Mid-2026 AI Usage Check

[jon-nyc]

I thought it would be interesting to do periodic surveys of how (or if) we are using AI.

What model or models do you use? If more than one, is there rhyme or reason as to when you choose one over another? Are you paying for any?

Has your use moved beyond the google on steroids? IOW, are you just asking it questions or are you doing more advanced stuff like vibe coding, running multiple agents, etc?

Feel free to add a relevant question I missed.

I'll start:

I have CHatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini apps installed on my phone, all in a neat row on the bottom of my front page. I pay for ChatGPT monthly, I'm finishing up a year's subscription to Grok which I won't renew. I was about to start paying for Claude to get Fable 5 but it was swiped by USG before I could. I imagine I'll be paying for Claude and ChatGPT moving forward.

ChatGPT and Claude get most of my attention (makes sense, they are the two frontier models). Grok I mostly use for the 'explain this tweet' feature. Gemini I use only very occasionally. Very occasionally I'll ask the same question to the four models to see if the answers align (cutting and pasting is trivial, so why not).

I find that once a model gets a lot of history and context with you the switching costs are very real, if not dollar denominated. That keeps me on CHatGPT for a few topics - my work and my health issues - even while I've moved to Claude for much else.

Not done any coding with them yet. I may try to play around with them to either replace or increase the efficiency of some of the bespoke spreadsheets I've been using for many years.

Haven't got any agents working. In that sense I'm still a basic if frequent user.

How about you?