How do you decide which AI to use?
There are thousands of AI tools, and new ones every week. I like to think of them as generalists and specialists. This post shows what I mean, and two things that help you choose.
Transcript
How do you decide which AI tools to use? AI shows up in a lot of places, but in your work, you'll mostly meet it in software. Some tools, like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, can help with almost anything. Think of those as generalists. Other tools are built for one job. Think of those as specialists. For example, Fireflies, Otter and Fathom take meeting notes. Canva, Gamma and Beautiful.ai help with design and slides. QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks handle the numbers. And there are many more. Many specialists are built on a generalist. Like your team, you can hand a generalist almost anything. But when a job needs an expert, you bring in a specialist. So here are two things you can do to help you decide. One, start with what you do. Where does your time go each week? Once you know that, you can decide which generalist and which specialists fit. Two, match the tool to the work. Pick one generalist for everyday work. For example, if your files live in Google, try Gemini. Otherwise, try a few and keep the one that feels right. Then add a specialist for the jobs that keep coming up. Once you've worked with a generalist for a while, ask it which specialist could help. I've created an interview you can paste into your generalist to audit your business and see where AI would work for you. It's in Friday's newsletter. What you tell it matters more than which one you choose. And that's in my next post.