AI tips, tricks, faults, and failures

[Irrelevant]

I wanted to start a thread to share suggestions for AI use. What works well, what doesn't, which models are better for what, etc.

I currently have the lowest level of paid ChatGPT membership, but am trying to switch to Claude. It's not going well.

 

[TOGIE]

I dunno, I just generally find Claude to give what seems/feels like much more researched and scientific feeling answers to things.

ChatGPT feels like talking to a Gen Z for some reason.

The free version of Claude has done some great spreadsheet ingestion for me. Hard to fully put words to it, but Claude just seems better.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

I have had good results with the same level Chat you are using. It has been able to search, analyze and calculate competitor costs from publicly available data and provide me with pricing models that have resulted in winning sales contracts. This work would have taken days for me to find and look through then run the risk of me doing the math wrong. My only complaint is Chat asks alot of questions. It seems to always know what the next step should be but is constantly asking me if I want it to do that. Kind of like an unsure of themself engineer.

 

[noharleyyet]

Listening in...

 

[TOGIE]

I really think AI is gonna revolutionize diagnostic healthcare in, more or less, unimaginable ways.

An AI can digest decades of tests, blood work, and reported symptoms, self reported feelings, sleep patterns, and actually effectively, and objectively, evaluate it against what the entire modern researched and published world understands about the human body in seconds/minutes.

Meanwhile, I'm barely able to tell my GP how i felt yesterday and what my sleep was like last night in the 15 $*)Q!#@$ minutes he gives me.

 

[npaden]

I use the free Gemini a lot for personal use.

Helped me diagnose why my chain was coming off the sprocket on my grain drill and repair it. Turns out the previous owner had put a #40 chain on it instead of #41 and that extra side to side play was helping it come off. I would have never thought to check on that.

It's helped me dial in my spray formulations and speed I need to drive for spraying weeds in my fields, planting rates on my cover crop for my CRP. Helped me sort through converting a variable life insurance policy to a long term care annuity for my wife (I would have never thought that was a possibility, I just whined to it about how sucky my variable life insurance policy was and asked it to help me brainstorm on what I could do with it and between us we came up with the long term care annuity for my wife since she has Parkinsons and is going to need long term care).

It really does a great job on helping me prepare to teach adult bible class. Helping me design and plan my sea container cabin. Just helped me negotiate a deal with Discount tire for some new tires, helped me source replacement parts for my Brinkmann gas grill that has been bankrupt for 10+ years, helped me sort through some decisions on my new property on stand placement based on predominant wind directions in early October, it goes on and on.

I was going to move some stocks from Fidelity to Robinhood to take advantage of Robinhoods very low margin interest rate and it told me I should negotiate the margin interest rate with Fidelity instead and Fidelity dropped my margin interest rate from 10.625% to 5.5% so that's what I'm using to buy another 40 acres adjoining my land in Colorado instead of having to go get a loan that would require an appraisal, survey, etc. and saved me probably $2,000 minimum in closing costs and has a better interest rate also. It's helping me work on my Colorado State Forestry Plan so I can get my agriculture exemption on my property taxes there. I essentially treat it as a very smart friend who really knows a lot about everything. It's way better than using YouTube videos to figure stuff out, it does a better job of sorting through the stupid stuff.

It can still make blatant mistakes, you have to know at least a little bit about what you are asking it about to know if it is full of crap or not but it has saved me a LOT of money just in the last few months.

At work we are testing all the paid versions, right now we have CoPilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Codex. Most are on CoPilot because it is cheap and does okay. Our best tech users are all infatuated with Claude and really swear by it although they cuss running out of tokens all the time even on the $100 per month version. I think it is going to really change things and make us more efficient.

I should have used it to help me type this up a little more organized because it was a bit of a wreck and I had to edit it 3 times.

 

[Irrelevant]

The free version of Claude has done some great spreadsheet ingestion for me. Hard to fully put words to it, but Claude just seems better.

That's interesting, I literally can't get it to build a simple cost comparison spreadsheet for a new car purchase. I either get error messages, or it simply times out and does nothing.

 

[TOGIE]

That's interesting, I literally can't get it to build a simple cost comparison spreadsheet for a new car purchase. I either get error messages, or it simply times out and does nothing.

well, i haven't had it build anything, i've given it spreadsheets of data and told it pull patterns and generate graphs. i did so quite well. and came up with theories about what's going on.

mostly for fun. and it's on the free version.

i had it time out just asking it stuff yesterday. they might really be getting bogged down some days.

 

[Irrelevant]

I have had good results with the same level Chat you are using. It has been able to search, analyze and calculate competitor costs from publicly available data and provide me with pricing models that have resulted in winning sales contracts. This work would have taken days for me to find and look through then run the risk of me doing the math wrong. My only complaint is Chat asks alot of questions. It seems to always know what the next step should be but is constantly asking me if I want it to do that. Kind of like an unsure of themself engineer.

I might have to pivot back to chat.

I was able to take some notes, highlights, and screenshots that I took about when I reviewed a large feasibility study (300+ pgs; plus 2k in appendices) and turn it into an excellent response requiring minimal input.

It's been really useful for converting screenshots to text, tables, and figures.

 

[npaden]

That's interesting, I literally can't get it to build a simple cost comparison spreadsheet for a new car purchase. I either get error messages, or it simply times out and does nothing.

We are thinking it is going to take the job of a full time data extraction and manipulation employee that we have. It can merge multiple PDFs into a single Excel spreadsheet and prove the totals and end up making some complex calculations with very little guidance other than just telling it what you want.

