… then try an alternative!
Here is a concrete example: I wanted to use an AI assistant as a programming helper. Years ago, I tried to learn about iOS development. The main driver was an idea for a fairly simple Apple Watch app. I diligently studied Treehouse for a few weeks and thought I was on the right track – until I tried to adapt one of the seemingly simple code examples to my liking and just couldn’t get it right.
In the end, I gave up because it wasn’t that important to me.
The trigger for a new attempt was the release of the AI assistant Codestral by the French company Mistral. Without further ado, I installed it on my Mac via LM Studio and started.
I actually made good progress. I was thrilled. But then I found myself at a dead end because Codestral’s knowledge was either not up to date or the instructions were too unclear to help me.
I tried other assistants. These included GPT-4 Turbo, Google Gemini 1.5 Pro, and finally Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus.
A logic problem in the structure of my watch app seemed to trip up all the assistants until Claude 3 solved it with a flick of the wrist. Then I could continue.
I have had similar experiences with text. As I mentioned in a previous issue, I use the browser-based TypingMind to combine several assistants in one place. This makes experiments very easy. For example, I have found that Gemini 1.5 Flash sometimes writes better than Gemini 1.5 Pro. This is despite the fact that the “Flash” version is primarily designed for speed, while the “Pro” version is supposed to be very powerful.
In the end, it always depends on the individual case.
By the way, it is worth experimenting with the different variants within ChatGPT as well! The following are currently available: GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Turbo and the brand new GPT-4o.
It is not always the newest tool that is the best. GPT-4o, for example, has been criticized for not following prompts as well as GPT-4, and sometimes giving unnecessarily long responses. On the other hand, GPT-4o’s strength lies in its ability to handle input in a variety of media formats.
In short, it’s worth experimenting with. What doesn’t work in one place might work like magic in another.