Google’s enabled you to turn on its Gemini AI in every service to search across your ibox, calendar, files, etc. Seems like a good idea to some, but the privacy concerns should not be ignored.

Claude is on everyone’s minds and in all the headlines for its incredible Code and Cowork tools available to Pro subscribers. Is this the moment to jump in and try another service?

OpenAI is testing ads on free ChatGPT and a new $8/month Go tier. They say advertisers can’t pay to change the chat bot’s responses but ads will be triggered by what you’re discussing with it.

Should you try out Claude? Should you pay for ChatGPT? And can I trust Gemini with all my emails?

Which way do you turn? How do you decide?

Breathe, then answer a few questions.

First The Backstory

Since New Year’s Day, artificial intelligence has been talked about with breathless enthusiasm by a lot of people. And the buzz about Claude coming out of the holidays has drowned out almost everything else.

Why?

Simply, something significant has changed.

Veteran engineers used Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Code to solve problems they had not been able to untangle before. Then the experts, folks who observe and comment on the industry, got excited when they got their hands on the tools.

Now a huge hype flywheel is humming. Claims and conjecture are flying around.

And you’re feeling lost in all that noise. Through no fault of your own, you’re in this tempest while either trying to use AI to be more efficient and effective or still figuring out if you should even bother with it.

As the volume builds, so does the confusion.

Let’s flip the script and leave the noise behind to think clearly about what’s best for you.

We’ll accomplish that with a few questions.

Seven Questions to Clarity

To help you understand where you are right now with AI, I came up with a simple, short quiz. It contains seven questions. They’re worded simply, and there are no wrong answers.

You can answer the AI Readiness Quiz now at this link. No email address is required.

After the final question, based solely on your responses, you’ll know if you are an AI Skeptic (which is completely reasonable), if you’re AI Curious (ready to explore more and maybe unsure where to begin), or if you are an AI Adopter (using tools and wanting more confidence).

Clarity.

And then you can do a few things with that information.

You can share the quiz with someone. Maybe a spouse or a buddy would benefit from stepping through the questions themselves.

You can print your answers on paper or save them as a PDF. This could be helpful if that young person at work has been breathing down your neck to get with the times.

Depending on your score, you can follow some suggested next steps. Some of my earlier posts could be helpful.

Or you can get personalized assistance from me whether that’s an answer to a quick question or working through my AI Trainer program. At the end of the quiz, enter your email address to message me directly.

Because sometimes all you really need is a simple, straightforward answer to cut through the clamor.

Some Simple Answers

Remember those three questions at the beginning. Here’s what I’d tell a friend:

1. Even if I used Gmail, I would never give Gemini unfettered access to crawl my inbox and saved messages. The information is too private and personal to give Google the keys to medical records, bank accounts, and everything else which is sent via email. I don’t even use its Chrome browser.
2. You should pay for a ChatGPT Plus subscription. Not only will you avoid seeing ads, but the ability to build your own Custom GPTs and create very good images is well worth the investment.
3. You should definitely try Claude now. I appreciate the tenor and tone of its responses, how it guides me through a difficult problem, and its creativity. And, because I’m a Pro subscriber, I could use Code to create the AI Readiness quiz webpage, to program every aspect of the quiz, and to build the Winter Weather Agent recently to help my girlfriend and me plan our outdoor activities—all without writing a line of code.

Take the quiz, get your answer, and let me know what you discover.