About Us

Hi, I'm J. Mercer — the person behind Ordinary AI Work.

I'm not an AI researcher, a prompt engineer, or a productivity guru. I'm just an ordinary worker who spends most evenings testing tools, reading documentation, and trying to figure out what actually helps when you're writing a report, planning a project, or learning something new.

I've worked in offices, libraries, and co-working spaces. I've been the person who "just tries the new tool" so everyone else doesn't have to. For the last few years, I've been documenting what happens when AI meets real deadlines, messy notes, and the kind of learning that happens on a Tuesday night after work.

Why I write here

Most AI content online falls into two camps: breathless hype or academic abstraction. Neither tells you whether a tool will save you ten minutes on a memo, or whether it will quietly produce nonsense that you then have to fix. I wanted a place for the middle ground — where the writing is personal, the testing is honest, and the conclusion is allowed to be "this part didn't work."

Ordinary AI Work is my notebook made public. I write about writing with AI, office workflows, self-directed learning, and the daily friction of using new tools without losing your own judgment. I don't accept sponsorships for tools I haven't used, and I don't pretend that a subscription is a substitute for thinking.

What I believe

I believe AI is most useful when it stays in the background — like a good pencil sharpener.

I believe human judgment is not a bottleneck to be automated away; it's the whole point.

And I believe that ordinary workers deserve honest, unglamorous answers about what these tools can and cannot do.

What you'll find here

Long-form experiments: Real tasks, real time spent, real conclusions — including the parts that failed.
Practical breakdowns: How to use AI for writing, planning, learning, and office drudgery without losing your voice.
The "human part": Where judgment, adaptation, and plain old trial-and-error still matter more than any model.
No hype, no doom: I'm neither a cheerleader nor a doomsayer. I'm just someone trying to get the work done.

A bit more about me

I live in a small city, work a regular job, and write here in the evenings. I have a background in the humanities, which means I care about words, ambiguity, and the limits of systems. I started using AI tools out of curiosity and stayed because some of them genuinely helped — and because the ones that didn't were just as interesting to write about.

When I'm not testing AI, I'm reading essays, taking long walks, and trying (slowly) to learn Italian. I believe in small tools, slow learning, and keeping a healthy skepticism toward anything that promises to change everything overnight.

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You can reach me at [email protected] — I read everything, though I'm slower to reply than an AI.

— J. Mercer,
ordinary worker & editor

Last revised · 2026-09-15 15:37