I sought advice from four mainstream A.Is for a basic consumer use case question and to me, the differing style of the answers are quite revealing.

Premise: A poorly hung clothes dryer spectacularly ripped from the wall whilst on and tumbling, smashing into the washing machine beneath and trying to exit out the laundry door in a manner reminiscent of Stephen King's haunted laundromat story The Mangler.

After all the shards of glass, wall plaster etc were cleared up, the six month old washing machine wasn't working - yes, unsurprisingly but the problem was electronic, not mechanical. The display defaulted to blanks flashing - no error code etc. Having tried all the obvious fixes, I put the dilemma to four A.I.s: Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude (Pro) and Google Search with A.I. Mode.

All suggested more or less the same checkpoints and then a technician but diverged into unique personae + ideas.

Chat GPT: Empathetic, sycophanticaly validating "you've taken a laundry mishap and turned it into a quantum learning exercise...Here is a well-worded, no nonsense description of the problem to show to your technican or Westinghouse...You should be proud though..."

Perplexity: Scolding like the worst school teacher - essentially, "the machine is damaged because of a situation of your making. Even if it is within warranty blah blah" Have you consulted the washing machine manual? I can help you find it. (Yes I'd consulted the manual and no I had not asked Perplexity about trying to get it repaired within warranty)

Google A.I. Mode: Moved briskly onto 'new washing machine' turf. eg "What did you like most about your Westinghouse? Would you like another front loader or given your traumatic experience with the clothes dryer, would you prefer an all in one washing machine and dryer? Affiliate links galore.

Claude: It is definitely a problem with the electronics - eg: a connector ribbon failure, cracked solder joint etc etc - if you're comfortable and have the serial number, I can provide teardown instructions etc etc

I was actually into this idea and liked that Claude would have gone with me on it but as I was also on deadline, with piles of stinky laundry lurking, I ended up using H.I. - Human Intution.

Intuitively - and wasn't in the washing machine manual - I pressed the on/off button for a long hold and the machine revived - No teardown, no new machine, no eloquently composed briefs for Westinghouse nor shady attempt to get help from them either.

Four Competing AIs Answer 1 Classic Question