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So I know a lot of posters here are doing some really advanced stuff with AI, but I have a quick little anecdote from my own luddite life that might help explain why most normies don't really see AI as something particularly useful.
I just asked Google's free AI what the current value of 0.035 ounces of gold is and it completely face-planted, ignoring the decimal and the zero and giving me the value for 35 ounces. This isn't a case of overactive guardrails or confusing syntax or hallucinating plausible details into a news story; it's the most basic of transcription errors, the kind that dumb, pre-LLM systems have solved for decades. Old google never would have made such an error.
This is the technology that's going to completely upend the world order? It makes sense for normies to be skeptical. Regardless of what the frontier labs have cooking, the AI most people actually interact with is worse than useless half the time.
Anybody else have one of these "the fuck are we even doing here?" moments with AI recently?
I'm amazed at how many people don't cough up even the $20 required for the full-fat experience. At least OpenAI has recently announced that they're making unlimited usage of a newer model, 5.6 Luna, available to the masses for free. It is still several steps down from Sol, which continues to genuinely impress me.
Google's "free AI" is an incredibly imprecise term. It can mean Gemini 3.5 (Flash? Lite?) when used through the Gemini app. It can be the search-specific Gemini 1.5, IIRC, used if you just "Google" something. As you can imagine, not even Google can afford to use the best of the best when serving so many people at such scale, with the majority being trivial queries.
I would pay a great deal more than $20 for an AI plan, but luckily, I don't have to. I've got tons of Claude Max, because I decided to accept payment in that form instead of figuring out intercontinental financial transfers after my participation in Unslop.
I remember when a Dutch junior of mine was consulting another senior for advice when working on a meta-analysis meant for a big name journal. I could have clapped like a seal when the latter mentioned Claude, in addition to ChatGPT, for help with the stats scutwork. Then I asked, and confirmed, that she only had a free plan. I was so dismayed that I immediately offered to share my Max, and walk her through things. It didn't hurt that she's a pretty girl, and it would have provided an opportunity to go out with her (that ended up happening anyway), but I am beyond annoyed when other doctors use free-tier LLMs for clinical work. They still function adequately, but anyone who can afford better should use better. $20 is really not an onerous ask for a significant amount of intelligence on tap.
I've got access to higher end stuff from work and I've found that Sonnet on the free plan is basically golden for most anything I want from it in my personal life. The main things I would get out of paying for a model aren't "better model" it would be things like better integration with my desktop files (since on the free plan you can't give Claude access to a folder) and longer uninterrupted sessions.
The floor has risen significantly. Even prior to Sonnet 5 (haven't fucked around with it it), the previous Sonnets were highly capable and treading into Opus territory at times.
I still think that for anything that isn't trivial/low-effort, the better models justify themselves very easily. I use the best that my plan allows unless I have a good reason to drop down (usage limits on a 5x plan are still annoying as hell).
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