This was an informative read Kexin! I have completely ignored Google Gemini so far, not sure exactly why, but I have a feeling that one person can reasonably test a select few tools at a time.
A few questions,
1. Do you use the other LLMs at all?
2. Is Gemini your go to LLM? How has it won you over the more popular Gpt and Claude?
3. When you say the information from Gemini feels more like storing it in your bag and with the Gemini Gem learning coach you can digest it at a suitable occasion selecting only the ingredients you want from the original Gemini output (I hope that made sense haha) What's the workflow like for you, in terms of info capture, storing and revisiting at the desired time and place?
This is a challenge I struggle with so mu curiosity was peaked.
From the most to least frequent use cases, I use ChatGPT and Gemini for learning/ researching, coding for data analysis, and brainstorming. The data analysis needs come from my job for analyzing user data: I use ChatGPT to write python to analyze .csv files, and Gemini to write Google sheet functions since early this year. They both have been working very well for me, but I recently discovered an error in one Google sheet function after I’ve been using it for more than a month. I did a quick test before I started using it in my work, but I should have done more testing. Testing/ checking for errors would become more of a challenge when it comes to coding for people like me with little coding experiences. I want to try Claude to code next.
For graphics, I occasionally use Midjourney to save time from making things from scratch.
For videos, I use artlist.io to generate voice-overs. I really like the voices of various personas they provide. The feature is a little expensive, but the voice quality is the best among other softwares I’ve tried. It does not feel mechanical at all, and the sliders UI allows me to adjust various emotions of each persona’s voice.
2. Is Gemini your go to LLM? How has it won you over the more popular Gpt and Claude?
I use Gemini more for life related tasks, like learning about culture and history when I’m traveling, or learning about diets and health related topics.
For any coding related topics, I’ll use ChatGPT because it is the first to earn my trust to successfully write python to analyze data.
For design related topics, I tend to ask Gemini first, but I’ll also ask ChatGPT again if the answer by Gemini is lacking or if I want to cross check. If I still don’t get the information I need in full, I’ll ask them to give me the answers sources in URL so that I have more context and can read more in depth. When these URLs are not useful, I’ll search on Google.
For brainstorming, I use both to get more ideas to help expand my thinking.
3. When you say the information from Gemini feels more like storing it in your bag and with the Gemini Gem learning coach you can digest it at a suitable occasion selecting only the ingredients you want from the original Gemini output (I hope that made sense haha) What's the workflow like for you, in terms of info capture, storing and revisiting at the desired time and place?
What I meant to say is learning information from Gemini feels a bit passive. The information I read is likely to stays in short-term memory without actively trying to recall them, so I would lose them after a while (I don’t own them). It is good for when I need to gather information to use at the moment, but not retaining information for future use.
The Gemini Learning Coach gem quizzes helps me to “own” the knowledge by moving them from short- term memory to long-term memory. The act of answering the quizzes makes me recall the new knowledge I read earlier and process them to answer the quiz questions. This helps to make new knowledge from short term memory to long term memory, so I “own” the knowledge now.
However, retaining the knowledge takes more efforts and time, so I mix it with taking notes in Notion. I sometimes copy the entire answers I find very useful and paste them to Notion, and make comments to parts of the copied paragraphs for two purposes:
1. Commenting is an act of processing the information. In my comments, I make connection of the piece of information I’m commenting on with another piece of information in my mind, or a project I’m working on.
2. Comments tell my future self this is something important. When I visit the Notion page in the future, I could skip other parts but not this part that has my comment.
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to write this comprehensive response. Very helpful to know how you use LLMs overall and specific usecases too.
I 100% agree with you on the immense value commenting plays in knowledge retention and comprehension. It's like talking to yourself out loud but in text. Like a series of echoes, thinking, writing, reading, thinking and so on. I find this to be one of the disadvantages of using Obsidian for knowledge management.
What is your line of work? Am I correct in assuming you're a UX designer?
This was an informative read Kexin! I have completely ignored Google Gemini so far, not sure exactly why, but I have a feeling that one person can reasonably test a select few tools at a time.
