Ask Good Questions: Try, Try Again

1

A lot of people try an AI model, get a disappointing result, and decide that it simply can’t do what they need.

That may have been true on the day they tried it. It may not be true now.

The models are improving quickly, the tools around them are changing, and we’re also getting better at explaining what we need and managing longer AI-assisted projects.

This week’s guide, A Failed AI Experiment Isn’t a Final Answer, looks at how to revisit an unsuccessful AI task and determine whether the model, the method, or both have improved.

https://askgoodquestions.dev/guides/a-failed-ai-experiment-isnt-a-final-answer

The companion field note, Try, Try Again, includes some of what I’ve been seeing firsthand while working with Claude and ChatGPT. That includes a recent programming session where ChatGPT created a 10,000-row test case, discovered a timeout problem, and revised the search design around the results.

https://askgoodquestions.dev/field-notes/try-try-again

With AI, failure has an expiration date. The model that disappointed you a few months ago may no longer exist in any meaningful sense.

Try the old task again. You may be surprised by what happens.

2

Hi Charles, I just got offered a free US$100 credits to use Fable 5 - is it worth having a look at?

And, slightly off-topic - I really like the design of your website, is that a publicly available Hugo theme, or did you design it yourself? Supplementary question, do you use a specific editor to create your Hugo pages, or do you just use markup and a text editor? I have installed a VSCode plugin for Hugo and it has limited usefulness. I’m considering moving from Hugo to GRAV because it looks easier to manage? (I’m not making many changes to my site so it won’t matter a lot)

3

Yes, with $100 in free credits, I’d certainly give it a try.

I wouldn’t waste them on casual conversation, though. Give it something substantial, such as planning a real project, reviewing an architecture, or working through a difficult coding problem, preferably one you’ve already tried with another model.

That’ll give you a meaningful comparison and tell you whether it actually brings anything useful to your work.

The Ask Good Questions website is not a Hugo site. It is done with Grav.

I have used Hugo on another site that is complex with multiple languages, but switched to GRAV because I felt it was easier to manage and publish. Plus it can be installed from CPANEL so it was easy to setup.

The theme is one that I had Claude create for me, then I added the logo that the site uses. It was fairly easy to setup with AI assistance.

Although you can upload full Markdown pages to designated folders, I create the pages in GRAV, but switch to the expert mode and paste content into it rather than edit it in the web editor. That let’s GRAV make sure the page organization is correct.

For content creation I use my new PageSnip product that I am about to release.

AGQ-Grav1
AGQ-Grav11920×1080 211 KB

It is a solid first class Markdown editor better than anything I tried that allows you to edit without using raw Markdown code (although you can switch to that if need be).

It also has a preview that you can even run in split screen so you see the final output at the same time if desired. The split can be horizontal or vertical if you prefer side by side documents.

AGQ-Grav4
AGQ-Grav41920×1080 214 KB

I create the Front Matter for the website pages as a normal text page in PageSnip.and use Page Groups to organize the article pairs.

AGQ-Grav3
AGQ-Grav31920×1080 177 KB

When i am ready to publish I just use the copy button on each page to copy the Markdown or the text to the clipboard, paste it into the Expert panes in GRAV and click the save button.

I prefer this method as it lets me work without needing to be logged in.

Plus having the content in PageSnip means it is a local archive in case the server loses the copy.

I find it is the best of both worlds for this sort of content.

4

Thanks Charles, it looks great! (I thought it was a Hugo site because it comes up in BuiltWith as a Hugo site.) I’ve had a brief play with Grav, I think I will head there when I have time to get a round-tuit! :grin: