How I use AI without going insane

No, I don't want AI added to every product, service and website. No, I do not want to have to pay for 20 different subscriptions becuase your product has a specific esoteric LLM in that I have to pay seperately for.

AI is a tool, it is not a solution. It doesn't fix the problems in your application, it just burns the world while it uses it's baked-in plyfills to get around your bad UI. Too many apps rely on people using their AI to help people find information - how about you have better navgiation, sign-posting and UX so people can find it themselves?

I was speaking with an accessibility consultant a while ago and he was bemoaning about those widgets people can add to their website to "improve" accessibiliyt. He was saying that, if he needed bigger text or different contrast, he would have his own tool to do it. People wouldn't turn up to shops in their wheelchairs and expect to be forced to use the shop provided ones. I feel the same about AI, I have an AI I am paying for, don't force me to use yours - allow me to continue to use my personalised assistant within your property.

While I rant on about AI, you'd think I was some sort of hater - but I'm an avid user. It has it's place, it is a useful tool but this scattergun multi-LLM apprach the tech industry seems to be taking at the moment needs to stop. Allow us to bring our own LLM if we have one, expose your service or app as an MCP or plugin, so I can use my customise AI agent of choice to do the things you desperately need me to use an AI for.

I've tried a few of the popular LLMs and have settled on Claude as my favoured one. It seems a lot more code-focused (which is what I mainly use it for) although I will pop over to Gemini if I need/want to do any image/video/music creatioon or editing (this is normally for humerous affect rather than anything serious).