Increasingly powerful AI systems are being released at an increasingly rapid pace. This week saw the debut of Claude 2, likely the second most capable AI system available to the public. The week before, Open AI released Code Interpreter, the most sophisticated mode of AI yet available. The week before that, some AIs got the ability to see images.

And yet not a single AI lab seems to have provided any user documentation. Instead, the only user guides out there appear to be Twitter influencer threads. Documentation-by-rumor is a weird choice for organizations claiming to be concerned about proper use of their technologies, but here we are.

I can’t claim that this is going to be a complete user guide, but it will serve as a bit of orientation to the current state of AI. I have been putting together a Getting Started Guide to AI for my students (and interested readers) every few months, and each time, it requires major modifications. The last couple of months have been particularly insane.

This guide is opinionated, based on my experience, and focused on how to pick the right tool to do things. I have written separately about the kinds of tasks you may want AI to do, which might be useful to read first.

When we talk about AI right now, we are usually talking about Large Language Models, or LLMs. Most AI applications are powered by LLMs, of which there are just a few Foundation Models, created by a handful of organizations. Each company gives direct access to their models via a Chatbot: OpenAI makes GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, which power ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing (access it on an Edge browser). Google has a variety of models under the label of Bard. And Anthropic makes Claude and Claude 2.

There are other LLMs I won’t be discussing. The first is Pi, a chatbot built by Inflection. Pi is optimized for conversation, and really, really wants to be your friend (seriously, try it to see what I mean). It does not like to do much besides chat, and trying to get it to do work for you is an exercise in frustration. We also won’t cover the variety of open source models that anyone can use and modify. They are generally not accessible or useful for the casual user today, but have real promise. Future guides may include them.

So here is your quick reference chart, summarizing the state of LLMs:

The first four (including Bing) are all OpenAI systems. There are basically two major OpenAI AIs today: 3.5 and 4. The 3.5 model kicked off the current AI craze in November, the 4 model premiered in the Spring and is much more powerful. A new variation uses plugins to connect to the internet and other apps. There are a lot of plugins, most of which are not very useful, but you should feel free to explore them as needed. Code Interpreter as is an extremely powerful version of ChatGPT that can run Python programs. If you have never paid for OpenAI, you have only used 3.5. Aside from the plugins variation, and a temporarily suspended version of GPT-4 with browsing, none of these models are connected to the internet. Microsoft’s Bing uses a mix of 4 and 3.5, and is usually the first model in the GPT-4 family to roll out new features. For example, it can both create and view images, and it can read documents in the web browser. It is connected to the internet. Bing is a bit weird to use, but powerful.

Google has been testing its own AI for consumer use, which they call Bard, but which is powered by a variety of Foundation Models, most recently one called PaLM 2. For the company that developed LLM technology, they have been pretty disappointing, although improvements announced yesterday show they are still working on the underlying technology, so I have hope. It has already gained the capability to run limited code and interpret images, but I would generally avoid it for now.

The final company, Anthropic has released Claude 2. Claude is most notable for having a very large context window – essentially the memory of the LLM. Claude can hold almost an entire book, or many PDFs, in memory. It has been built to be less likely to act maliciously than other Large Language Models, which means, practically, that it tends to scold you a bit about stuff.

Now, on to some uses:

Best free options: Bing and Claude 2
Paid option: ChatGPT 4.0/ChatGPT with plugins

For right now, GPT-4 is still the most capable AI tool for writing, which you can access at Bing (select“creative mode”) for free or by purchasing a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT. Claude, however, is a close second, and has a limited free option available.

These tools are also being integrated directly into common office applications. Microsoft Office will include a copilot powered by GPT and Google Docs will integrate suggestions from Bard. The implications of what these new innovations mean for writing are pretty profound.

Here are some ways to use AI to help you write.

• Writing drafts of anything. Blog posts, essays, promotional material, speeches, lectures, chose-you-own adventures, scripts, short stories – you name it, AI does it, and pretty well. All you have to do is prompt it. Prompt crafting is not magic, but basic prompts result in boring writing, but getting better at prompting is not that hard, just work interactively with the system. You will find AI systems to be much more capable as writers with a little practice.

• Make your writing better. Paste your text into an AI. Ask it to improve the content, or for suggestions about how to make it better for a particular audience. Ask it to create 10 drafts in radically different styles. Ask it to make things more vivid, or add examples. Use it to inspire you to do better work.

• Help you with tasks. AI can do things you don’t have the time to do. Use it like an intern to write emails, create sales templates, give you next steps in a business plan, and a lot more. Here is what I could accomplish with it in 30 minutes in supporting a product launch.

• Unblock yourself. It is very easy to get distracted from a task by one difficult challenge. AI provides a way of giving yourself momentum.

Some things to worry about: In a bid to respond to your answers, it is very easy for the AI to “hallucinate” and generate plausible facts. It can generate entirely false content that is utterly convincing. Let me emphasize that: AI lies continuously and well. Every fact or piece of information it tells you may be incorrect. You will need to check it all. Particularly dangerous is asking it for references, quotes, citations, and information for the internet (for the models that are not connected to the internet). Bing will usually hallucinate less than other models, because GPT-4 is generally more grounded and because Bing’s internet connection means it can actually pull in relevant facts. Here is a guide to avoiding hallucinations, but they are impossible to completely eliminate.

And also note that AI doesn’t explain itself, it only makes you think it does. If you ask it to explain why it wrote something, it will give you a plausible answer that is completely made up. When you ask it for its thought process, is not interrogating its own actions, it is just generating text that sounds like it is doing so. This makes understanding biases in the system very challenging, even tho