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The answers readers here click through on most.
Published answers, ranked by this site's own counting: clicks through each answer's affiliate links first, with the number of readers who handed the task to AI breaking ties, capped at ten. Computed on 16 August 2026. A click measures what readers act on, not how well AI does the task, and no verdict is touched by these numbers.
Counting went live on 12 August 2026, so the list is young: one answer carries a signal so far, and rows join as readers click.
Ranked by readers here
What the wider world uses AI for
This second list is not this site's counting. It is the most recent published research with a ranked list: Marc Zao-Sanders' 2025 study of thousands of real usage reports, published in Harvard Business Review in April 2025. Where this site has answered one of these uses, the answer is linked.
Therapy and companionship
Talking things through, on tap and without judgement.
Organising my life
Plans, schedules, routines and the nagging that keeps them.
Finding purpose
Working out what matters and what to do about it.
Enhanced learning
Explaining anything, at whatever level you ask for.
Generating code
Writing software from a plain description of what it should do.
Generating ideas
Brainstorming names, angles, gifts, plans and openings.
Fun and nonsense
Jokes, games, songs and things that exist purely to amuse.
Improving code
Debugging, reviewing and refactoring what already exists.
Creativity
Stories, lyrics, images and drafts that start from nothing.
Healthier living
Meal plans, training plans and habit tracking.
Source: Zao-Sanders, "How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025", Harvard Business Review, April 2025. Worth knowing alongside it: measured usage logs, such as Anthropic's Economic Index, skew far more heavily toward software and writing tasks than self-reported lists do; both are real, they measure different things.