Ep 867: 2026 LLM Cheat Code: 10 Essential Steps To Get the Most out of Any AI Chatbot (Start Here Series Vol 26)

Jordan Wilson (0:00)

Welcome to the Everyday AI Podcast. My name is Jordan Wilson, and for the past three and a half years, we've put out more than 800 episodes. Yet, one of the most common questions I get, I didn't really have an answer for. Where do I start on the Everyday AI Podcast? And that's why we started the Start Here series. And with the fall now back in full swing, the Everyday AI Podcast is going back to school and playing back the entire Start Here series from front to back. We've hit pause on our normal Monday to Friday programming to run back our most popular series ever for the next 30 days. We made the Start Here series for beginners and AI champions alike. So whether you're just trying to get a grasp on large language models or grappling with the best coding harness for multi-agentic workflows, the Start Here series covers it all. Plain language, no jargon, and easy to follow along each day. So make sure to subscribe to the podcast and check back each day for new insights, day by day. The series is a culmination of spending more than 10,000 hours covering generative AI over the past three and a half years. So you don't want to miss a single episode of the Start Here series. Let's get into it.

The saying of keeping up with AI is like trying to drink water from a firehose, though it's tired and cliche is obviously 100% true. I mean, with all the nonstop updates, your head is probably spinning trying to keep up. So you're thinking with all these new releases, how do I use ChatGPT or is using Claude kind of the same as using Gemini on the desktop or can I prompt Copilot kind of like I'd prompt Codex? Or maybe you've had to start the race sprinting and you never really got the proper 101 on how all of these AI chatbots work. Regardless, you definitely aren't alone in the firehose updates drowning you out. That's the new struggle for every enterprise because it's not like there's a cheat code, right? Because as the AI models are changing almost daily, so too does the input required to get the best output. And I get it. As someone that covers AI daily, I understand the struggle of trying to play a game, yet the field dimensions change without notice. You were using a softball yesterday, but cricket gear today and tomorrow, you might kind of play it out like rugby. The input rules and the output capabilities are moving targets. But there's one thing I've found out over the last three or four months. The big players have all just kind of started to copy each other, which is actually a good thing for you. So I think it's actually been over the last two months that we've finally stumbled on a set of best practices for getting the best outputs out of any large language model. So that means, well, there is a cheat code, or at least a set of somewhat concrete rules that when followed will give you stellar outputs really no matter what model you're using. And that's exactly what we're going to be giving you today on Everyday AI. Welcome to the Start Here series. If you're new here, the Start Here series is your essential guide to getting caught up in getting ahead with AI. But first, let's talk about the big picture.

So, the capabilities of these models are very, very real, and it is hard to keep up.

Right now, you probably see examples all over the place. You see people sharing examples, whether it's online, whether it's media articles that are so poorly written, and you're like, well, these AI models are really bad. Look at all these mistakes. But then you also see these benchmarks and these tasks and these big companies laying people off in lieu of spending billions of dollars on AI and you're confused because you can't even know or don't even really understand what button to click or which model should I use. And up until recently, it's been too hard to follow because there's been too many different paths. And now, I think essentially we have cookie cutters, right? We have the McMansions of models because they're all kind of the same. Obviously, the capabilities and the harnessing of the tool is all completely different and unique. But I think for the first time, maybe ever, at least when it comes to the three to five handful of big AI players, we have a set of rules that can apply unilaterally to really any of them. So that's what we're going to be going over on today's show. Stick with me. This one, trust me, is going to be 30 minutes. All right. I know sometimes I say 25 to 30 and then you're like 45 minutes in, but stick with me on today's show. Here's what you're going to learn. You're going to know why the cookie cutter nature of today's large language models is actually both a good and a bad thing. You're going to know the up-to-date capabilities, features, pros and cons of the big players, specifically focusing on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, technically applicable to Copilot, but we're not going to go into that one as deep, as well as, I mean, you can apply it to Perplexity, Grok, Open Models, et cetera, because they are kind of all getting the same and you're going to leave today's show with the 10 essential steps to get the most out of any AI chatbot. All right, this is the Start Here series. This is the essential podcast series to both learn the AI basics and to double down on your AI knowledge, because after doing this for three and a half years, nearly almost 800 episodes now, I never had a good answer when people ask, Jordan, I'm new to the podcast, where do I start? Well, you start here with the Start Here series and you go to starthereseries.com. That is going to give you free access to our inner circle community. It's exclusive. This is the only way you can actually get access in the Start Here series space inside of our free community. You can go find every single Start Here series episode all in one easy to find place, a Spotify playlist that's updated, all the newsletters. Go read it. It's awesome. All right. So if you missed our last Start Here series episode, we covered Build, Buy, Partner or Wait, the four-layered AI Stack Decision Framework for 2026 And today we are giving you the LLM cheat code, 10 essential steps to get the most out of any AI chatbot.