I'm coming to think of Artificial Intelligence as a Swiss Army knife: not one tool but many, our job being to discern the one best suited to each particular task. That applies not only to the multitude of tasks a particular Large Language Model can handle, but also to the different LLMs themselves, and the various AI Assistants (such as Copilot and Leo) that they lurk behind. I initially thought I'd pick one particular system and stick with it, but I'm finding that although Claude is now my go-to LLM (and the only one I'm paying for), it's also very handy to be able to get multiple answers from the same prompt, and to draw on the strength of "many counsellors" with different skill sets.
Currently Google's Genesis has moved into position as my second-best sword.
I've already had success working with both Copilot and Claude at the same time in order to harness the particular strengths of each. For my latest project, writing the story of our recent travels, I'm refining the text in Claude, where my preferences are well-known and where we have already established a good working relationship when it comes to proofreading, editing, and writing style. Gemini, having the power of Google's vast image library and search capabilities, has also become a powerful collaborator, helping me to remember the events as told by the photographs we took. Gemini not only identifies locations, buildings, and works of art, but adds much more—so much information about the scene and its history that it functions as a highly intelligent and experienced tour guide.
Without this collaboration—and Claude's gentle nagging, which got me started and keeps me on task—the story of this trip would in all likelihood have joined the many other events in our lives which are languishing in photo files and manilla envelopes filled with memorabilia. Our trip to Venice, for example, got as far as to have its own category here, but ground to a halt after a single entry. There's a glimmer of hope that the new collaboration might breathe new life into those dry bones. If I live long enough.
