S11E13 – How to Talk to an AI Properly

Episode Summary

Mike opened with another warning about TP-Link routers, after news that Russia is using the same kind of router weakness that Chinese groups were reported to use. He told listeners to replace any TP-Link device and said other budget brands carry similar risks.

Most of the show was a guide to talking to AI so it gives useful results. Prompted by watching his wife use an AI to write Word documents, Mike said people are too polite and too quick to accept weak answers, and explained tokens, saving a working process as a skill, and add-ons that connect an AI to email or folders. One caller, Charles, asked whether his router’s DNS setting conflicts with the one on his computer.

Topics Covered

TP-Link and budget routers

Mike repeated his advice to get rid of any TP-Link router, saying the company stops pushing updates after roughly five to six years and the updates are often months or years out of date. He said Asus routers are decent and can update firmware automatically, which he recommended turning on, and that people should check their router for firmware updates now and then.

Trusting code you did not write

Mike and Howard talked about how malicious code can slip into open-source projects, including on GitHub. Howard said Linus Torvalds has been complaining about AI-generated code submissions. Mike said human-only code review will not scale and that automated AI review checked by a human is likely the future.

Be direct with AI

Mike said most people are too soft with AI and accept a weaker result, such as when an AI offered a simplified document after its first file crashed Word. He said the AI is not offended, so say plainly what is wrong and what you want. He called AI a genius two-year-old that needs very specific, detailed instructions, and said paid accounts can keep standing instructions across conversations.

Tokens and treating AI as an appliance

Mike explained that words going in and out are broken into tokens, which measure how much work the AI does, and that polite filler wastes electricity at scale. He said to treat the AI like a tool or appliance, not a friend, and noted that its friendly tone comes from predicting words, not feelings. He also suggested asking an AI what it can do and asking it to explain anything you do not understand.

Skills, add-ons and projects

Mike described saving a successful process as a skill so the AI repeats it, and said the command-line versions handle many skills better than web versions but give the AI more access to your computer. He described add-ons (MCP) that let an AI read email or reach folders, and advised against giving an AI outbound communication. He said project rules in the web versions apply to every chat in a project, that most AIs lack live web search, and that they cannot reliably do math unless they write a script.

Calls

• Charles asked whether the DNS servers built into his fiber router conflict with the different DNS he set on his computers. Mike said they do not conflict: the router’s setting is only a default for devices that have none, so a DNS set on the computer is used instead.