Finding The Right AI Is A Lot Like Dating: You Have To Kiss A Few Frogs

Marie Aiello, President, ContinuumGlobal, an engagement marketing services company.

​I spend a ridiculous amount of my time talking about AI. Which model should we use? Should this be an agent? Is this something we should build ourselves? How much autonomy should we give it? Why did something that worked perfectly last week suddenly give us a completely different answer?

And somewhere in the middle of one of these conversations, it occurred to me that choosing AI is a lot like dating. Everyone wants to find “the one.” You make your list of requirements. You do your research. Other people tell you how great they are. You start thinking this could really work.

Then you actually spend some time together, and suddenly there are things you didn’t see coming. The thing everyone else loves about them drives you crazy. Something you thought mattered turns out not to matter at all. And occasionally the one you almost dismissed surprises you.

AI is starting to feel very similar.

The ‘best’ model isn’t necessarily the best for you.

I get asked all the time which LLM companies should be using. It’s a completely reasonable question, and I understand why everyone wants a definitive answer. I just don’t think there is one.

At my company, we’ve tested different models against the same work and gotten very different results. A model that’s fantastic at one task can be surprisingly average at another. Sometimes the model with the best reputation isn’t the one that performs best for what we’re trying to accomplish.

Performance isn’t the only consideration. There’s also cost, speed, security, context, integration and model interaction requirements to consider. There are also plenty of situations where we discover that we don’t need an LLM at all. A traditional automation or API can perform part of the work more reliably and inexpensively.

That’s not nearly as exciting as saying everything needs to be agentic, but we’re trying to solve the problem, not win an award for using the most AI.