Which AI platform do you use?

cantdrv55 · 10-05-2026, 06:58 PM

I mainly use Gemini on my phone and Grok in my car. I’m curious about Meta’s Muse but haven’t tried it yet. Claude is OK. ChatGPT has given me wrong info a couple of times. Which one do you use? Is there one I’m forgetting? Oh, Alexa Plus sucks.

john70t · 05:41 AM

(edited)
I try not to use AI because it's intrusive to personal data, and can be used for manipulation.
When it unilaterally decides to reorganize the entire system it will be a disaster.

917_Langheck · 917_Langheck's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by john70t

Q)
FBI sez $250k+5years jail for each use.
Even for corporate hackers.
Such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple.

Except that it didn't when Open AI's agents went about hacking into corporate machines around the world. Why isn't that googlie-eyed liar boy in the dock for hacking? Anyone else would be so.

onewhippedpuppy · 10-07-2026, 03:52 AM

I use it for work. We have Gemini through our MS products and pay for a service called GovEagle which is designed for government contractors. I think our IT is trying to get Claude for Government authorized for our network, if so I’ll probably play with it too.

David Inc. · David Inc.'s Garage

What kind of tasks are people using it for? For me it's been limited to copilot or powerBI automating some task emails, but it's basically replacing writing excel macros with asking for it to make excel macros.

dad911 · 10-07-2026, 06:46 AM

Gemini does a good job restoring/editing pics and generating code for small chip processors like the esp32.

Also works well for fact checking memes and separating text from images.

onewhippedpuppy · 10-07-2026, 09:26 AM

I mostly use it for document prep. For instance when responding to a government RFI or RFQ I will dump all of the government documents into our tool, then tell it to draft the appropriate documents for a response. It will create an outline based on the RFI/RFP with the appropriate sections and a brief description of the content that should be included. Then I’ll typically go through the outline and either write new content myself or use AI for generic content and/or a summary of things like past performance, company capability, etc. It royally sucks at creating content from scratch but does a pretty good job if there’s sufficient content to draw from. Very much a garbage in, garbage out situation. It still requires a lot of review because it will often misinterpret information or flat out make stuff up. AI also has an overly verbose writing style that loves run on sentences and semicolons, so I usually edit that out as well.

cantdrv55 · 10-07-2026, 11:47 AM

I’m retired so Gemini is for personal use only.

I’ve been wanting to get serious into gravel biking so I’m shopping for a bike. I asked Gemini to recommend such bikes under $2k with a 1x crank but will give me plenty of climbing power plus a similar top end to my road bike. I want to be able to do road rides with my local bike club and maintain their pace. I described my height, weight and age and my current bike fleet. Gemini did an excellent analysis and provided reasons for each recommendation. I eventually bought a bike from its list.

gacook · gacook's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

I mostly use it for document prep. For instance when responding to a government RFI or RFQ I will dump all of the government documents into our tool, then tell it to draft the appropriate documents for a response. It will create an outline based on the RFI/RFP with the appropriate sections and a brief description of the content that should be included. Then I’ll typically go through the outline and either write new content myself or use AI for generic content and/or a summary of things like past performance, company capability, etc. It royally sucks at creating content from scratch but does a pretty good job if there’s sufficient content to draw from. Very much a garbage in, garbage out situation. It still requires a lot of review because it will often misinterpret information or flat out make stuff up. AI also has an overly verbose writing style that loves run on sentences and semicolons, so I usually edit that out as well.

I'd caution overuse of AI in RFP responses. I recently let a contract and it was painfully obvious which proposals were written by AI and NOT properly edited/vetted after AI spit out whatever it spit out. Goes without saying, those props didn't do well.

masraum · 02:57 PM

There are also agents that we can use for coding. There are many different agents that I can chose from, and I suspect there are other folks that have other/more options. And apparently, the company is testing/developing more.

We have about a dozen different versions to choose from, with about a 60/40 split between GPT and Claude. And those are just the copilot agents for coding. They don't include the couple of versions available for MS Office and/or desktop use.

