The small things that make or break Your AI experience
Today I’m not going to talk about the latest model releases, sweeping industry trends, or yet another tool that promises to “change everything.”
I want to talk about something far smaller. And, paradoxically, far more important.
How people judge AI – and how they should
Most people evaluate AI tools by benchmarks and impressive demos. A new model drops, and social media fills up with jaw-dropping videos of what it can do. But when you work with AI intensively, day after day, you quickly discover that it’s the small things – the quiet, unglamorous details – that determine whether a tool genuinely elevates your work or quietly drives you mad.
When you can’t rely on the AI to finish what it started. When you’re not sure it actually understood you. When you have to re-explain something you’ve already explained.
I’ve run into all of this recently. I deliberately use several tools for the same tasks, and I’m noticing the differences more and more:
The unfinished task. I had a spreadsheet with several email drafts. Next to each one I’d jotted a rough reply, and I asked an AI to turn them into polished, professional responses. One tool handled the whole batch without a hitch. Another did only some of them – no explanation, no warning. Just done, but not really done.
The lost context. I needed a series of similar texts. I worked with the AI to refine the first one, then said: “Do the rest the same way.” Two tools understood immediately. One didn’t – and I had to re-enter the entire brief from scratch.
The pointless refusal. When I asked an AI to review an article I’d written, it replied: “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss this topic.” When I asked why, it said: “I apologize for the confusion – your topic is completely fine. We can absolutely work on this.” The topic wasn’t sensitive. Nothing had changed. I simply don’t want to manage moments like that. I want to work.
The other side: WOW moments
But it works in the opposite direction too. Every time an AI does something unexpectedly clever – something you never asked for, something that stops you mid-scroll – that’s the moment you remember why any of this matters. Whatever people say about whether AI is “really” intelligent, these are the moments that feel like it genuinely is.
I had one recently in Replit, my go-to tool for building apps. I’d just purchased the domain Superpowers.md – deliberately, because .md is the extension for markdown files, a text format that AI handles exceptionally well. When I asked Replit to design the website and use “Superpowers.md” as the logo, it did something I never instructed: it rendered the “.md” as a markdown file icon, exactly the way you’d recognize it from any developer app.
On its own. Without a single instruction.
These are the moments that give me real intellectual and creative joy. It’s what a friend of mine describes perfectly – like hitting the G-spot of your brain.
What this means for how you work
If you’re not experiencing moments like that, you’re probably not using the best tools available to you. That doesn’t mean replacing everything at once – in many work environments you use what you’re given, and that’s fine. But for your personal projects, your learning, and the work that actually shapes where you’re headed, it’s worth reaching for the best that exists.
Because the biggest differences often live in the smallest details. Not just in AI – in everything.
FD
