An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now

One Useful Thing · 9 months ago · 29

An opinionated guide recommends choosing among nine major AI models (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and open-weight alternatives) based on your needs, with free versions sufficient for most users but $20/month paid plans recommended for serious work. For paid users, the guide advises selecting advanced or agentic models over basic chat modes, using Deep Research for high-quality information gathering, and manually choosing stronger model variants like GPT-5 Thinking Extended or Claude Sonnet 4.5 for complex tasks. Key improvements come from enabling web search, connecting personal data, using voice mode, and understanding that newer models hallucinate less frequently but still make confident errors, particularly without fact-checking features.