One of the things that they ALWAYS stress, is that anything that you do with AI needs to be reviewed. I am in IT, but I'm not always an early adopter. As a matter of fact, this past week, I used AI for the first time for a few different things. The first thing that I did was take some feedback that I had for someone (positive, think "thanks, you're awesome" kind of thing), and run it through AI. I did it 2 or 3 times. The first couple of times, I didn't like what it spit out, but it eventually spit something out that I thought was an improvement, although I still made a couple of small changes.
I was then asked for a slightly different sort of feedback (to go with a year end review) and used it again for that. Again, it took me several shots and editing for me to be happy with the results.

Claude Sonnet 5.5
But what really blew me away was when I finally used it for something technical.

We have a script that we run on a system that is designed to push similar, but different information to 2 other systems. Once you push the info to the two systems, if I gave a person the script from the first system, and then the results of the script from the 2 target systems, the average thinking person would be able to see how the things fit together.

So we have a thing A-B that begets 2 different things that are 1-A and 2-B.

I have a need, to take ~1200 of the 1-A and 2-B things, and then reverse engineer them into one really long A-B.

I created 5 files.

file-1 with A-B
file-2 with 1-A
file-3 with 2-B
file-4 with 1-E
file-5 with 2-F

I explained that file 1 causes the creation of files 2 and 3 and then said, please take files 4 and 5 and create a file 6 similar to file 1.
Bam! It thought for a few secs and then spit out a correct file-6.

I then took the 1183 items similar to A from system 1, and the 1183 items similar to B from system 2, and pasted those into file 4 and 5. I said "I updated file 4 and file 5. Please repeat the previous process to create a new file 6 with the new data.
It took a minute and 20 seconds and spit out a file. With the file, it explained what it did including saying "I checked one block and confirmed that it is accurate."
I said "please repeat the previous action, but check every block".
It did it again and that time only took 23 seconds.

It was very impressive. I've got a colleague that is apparently number 4 in the company as far as token use. He's loving it. He said it's great for data analysis. For instance, writing formulas in Excel or performing complex data analysis in spreadsheets.

I can see more of it in my future. I hope to hang on to work as long as I can until I'm ready to retire which I assume is ~9yrs out. I think that learning to use and using AI is a requirement. Folks, especially in IT that aren't or don't use it, will be out of the loop and won't last indefinitely unless they have some task that just cannot be done by AI (not a lot of that in IT).

Quote:

Originally Posted by gacook

I'd caution overuse of AI in RFP responses. I recently let a contract and it was painfully obvious which proposals were written by AI and NOT properly edited/vetted after AI spit out whatever it spit out. Goes without saying, those props didn't do well.

Where I work they are pushing AI very hard. We have our own in house copies and a whole AI division (and have for at least 6-7 years, I think). There are several different AI options available at work, stuff that's specifically for working in Microsoft Office (emails, spreadsheets, word, etc...).

Zeke · 10-09-2026, 04:17 PM

I never knew there were so many.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1123278970023222

Sorry, it would not embed, said no longer available. It's a valid FB link as I tested it.

masraum · 10-09-2026, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke

I never knew there were so many.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1123278970023222

Sorry, it would not embed, said no longer available. It's a valid FB link as I tested it.

Yep, there are many kinds, many versions, and a bunch of different companies have their own.

Anyone on the Internet has access to several that are free. Most folks are aware of "ChatGPT". The free version of ChatGPT that anyone can use is not the same version that you get to use if you pay for a subscription to ChatGPT.

Here's an explanation of the different versions/types of chatGPT.
https://www.coursera.org/articles/chatgpt-models-explained

Jeff Higgins · 10-09-2026, 05:50 PM

My wife. She knows everything.

A930Rocket · 10-09-2026, 06:04 PM

I used it adding a fireplace on a screen porch but it took multiple multiple changes on my phone to get it close to what I wanted

Other than that, I don’t use one at all

onewhippedpuppy · 10-09-2026, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gacook

I'd caution overuse of AI in RFP responses. I recently let a contract and it was painfully obvious which proposals were written by AI and NOT properly edited/vetted after AI spit out whatever it spit out. Goes without saying, those props didn't do well.

Totally agree. That’s why I generally use it to draft the structure and mostly hand write the content. AI has a very distinctive writing style that’s not very good or human.