Exploring GenAI with VAILL: Day 9 🛠
A 10-day journey into human-centered GenAI for legal professionals
🛠 Day 9: AI Tools Comparison
Welcome back! After practicing various GenAI techniques and applications, let's focus on something practical: comparing different AI tools to find the ones that best suit your needs. Today, we'll use Poe, a platform that gives you access to multiple models in one place, to help streamline your testing process.
Today's Focus: Learn to evaluate and select appropriate GenAI tools for different legal tasks by testing multiple models through a single interface.
🎯 Learning Objectives
Compare different GenAI models' capabilities efficiently
Identify which tools best suit specific tasks for your workflow
Learn to evaluate AI responses for professional use
📚 Key Concepts
Not all GenAI tools are created equal, as each has unique strengths and limitations. Poe (poe.com) makes it easy to explore these differences by providing access to various GenAI models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta all in one place.
Think of Poe as a laboratory where you can:
Test multiple GenAI models simultaneously
Compare responses side-by-side
Discover which tools work best for different tasks
Save time by accessing everything in one interface
Remember: The goal isn't to find one "perfect" tool, but to build a toolkit that serves your various professional needs while maintaining high standards of practice.
💡 Pro Tips
Test models with real-world scenarios you commonly encounter
Pay attention to both response quality and speed
Take notes on which models excel at different tasks
Consider how each model's style matches your needs
Remember that AI responses may vary in quality and accuracy
✍️ Today's Exercise
To give you easy access to a variety of GenAI models via a single platform, we suggest using Poe (poe.com)1 for today’s exercise to compare how different models handle various professional tasks.
Getting Started with Poe:
Comparison Testing: Try the suggested prompts in each category below with your chosen models and note how they differ. Or, better yet, practice your new prompting skills to create a set of prompts focused on your particular workflow and goals!
Chain-of-Thought Test: (Building on Day 8's advanced prompting) "Help me analyze this project challenge: Our team needs to implement a new [kind of workflow or system, e.g. a document management system]. Please think through this step by step:
What should we consider first?
Then what?
What might we be forgetting?
Show your reasoning at each step."
Multi-Perspective Analysis: (Building on Day 3 and Day 4's content creation and analysis) "Take this statement: 'We should move all client meetings to video calls by default.' Analyze this from three perspectives:
Client relationship management
Legal risk management
Resource allocation
Explain the tradeoffs for each perspective."
Process Optimization: (Building on Day 5's productivity focus) "Review this basic workflow: 'Associate drafts document → Partner reviews → Associate revises → Final client review.' Suggest three specific ways to make this more efficient while maintaining quality and compliance, explaining the benefits and potential challenges of each suggestion."
Evaluation: For each model's responses, note:
Which provided the most thorough analysis?
Which gave the most practical suggestions?
Which explained its reasoning most clearly?
Which would you trust for similar tasks?
Keep notes on which models excel at different types of tasks to help build your optimal GenAI toolkit.
🔍 Common Mistakes to Avoid
Testing only one type of task
Forgetting to consider response time and consistency
Not keeping notes on which models excel at specific tasks
Overlooking important features like file-handling capabilities
⚡️ Lightning Round (Optional)
Pick your favorite model on Poe and ask it: "What are 3 features or capabilities of this platform that most users don't know about?" Try one feature you didn't know existed and share what you discover. This simple exploration might reveal valuable capabilities you've been missing!
🔄 Quick Recap
Different GenAI models excel at different tasks
Poe makes comparison testing efficient
Quick tests can reveal important differences
Building a varied toolkit is more valuable than finding one "perfect" tool
📔 Reflect
Before moving on, spend a few minutes in your learning journal noting:
After comparing different GenAI tools today, which capabilities align most closely with your most frequent tasks? Why?
What support or resources would help you implement your takeaways from today’s lesson?
These final reflections will be particularly valuable as you develop your personal AI implementation plan.
📚 Additional Resources
Article: Doing Stuff with AI: Opinionated Midyear Edition (One Useful Thing Substack) - in this post, Wharton Prof Ethan Mollick explores some cool GenAI tools, some for fun and some for work to inspire your continued experimentation and exploration
Video: 10 AI Tools You Need to Know in 2024 (Hayls World via Youtube) - A short video demoing GenAI tools that do fun things (that you might not know that GenAI can do so easily!)
Database: Legal Technology Hub (website): LTH provides a comprehensive, searchable database of legal technology vendors, including legal-specific tools that incorporate GenAI
👉 Coming Tomorrow
Get ready for our final day! In the final post of this series, we'll explore emerging trends and develop your personal GenAI action plan for continued growth and success.
Keep experimenting with different tools, and share your discoveries with us at vaill@vanderbilt.edu!
Poe is a multi-platform service that enables users to interact with various AI models from different companies through conversational interfaces. The platform provides access to a wide range of models including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, along with millions of community-created bots.
We’ve found it easy to reach your limits using a free Poe account. To get the most out of this tool and its ability to work across LLM platforms, consider investing for one month of a paid account. Poe operates on a “points” system and currently the entry level paid account of 1 million points starts at 19.99/month. This should give you adequate access to go through the Day 9 comparison exercises and fully explore and compare various platforms.