Actually Tested AI

How to Use Claude to Actually Understand a Long Boring Document Last week I had to read a 47-page municipal zoning variance report for a project I'm consulting on. The kind of document where every paragraph feels like it was written specifically to make you stop reading. I'd been putting it off for three days when I remembered: this is literally what Claude is supposed to be good at. The Obvious Approach That Didn't Work My first instinct was lazy. Copy the whole thing, paste it into Claude, type "summarize this." The summary I got back was technically accurate and completely useless. It told me the document was about a zoning variance request for a mixed-use development. Yeah, I knew that from the title. The problem with "summarize this" is that Claude doesn't know what you actually need from the document. It gives you the Wikipedia version — the facts without the judgment. For a 47-page zoning report, that meant I got a neat little ...

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...

The AI Tool I Use Instead of Google When I Need a Fast Honest Answer Last Tuesday I needed to know if I could take ibuprofen with the antibiotic my doctor prescribed. Google gave me six sponsored links, three Reddit threads from 2019, and a WebMD article that somehow mentioned cancer in the second paragraph. I closed the tab and opened Perplexity instead. Thirty seconds later I had my answer with sources I could actually check. I've been using Perplexity AI as my default search for about eight months now. Not because I'm anti-Google or because I think AI is the future of everything. I just got tired of playing detective every time I had a simple question. What Actually Changed The first time I used Perplexity, I was researching whether a specific HDMI cable would work with my monitor's refresh rate. Google's results were mostly Amazon listings and forum posts where people argued about things that weren't my question. Perplexity just told me: yes, but...

I tested Gamma AI for presentations and this one thing genuinely surprised me I was staring at a blank Google Slides document at 11pm, knowing I had a client presentation in 14 hours, when I remembered Gamma existed. I'd dismissed it months ago as another "AI-generated content" gimmick. Turns out I was completely wrong about what it actually does. What I thought Gamma was vs. what it actually is I assumed Gamma was basically "paste your text, get ugly AI slides." That's what most AI presentation tools do. You end up with generic stock photos, weird layouts, and text that looks like it was designed by someone who's never seen a presentation before. Gamma doesn't work that way. You give it a topic or paste your content, and it generates something closer to a Notion document that happens to be presentable. The default output isn't slides — it's scrollable cards with actual visual hierarchy. This threw me off initially because I k...

AI Tools I Stopped Using After 30 Days and Exactly Why I canceled three AI subscriptions in the same week last month, and the reasons weren't what I expected when I signed up. None of them were bad tools. That's the weird part. They all did exactly what they promised. I just couldn't make them stick in my actual workflow. The Writing Assistant That Made Me a Worse Writer Jasper was first. I'd been paying $49/month for about six weeks when I noticed something uncomfortable. My drafts were starting to sound the same. Not the same as each other — the same as everything Jasper produces. That slightly enthusiastic, bullet-point-friendly, aggressively helpful tone that works great for landing pages but makes blog posts feel like they came off a conveyor belt. The tool worked fast. I'll give it that. I could generate a 1,200-word article outline in maybe 90 seconds. But I was spending more time editing out the Jasper-ness than I would have spent just writin...

📅 July 5, 2026 | ✍️ Actually Tested AI Is ChatGPT Plus Actually Worth $20 a Month? I Built a Calculator to Settle It I've paid for ChatGPT Plus for over two years without once checking whether it was worth it. Last month I finally did the math, and the answer surprised me — not because Plus was a rip-off, but because the honest answer depends entirely on how you actually use it , and almost nobody runs the numbers. Here's the thing every "is it worth it" article gets wrong: they give you their verdict. But $20 a month is trivial if you save two focused hours, and a waste if you send three messages a week. So instead of another opinion, I built the calculator I wish I'd had. Plug in your real usage below. 📌 The 3-line version Plus is $20/month ($240/year) — unchanged for three years while the feature set kept growing. The free tier is genuinely good now (...

How to Use AI to Prep for a Job Interview in a Single Evening I had 14 hours between getting the interview confirmation and walking into the building. Product marketing role at a SaaS company I'd only vaguely heard of. My normal prep routine takes three days minimum. So I threw everything at ChatGPT and tracked exactly what worked. The Company Research Phase (About 40 Minutes) First thing I tried: pasting the job description and asking ChatGPT to "tell me everything about this company." Useless. It gave me Wikipedia-level stuff mixed with outdated information and a few things that were just wrong. What actually worked was being specific about what I needed. I asked it to analyze the job posting for implied problems the company might be trying to solve by hiring this role. That prompt gave me three genuinely useful angles I wouldn't have thought of — like how the emphasis on "cross-functional collaboration" probably meant their current marketi...