I recently had a friend ask what AI tools I was using these days. I was surprised at how many of them I came up with. It was like checking your home wi-fi router and finding out how many devices in your home use it.
Here’s the list I compiled. It will be interesting to re-visit the question – and this list – every six months or so to see what’s new and what changed.
Alexa – using this an Echo screen for timers, quick answers, and home devices like lights and front door Ring cam views
Siri – using less often, mainly because between my watch, phone, iPad, laptop and HomePods, the wrong device always tries to jump up and answer.
Between the two of these, Siri has the most “false activations” from movies and TV shows I’m watching. Alexa claims to have an upgrade that allows for more conversational prompting, but I still have to talk to it Like. A. Three. Year. Old. Neither one has lived up to their promise from the ads. You know the ones, where the family is getting ready in the morning with Mom, Dad and the kids all asking the helpful home device for stuff and getting great answers. When in reality, someone always interrupts in the middle of a prompt question, screwing up everything until fists and f-bombs start flying.
Google – I’ve found Google’s AI responses to search (from just typing in a safari browser URL field) is quite useful. Probably the most useful upgrade to their search capabilities in years. I use it many times a day.
Cursor – I was dabbling in mobile app development using this tool. I liked being able to just talk to it like I would an engineer on staff, and off it would go. I also liked getting little status upgrades as it was chugging along – unlike said engineers. What I did not like was the lack of QA testing. The engine would proclaim success and I would run it and start finding stuff was wrong or something that previously worked was now broken. I found I spent a LOT of time finding bugs and flaws that should never have passed a check. Another downer was working in multiple sessions. I found the engine would “forget” all the progress made in the last session and we’d have to backtrack across a lot of covered ground. So much so that I had to specifically prompt it to annotate the work done so far, what the current state is and what is left to do, as well as the plan to go forward. Then, in a “new” session, it was like handing off to another engineer and having to get them up to speed on the previous work.
Limitless (and Pendant) – I use Limitless for taking notes in online meetings. It does a great job of summarizing, pulling out action items and next steps from a lot of yakking. Would like to “attend” with an AI looped video rendition of myself looking interested for these meetings with Limitless running and just get the summary in an email. Would save me a lot of time and having to pause video while yawning uncontrollably.
The Pendant is a physical necklace that has made doctor visits with my 87 yr old mom go so much smoother. The summaries are very handy for keeping the rest of my family up to speed, and if he mentions medications and dosages, it does a great job of spelling and pointing those out in the notes. If I still attended in-person meetings, I’d be using this there as well.
ChatGPT – First to confess I’m probably just scraping the surface of what this can really do. In my current gig, I’m helping customize an instance of the open-source SuiteCRM (a Hubspot clone) – ChatGPT has absorbed all of SuiteCRM’s knowledge-base and has been very helpful in providing not just answers but code snips for creating bespoke logic hooks where needed. I also use it for spec comparisons when shopping for tech gear. I recently had it make a comparison chart between a number of Mac-compatible video capture devices (some I specified, some it suggested) with all the key specs and prices. Quite handy. I’ve also used it for “I’m using [thingie] and this part doesn’t work as [expected result] when I [do something]. What’s wrong, and how do I get it to work?” Pretty good for that sort of thing.
Firefly – Not as sexy as the other generative art tools out there, but Adobe’s Firefly is quick (paid for in my Creative Suite) and works OK in a pinch. I rarely use it, honestly. Made a cool avatar for my Playstation account recently.
Huntr – As much as I’d like to announce I’ve “retired” from using f**king resume’s, many companies still ask for them as their first obstacle in the gauntlet. It’s at the point where I don’t even apply to companies who require them as I already know I’m talking to a robot. Huntr is a robot I can use to talk to their robot and let them fight it out. The results are so horrible on both sides, I don’t want to be involved anymore.
