the same time don't need any new courses/places to learn how to use AI from.

• Learn by Doing, Not Reading
  I can obviously can't fully have no reading content. The nature of the chat based UI, is making people habituated to reading. So I need to have interactive plus reading material, where the content pushes them to use AI apps.

• No Jargon with Justification.
  They don't know what is machine learning or AI is.

• Healthy Skepticism over Blind Trust.
  People blindly trusted Google search results for health info. AI is even more convincing for health, financial and legal info. So take them with a grain of salt.

• Visual and Fun.
  People easily get bored or overwhelmed with a lot of text The content needs to keep them engaged

Now that I have my principles set, before I start building the application. I wanted to know if I'm missing anything. I need to wear my Product thinking hat, so I interviewed my mom, dad and my uncle to check what are some boring day to day tasks that could be automated.

Once I have the clear picture of what needs to be done, I summoned Claude Code agent to build out my application, carefully crafting the content, running out of my daily token limit, waiting for it to be reset. It took me some 2 odd weeks to finally announce - RozAI.

What's more to come?

• Indic languages support - Telugu, Hindi, and probably Tamil.

• More chapters - AI for Work, More info on scams, optional video content for specific languages.

Roz AI is just getting started. Hey, more is coming! Please do leave feedback!