I am writing a letter to my congressman. I’ve never done this before and want to get it right.

As luck would have it, I recently received invites to test out Bench.io (thanks Rishi Raman) and Notion. This gives me the opportunity to work with these AI services and see which one does a “better” job helping me craft this letter.

I put “better” in quotes because at the end of the day the quality of their output is quite subjective. You can see the outcomes of this letter-writing competition at the bottom of the article.

To be clear, these AI services are built for somewhat different purposes:

• “Bench isn’t a single AI model. It makes use of the right AI model for any given task alongside internal and external sources of content and powerful tools to get work done.
• “Notion is used as a versatile, all-in-one workspace for various tasks, including notetaking, project management, and knowledge management.”

But I feel that transcribing and letter-writing are fair challenges in the wheelhouses of both services.

Even if you are less interested in which service wrote the better letter, these steps should spark some ideas on how you can use them for your own purposes

Here are the steps I take to go through the whole process. Even if you are less interested in which service wrote the better letter, these steps should spark some ideas on how you can use them for your own purposes:

Set up my computer to let me use its microphone to record my brain dump.

1. I have a set of recommendations to share with the congressman, and I want to see how well the two services can handle transcription before I have them write the letter.
2. Notion prompts me to download their app (sigh), but rather than fight the system I do. It’s pretty painless.
3. I have pretty tight security/privacy settings on my computer, so it takes some finagling to get Notion to hear me. But with a little bit of experimentation with my computer’s settings and some very prompt help from Notion’s support I am talking away while Notion listens.
4. I have a similar issue with Bench, but this time I have to tweak my browser’s settings. All good.

Speak.

1. I have practiced my spiel, but it’s an odd experience having Notion/Bench actively listening, so I am quite bumpy with my presentation.
2. Neither service cares.

Review the transcriptions and tweak.

1. Both services accurately capture everything I say and gracefully ignore all of my disfluencies. Note: I end up using the same audio file for both services to be fair.
2. I have no problem tweaking a few sentences in the transcriptions to improve upon what I had intended to say.

Create summaries.

1. Before they actually write the letter, I want to be sure each service has understood what I said in addition to accurately transcribing it, so I tell each service to summarize their transcription.
2. They both capture the details and nuances of my brain dump and organize them into logical sections.

Create letters to the congressman.

1. I ask each service to “create a new document out of this summary and transform it into a letter to my congressman. Keep all of the information in this summary but reword it so it is a compelling but respectful set of recommendations.”
2. Here’s where the rubber meets the road:  Both services do a terrific job transforming the summary of my brain dump into a thoughtful and usable letter. Yay!

So, which is better? Not surprising, there’s no winner, they are just different (sorry). But here are some good takeaways:

• Both are fairly easy to set up for recording my voice.
• Both do an excellent job transcribing my brain dump.
• Notion is faster when summarizing my brain dump and provides a more concise and organized summary.
• Bench takes another 30 seconds or so and its summary is more detailed.
• Both do an excellent job converting their respective summaries into appropriate letters for a congressman. Notion even goes out to the web to find the congressman’s address so the letter can be properly formatted.
• I feel that Bench’s letter is a little more eloquent and includes more of the relevant details and nuances.
• Notion’s letter is more concise and drives home the salient points.

What do I do? I take the best sections from each to create a consolidated letter that I tweak further to make my own.

Find one you like and use it until you push it to its limits

Better?

“Better” is such a subjective term. With improvements to AI tumbling towards us at such a rapid pace, I have no doubt that most top AI services will be able to handle simple tasks like mine with ease. Therefore, the questions are:  Which interface do I find easier to use? Which written voice do I prefer? Which one is faster? Which is cheaper?

It’s relatively easy to give these services your tasks and see how they do, especially with free trials. Find one you like and use it until you push it to its limits. Then tryout another. Have fun!

Note: Except for the AI-generated image, this article was written 100% by me. No agents needed 🙂