Actually Tested AI

The Perplexity AI Feature That Makes It Better Than Google for Certain Searches I was trying to figure out which USB-C hub would actually work with my specific laptop model for dual 4K monitors, and after 20 minutes of clicking through Google results, I had twelve open tabs, three contradictory Reddit threads, and a growing headache. Then I asked Perplexity the same question. What happened next made me rethink how I search for anything technical. The Feature Nobody Talks About Properly It's called Sources, but that undersells it completely. Every claim Perplexity makes comes with a clickable citation. Not buried at the bottom. Right there, inline, as it talks. Here's why that matters more than it sounds. When Google gives you an AI Overview, you get a summary. Maybe it's right. Maybe it's confidently wrong. You have no idea which until you dig. Perplexity shows its work. I can see it pulled that spec from Tom's Hardware and that compatibility note fr...

The ChatGPT Setting Most People Never Change That Makes Answers Way Better I spent three months getting mediocre ChatGPT responses before I accidentally discovered I'd been ignoring the one setting that actually matters. Not temperature. Not the model selector. The custom instructions panel that's been sitting there the whole time, quietly waiting for me to stop being lazy. Where This Setting Actually Lives Click your profile icon. Then "Customize ChatGPT." Two text boxes appear. The first asks what you want ChatGPT to know about you. The second asks how you want it to respond. Most people glance at this, think "I'll fill that out later," and never come back. I know because I did exactly that. For months. Every single conversation started from zero. I'd re-explain that I'm a writer, that I hate corporate speak, that I need practical examples not theory. Over and over. It was exhausting and I didn't even realize it was exhausti...

When Not to Use AI: The Tasks Where It Actually Makes Things Worse Last Tuesday I spent three hours using ChatGPT to write a condolence card to my friend whose father died. Three hours. The final version I sent? I wrote it myself in four minutes, after throwing away everything the AI gave me. That's when I realized I'd been using AI wrong for months. Not because the tools are bad — I've tested dozens and many are genuinely useful. But I kept defaulting to them for tasks where they actively made my work worse. Slower. More generic. Sometimes embarrassingly off. Here's what two years of obsessive testing taught me about when to close the ChatGPT tab entirely. Tasks That Require Actually Knowing Someone The condolence card was the obvious example. But it's part of a bigger pattern. Anything that requires understanding a specific human being — not humans in general, but this one person — AI fails at hard. I tried using Claude to help me write a weddi...

How to Use AI to Read and Summarize a Contract Before You Sign I was about to sign a freelance contract last month when I realized I'd spent more time picking a coffee order that morning than actually reading the eight-page document in front of me. That's when I wondered if ChatGPT could do what I clearly wasn't going to do myself — actually read the thing. What I Actually Did (And Why It Almost Went Wrong) My first attempt was embarrassingly simple. I copied the entire contract, pasted it into ChatGPT, and typed "summarize this contract." What I got back was technically accurate but completely useless. A list of what each section contained. "Section 3 addresses payment terms. Section 4 covers intellectual property." Thanks, I could see that from the headers. The problem was I asked the wrong question. AI summarizes what you give it, but it doesn't know what you're worried about. So I tried again with something more specific: ...

Last Sunday I finally did the thing I'd been avoiding for months: I opened my bank statement and searched for every AI charge. ChatGPT Plus. Claude Pro. Google AI Pro that I upgraded to in March for one project and forgot about. Total damage: $59.99 a month. That's $719.88 a year — quietly, automatically, whether I used them or not. And here's the uncomfortable part: in 2026, the big providers have converged on nearly identical $20 tiers, which means most of us are paying two or three times for capabilities that overlap heavily. So I built the audit I wish someone had handed me. 📌 Quick answer · The standard AI tier in 2026 costs about $20/month : ChatGPT Plus $20, Claude Pro $20, Google AI Pro $19.99, Perplexity Pro $20. · Budget tiers now exist: ChatGPT Go is $8/month and Google AI Plus dropped to $4.99/month in June 2026. ...

How to Use AI to Learn New Software Without Watching Hours of Tutorials I stared at Blender's interface for the third time this year, closed it, and went back to pretending I didn't need to learn 3D modeling. That's been my pattern with complex software for years. Download it, get overwhelmed by the 47 toolbars, promise myself I'll "find a good tutorial series," never do it. Then about three months ago I accidentally discovered that ChatGPT could teach me software in a completely different way, and now I've actually learned four tools I'd been avoiding. The Method I Stumbled Into It started because I was too lazy to search YouTube. I had DaVinci Resolve open, wanted to do one specific thing — add a simple zoom effect to a clip — and just asked ChatGPT how to do it. Not "teach me video editing." Just "I have a clip selected in DaVinci Resolve, how do I make it slowly zoom in over 3 seconds." The answer was step-by-ste...