A few questions,
1. Do you use the other LLMs at all?
2. Is Gemini your go to LLM? How has it won you over the more popular Gpt and Claude?
3. When you say the information from Gemini feels more like storing it in your bag and with the Gemini Gem learning coach you can digest it at a suitable occasion selecting only the ingredients you want from the original Gemini output (I hope that made sense haha) What's the workflow like for you, in terms of info capture, storing and revisiting at the desired time and place?
This is a challenge I struggle with so mu curiosity was peaked.
Hey Shashaank, thanks for these questions!
1. Do you use the other LLMs at all?
From the most to least frequent use cases, I use ChatGPT and Gemini for learning/ researching, coding for data analysis, and brainstorming. The data analysis needs come from my job for analyzing user data: I use ChatGPT to write python to analyze .csv files, and Gemini to write Google sheet functions since early this year. They both have been working very well for me, but I recently discovered an error in one Google sheet function after I’ve been using it for more than a month. I did a quick test before I started using it in my work, but I should have done more testing. Testing/ checking for errors would become more of a challenge when it comes to coding for people like me with little coding experiences. I want to try Claude to code next.
For graphics, I occasionally use Midjourney to save time from making things from scratch.
For videos, I use artlist.io to generate voice-overs. I really like the voices of various personas they provide. The feature is a little expensive, but the voice quality is the best among other softwares I’ve tried. It does not feel mechanical at all, and the sliders UI allows me to adjust various emotions of each persona’s voice.
2. Is Gemini your go to LLM? How has it won you over the more popular Gpt and Claude?
I use Gemini more for life related tasks, like learning about culture and history when I’m traveling, or learning about diets and health related topics.
For any coding related topics, I’ll use ChatGPT because it is the first to earn my trust to successfully write python to analyze data.
For design related topics, I tend to ask Gemini first, but I’ll also ask ChatGPT again if the answer by Gemini is lacking or if I want to cross check. If I still don’t get the information I need in full, I’ll ask them to give me the answers sources in URL so that I have more context and can read more in depth. When these URLs are not useful, I’ll search on Google.
For brainstorming, I use both to get more ideas to help expand my thinking.
3. When you say the information from Gemini feels more like storing it in your bag and with the Gemini Gem learning coach you can digest it at a suitable occasion selecting only the ingredients you want from the original Gemini output (I hope that made sense haha) What's the workflow like for you, in terms of info capture, storing and revisiting at the desired time and place?
What I meant to say is learning information from Gemini feels a bit passive. The information I read is likely to stays in short-term memory without actively trying to recall them, so I would lose them after a while (I don’t own them). It is good for when I need to gather information to use at the moment, but not retaining information for future use.
The Gemini Learning Coach gem quizzes helps me to “own” the knowledge by moving them from short- term memory to long-term memory. The act of answering the quizzes makes me recall the new knowledge I read earlier and process them to answer the quiz questions. This helps to make new knowledge from short term memory to long term memory, so I “own” the knowledge now.
However, retaining the knowledge takes more efforts and time, so I mix it with taking notes in Notion. I sometimes copy the entire answers I find very useful and paste them to Notion, and make comments to parts of the copied paragraphs for two purposes:
1. Commenting is an act of processing the information. In my comments, I make connection of the piece of information I’m commenting on with another piece of information in my mind, or a project I’m working on.
2. Comments tell my future self this is something important. When I visit the Notion page in the future, I could skip other parts but not this part that has my comment.
Wow! Thanks for taking the time to write this comprehensive response. Very helpful to know how you use LLMs overall and specific usecases too.
I 100% agree with you on the immense value commenting plays in knowledge retention and comprehension. It's like talking to yourself out loud but in text. Like a series of echoes, thinking, writing, reading, thinking and so on. I find this to be one of the disadvantages of using Obsidian for knowledge management.
What is your line of work? Am I correct in assuming you're a UX designer?
Thanks for writing such a detailed article, Kexin! Haven't tried Gemini yet and I’m curious about how it performs compared to ChatGPT.
It seems like Customized Gems might be influenced by ChatGPT’s Custom GPTs too—also curious to see how it will develop in the future.