Back when I started writing on the internet, specifically online, I had a lot of engagement around my articles talking about AI.
ChatGPT was taking off as a super-tool and everyone wanted to know where the technology would go next and how people were making the most of it in their personal knowledge management, productivity and other areas of life.
I was, as everyone else was too, trying out new AI tools in my workflows, learning, making mistakes and trying to optimise. And the stories of my escapades were quite popular online…
A little more than a year in the future, I’ve stopped using a lot of the AI tools that I liked back when I was writing these pieces.
So this article is to clear that up and explain the choices that I’ve now made for what tools I use AI within.
Let’s start with the first…
Alfred
Alfred is a well-known and loved Swiss army knife app launcher for Mac devices. I used to use Raycast for this job but found myself distracted by the sheer number of plugins and different functions that I could add to the app.
So I switched to Alfred and made the 1-time payment to be able to use the features in the Powerpack.
One of these features is being able to use the plugin gallery, which contains a plugin that brings the features of integrating with the OpenAI API, allowing you to interface with an LLM right inside of your app launcher.
I’ve been using this liberally to ask questions and create conversations, safe in the knowledge that all my chats are saved offline and recoverable should I desire to do so.
Using Alfred for quick queries is so much more convenient — you don’t have to open the browser to bring up the conventional ChatGPT window, so your workflow is less interrupted.
I also use a custom search feature in Alfred however, to give quick access to this next AI tool that I use…
Perplexity
I first heard of Perplexity a few months ago and since hearing about it and trying it out, I’ve been thrilled with how useful it is.
The service is an AI search engine that functions a little like ChatGPT in the sense that you ask a query and it returns to you an answer, but perplexity is more tightly bound to web search and web results.
It displays its answers with direct links to places on the web from which it’s answered your questions, so you can click and discover these sites just as if you’d used a conventional web browser. however, often you don’t even need to do this because perplexity has found your answer already and placed it on the page.
Its power also comes from aggregating knowledge from different pages, which has been great in getting step-by-step instructions for technical problems that I’ve needed to solve (think problems with website development, email service providers etc.)
I no longer have to trawl around different forum pages in search of a solution, perplexity presents them all in a list underneath the query I’ve made, saving a ton of time and confusion in searching and resolving issues.
There are some times when you just want to browse the internet and look at a set of search results too — this is where a normal search engine is still useful. But if you want an answer to a multi-step problem that might take a bit of research to solve, Perplexity is the new leader in getting you to that answer as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
I’ve written before about how I’ve been managing my photos as part of my PKM. For those who are wondering, it’s done quite separately to my notes, in a couple of apps from Adobe.
Now I try and stay away from using generative AI tools too heavily on images because it changes what’s meant by your photo and bends reality too heavily, but I have been experimenting with AI for small object removal.
I had an image of me competing in a boxing match last summer and there was a watermark of the events company splattered across the front of it. With a little help from the clone stamp tool and AI, I managed to flawlessly remove the watermark and enjoy my image.
Adobe’s privacy policy is grim, but their tools for editing and managing images are second to none. Until I find another service that can help me a bit better with a better privacy policy, I will be sticking with Lightroom and Photoshop.
Grok, from xAI
This is Twitter’s new brand of AI that you can find in-app if you’re subscribed to a premium plan.
It claims to be less biased than other AI models and comes with ‘Fun mode’ activated by default.
I used Grok whilst I was travelling to find some less basic inspirations for places to go and visit/eat/drink coffee at. And the recommendations weren’t bad — Copenhagen Coffee Lab in Lisbon and 7g Cafe in Porto were both suggestions from Grok and they both hit the spot in terms of food and atmosphere.
Now I’m not going to lie and say that this tool plays a big role in my life but it’s one of the very few AI services that I’ve been using recently so I thought I’d add it to the list.
This brings us to the main question — why haven’t I been using AI tools as much?
My reason for reducing AI use
In short — I focus and create better without it.
AI pretty much turned out to be another one of those distractions that can take you down endless rabbit holes of trying to over-automate things that shouldn’t be automated.
I work better when I focus on one thing — the quality of my output. If I try to use AI then I just spend more time in working on getting the output of the AI correct and to a higher quality.
No thanks. I’ll just do the work straight off the bat and save myself the headache.
There is a balance to be struck though — I use my minimal philosophy adapted from how I work in note-taking. This is to balance the complexity and simplicity in using AI tools in my workflow, reducing more than I think I need to because our minds are biased towards growth and complexity.
This way I can get some of the best benefits of AI without becoming confused and sidetracked by the infinite shiny objects that are out there in this field of tech.
I hope that this gives you some insight into which AI tools I still use and my philosophy on making use of this area of technology. Thanks for reading!