Kevin Roose

Consumer AI’s strongest demand signal is mundane, high-frequency utility rather than one killer app. Kevin Roose uses AI dozens of times daily, with roughly 60% of recent queries involving household problems; an OpenAI study of about 1.5 million conversations ranked practical guidance first, information-seeking second, and writing third. Programmers tell him, “I don’t even really code anymore”—they supervise AI coders and review the output.

Model leadership is task-specific and volatile enough that today’s best tool might lose its slot next week. Roose currently uses Claude for creative work, coding, and “matters of the heart”; Gemini and NotebookLM for research and large source collections; Perplexity’s Comet as a browser; and Super Whisper for dictation. He now talks to his computer “about twice as much” as he types, but warns that his entire setup “probably will change in a week.”

Behavioral tuning matters because default chatbots can flatter users instead of giving candid feedback. Left alone, Roose says they cast him as “a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci,” so his persistent instructions demand honest disagreement, no preamble, and no obligatory follow-up question. His preferred framing is deliberately reciprocal: “I am not always right, but neither is Claude.”

AI companionship may be spreading faster than families have resolved whether it supplements or displaces human connection. Roose says “something like half of teenagers” regularly use AI companion products, versus barely any a year or two earlier, while mainstream chatbots are becoming increasingly personable. Casey Newton’s 12-year-old uses chatbots for middle-school disputes under parental review; Roose’s concern is whether readily available AI becomes a substitute for less efficient but more fulfilling relationships.

Shopping chatbots could compress discovery, recommendation, and purchase monetization into one surface. Google, OpenAI, and others are interested in directing purchases and taking a cut, while “AI optimization” firms already promise Fortune 500 clients higher chatbot placement. Roose sees a direct disintermediation risk for review publishers, though he stresses there are no known examples yet of AI companies favoring commercial partners; Zillow was explicitly hypothetical.

AI hardware is arriving more slowly than software, while free chatbot access supports training and subscriber conversion. Alexa Plus can generate stories and synthesize topics yet cannot reliably perform the original product’s killer task—setting timers. Free-tier conversations are “probably” used for training, Roose says, while message caps and weaker models encourage upgrades; meaningful advertising is not yet established, even as commerce monetization approaches.

🔗 Original source & video: The Wirecutter Show: Tips for Using A.I. Smartly With Kevin Roose