 

[Irrelevant]

We are thinking it is going to take the job of a full time data extraction and manipulation employee that we have. It can merge multiple PDFs into a single Excel spreadsheet and prove the totals and end up making some complex calculations with very little guidance other than just telling it what you want.

I must have cleetus and not claude.

 

[npaden]

I must have cleetus and not claude.

There for sure is a learning curve on each of them on figuring out how they like to be asked/told what to do. I'm just the old gray haired guy looking over the young guys shoulder on the claude stuff but it just takes over his computer and does a bunch of stuff. We have moved it to an off network dedicated machine right now while he his playing with it.

 

[Nameless Range]

I use Perplexity Pro through my work. It allows me to switch between ChatGPT-4.0, Claude 3.5, and Llama. I really only use the first two - and mainly Claude. I'm currently building a workflow via python/GDAL scripts that uploads large imagery datasets to AWS and serves them out via image services for use in GIS systems. Users drag and drop and press a button. 3 years ago this genuinely would've taken me months and I still wouldn't be confident I'd figure it out. I'll have it done in about a week or so of work using AI.

Personal use is really just kind of answering questions I ask it. "How many times has person X said so and so and been wrong?" "I'm traveling from A to B by way of road C and want to do it in two days. Where are the highest rated Chicken Fried Steaks?"

 

[KS_Flatlander]

I’m paying for ChatGPT ($8/mo plan). I’m finding the free Google Gemini has comparable to better results. I put the same questions in both platforms sometimes just to see what they spit out. I’ve been using both for medical questions (had 2 unrelated outpatient surgeries in the last 6 week). Found it helpful with some Social Security and VA questions I had reference claims, benefits, timing, and “what if” type scenarios. Also found it’s handy for basic investing research (resistance, support level, chart analysis, stock comparisons, etc.) though I’m guessing there’s likely better customized AI investing apps out there. Helps me with nutrition and workout planning. I feed it screenshots from other apps and it spits out the analysis between multiple data sets. Example - I feed it nutritional data from MyFitness Pal app plus Apple Watch workout data and it can spit out potential indicators of how/where my diet impacts my workout, and vice versa. Pretty neat but, admittedly easy to fall down the rabbit hole with some of this stuff.

 

[Nameless Range]

You can improve outputs by hypothesizing scenarios: "I need you to act as if you are the most adept GIS professional in Montana". "I need you to break this down into step by step reasoning that someone not skilled in python will understand". "Ask me any questions you need up front so that you are as certain as possible that you'll complete this task perfectly".

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

We are thinking it is going to take the job of a full time data extraction and manipulation employee that we have. It can merge multiple PDFs into a single Excel spreadsheet and prove the totals and end up making some complex calculations with very little guidance other than just telling it what you want.

I was able to use Chat to upload over 300 individual pdf files containing quality data for prior shipments and calculate ton weighted averages for each parameter by month. Probably a way to do the same in Adobe and excel but I don't know how. Chat had it done in 10 minutes, although with many questions.

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

You can improve outputs by hypothesizing scenarios: "I need you to act as if you are the most adept GIS professional in Montana". "I need you to break this down into step by step reasoning that someone not skilled in python will understand". "Ask me any questions you need up front so that you are as certain as possible that you'll complete this task perfectly".

Interesting. Ill give that a try.

 

[Exhausted]

This is what ChatGpt (paid, business account) told me to say, with minor modifications as usual lol.

I’ve used ChatGPT extensively for commercial lending, appraisal analysis, loan package creation, policy work, marketing content, and general business writing.

My biggest takeaway is that AI is only as good as the instructions you give it. The people who are disappointed with AI often ask vague questions. The people who get the most value treat it like a new employee: provide context, explain the desired outcome, and refine the process over time.

A few things that have worked well for me:

• Give it a role before asking a question “You’re a commercial analyst specializing in real estate”
• Provide examples of what “good” looks like.
• Break complex projects into smaller steps.
• Verify important facts and calculations.
• Use it to accelerate thinking, not replace thinking.

For me, the real value isn’t asking random questions. It’s building repeatable workflows. I have tasks now that take minutes instead of hours because ChatGPT understands the format, style, and output I’m looking for.

The biggest failure I’ve seen is people expecting perfect answers from poor prompts. The biggest success I’ve seen is using AI as a capable assistant that gets better as you teach it how you work.

 

[Big Fin]

That's interesting, I literally can't get it to build a simple cost comparison spreadsheet for a new car purchase. I either get error messages, or it simply times out and does nothing.

I’m involved in a project with a group of MIT grads. What they accomplish with Ai is stunning.

To your point of a car comparison, I used GPT to do exactly that when I bought a boat this winter. It scraped the net for every comparable boat, assigned value to every added feature, geo-based market differentiation, how long each boat had been on the market, then suggested an offering price for each boat. It asked me to prioritize my features and criteria. In doing so, it gave me a list of boats to cross off the list.

Once I decided on the boat I most wanted it developed a negotiation strategy with starting points, timelines, and responses to counter offers.

Once the deal was struck it prepared a bill of sale and a checklist for an interstate title transfer.

Working with the MIT group since December has opened my eyes to what it can do it you provide specific enough prompts/queries.

 

[The_Jim]

I’ve struggled with sleep for a few years now and I’ve been using it to evaluate labs, supplements, etc. Just ordered an at home sleep study and plan on using chat to analyze before I step back into an ent’s office again. It does a pretty good job diagnosing symptoms.

Work wise it used to just get me close with python scripting, but it does pretty good now. It just keeps getting better. It’s very useful for importing and exporting CSV files to different formats and comparing the differences.

We’ve used it to diagnose car problems and it’s been spot on.