I'm trying to import ai files into Inkscape and I get an error message that it could not download the file. Other than purchasing AI, how can I import ai files into Inkscape. I cannot even pull these into Adobe Reader. I'm new to all of this and could really use some laymen assistance urgently. thanks.

Do you have the ai file on your computer? What do you mean you couldn't download it?

Inkscape can open ai files, just open Inkscape, go to File > Open and choose the file you want to open.

If you can't do that maybe you're missing a dependancy, try checking your extensions-errors.log file that is somewhere in your Inkscape directory (on linux it's in ~/.config/inkscape).