160 | AI Snips & Tidbits
AI Snips and Tidbits is a StrefaTECH grab bag of quick tips from my AI travels. No big lessons here, just small things I did with AI recently that worked (or surprised me!), shared while they’re fresh. Quick reads, no schedule, hopefully a nugget or two you can use today!
Run your research twice
I gave the same research task to Claude’s Research and ChatGPT’s Deep Research. They both gave me the same big conclusion, but each missed about half of what the other found. One dug through institutional documents while the other reasoned about people and context. I was glad I asked twice... there were truly good insights from both!
The tip: For anything consequential, run it in two tools (if you can) and compare. Want to try research without paying? ChatGPT and Gemini include a small monthly allowance of deep research (as of this writing); Claude’s requires a paid plan.
Spend time prepping for Deep Research
Speaking of deep research, here’s how I set one up this week. I’m evaluating conference room equipment (microphones, video, speakers) for a nonprofit board I serve on, so that our hybrid in-person/Zoom meetings will work better for everyone. Before launching ChatGPT’s Deep Research, I described the situation and asked it to write me a detailed research prompt. We went back and forth on a couple of questions it raised, and the final prompt included considerations I would have missed entirely if I’d just sent it off to research on its own.
The tip: Use AI as a brainstorming partner before just giving it some assignment. It can be quick and result in some good insights! And as in so many cases, talking to the computer (e.g., with WisprFlow) is a huge win.
Summarize responses to emails (lazy but oh-so-nice!)
I’m Treasurer of a nonprofit board, and I needed to schedule recurring Finance Committee meetings for the rest of the fiscal year. This wasn’t a job for Doodle or When2Meet (my usual meeting-scheduling-outreach go-to’s), and I dreaded the usual routine... everyone replies to my email in a different format, and I scribble it all on a notepad with hopes of finding a decent slot.
This time I asked AI to summarize the responses sitting in my email and recommend a time. I gave the task to Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini just to see what I’d get, and all three did it far better than my notepad ever has! Claude edged out the others (while also taking the longest to do it), and it went on to draft the follow-up email and calendar invitations.
The tip: Connecting your AI chatbot to your email and calendar can be hugely helpful. A warning, though: be very careful to instruct it to draft only, never send.
Tell the AI your outcome, not your solution
I needed to collect photos from a dozen or so family members with wildly different tech comfort levels for an upcoming family gathering. I could have sent an email or built a Google Form. Instead, I described the outcome I wanted (easy for everyone, minimal work for me) to Claude and let it propose options and ask me questions back. That conversation surfaced a gotcha I would have hit later: my first-choice tool made collecting the photos easy but downloading and using them painfully clunky. Starting from the goal instead of a tool got me to a better answer than I’d have picked on my own. (I wrote about this idea in issue #146 back in March... which in AI time might as well be a different century!)
The tip: Tell AI as much as you can about why you want to do something, have a conversation, and then let it rip!
That empties the tip log for now, though it never stays empty for long. Have a small AI win of your own? Share it in the Comments or drop me a note at strefatech.info@gmail.com. And while you’re gathering your own snips and tidbits...
Make Good Choices!
I have adopted the idea of asking Gemini to craft a prompt for me. Takes no more time than rewriting my own prompt to get it right.
Tip: I upgraded my Workspace account from Business Starter ($7/mo) to Business Standard ($14/mo). That includes Gemini Pro and lots of other AI connections with my apps.