Sam AI-Man Is Not Impressing ZDNet

December 9, 2025

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

In the good old days of Ziff Communication, editorial and ad sales were separated. The “Chinese wall” seemed to work. It would be interesting to go back in time and let the editorial team from 1985 check out the write up “Stop Using ChatGPT for Everything: The AI Models I Use for Research, Coding, and More (and Which I Avoid).” The “everything” is one of those categorical affirmatives that often cause trouble for high school debaters or significant others arguing with a person who thinks a bit like a Silicon Valley technology person. Example: “I have to do everything around here.” Ever hear that?

Yes, granny. You say one thing, but it seems to me that you are getting your cupcakes from a commercial bakery. You cannot trust dinobabies when they say “I make everything” can you?

But the subtitle strikes me as even more exciting; to wit:

From GPT to Claude to Gemini, model names change fast, but use cases matter more. Here’s how I choose the best model for the task at hand.

This is the 2025 equivalent to a 1985 article about “Choosing Character Sets with EGA.” Peter Norton’s article from November 26, 1985, was mostly arcana, not too much in the opinion game. The cited “Stop Using ChatGPT for Everything” is quite different.

Here’s a passage I noted:

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

And what about ChatGPT as a useful online service? Consider this statement:

However, when I do agentic coding, I’ve found that OpenAI’s Codex using GPT-5.1-Max and Claude Code using Opus 4.5 are astonishingly great. Agentic AI coding is when I hook up the AIs to my development environment, let the AIs read my entire codebase, and then do substantial, multi-step tasks. For example, I used Codex to write four WordPress plugin products for me in four days. Just recently, I’ve been using Claude Code with Opus 4.5 to build an entire complex and sophisticated iPhone app, which it helped me do in little sprints over the course of about half a month. I spent $200 for the month’s use of Codex and $100 for the month’s use of Claude Code. It does astonish me that Opus 4.5 did so poorly in the chatbot experience, but was a superstar in the agentic coding experience, but that’s part of why we’re looking at different models. AI vendors are still working out the kinks from this nascent technology.

But what about “everything” as in “stop using ChatGPT for everything”? Yeah, well, it is 2025.

And what about this passage? I quote:

Up until now, no other chatbot has been as broadly useful. However, Gemini 3 looks like it might give ChatGPT a run for its money. Gemini 3 has only been out for a week or so, which is why I don’t have enough experience to compare them. But, who knows, in six months this category might list Gemini 3 as the favorite model instead of GPT-5.1.

That “everything” still haunts me. It sure seems to me as if the ZDNet article uses ChatGPT a great deal. By the author’s own admission, he “doesn’t have enough experience to compare them.” But, but, but (as Jack Benny used to say) and then blurt “stop for everything!” Yeah, seems inconsistent to me. But, hey, I am a dinobaby.

I found this passage interesting as well:

Among the big names, I don’t use Perplexity, Copilot, or Grok. I know Perplexity also uses GPT-5.1, but it’s just never resonated with me. It’s known for search, but the few times I’ve tried some searches, its results have been meh. Also, I can’t stand the fact that you have to log in via email.

I guess these services suck as much as the ChatGPT system the author uses. Why? Yeah, log in method. That’s substantive stuff in AI land.

Observations:

I don’t think this write up is output by AI or at least any AI system with which I am familiar
I find the title and the text a bit out of step
The categorical affirmative is logically loosey goosey.

Net net: Sigh.

Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, News, Publishing

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.