AI Office Hours — Penn Carey Law

01 The Current Model Landscape

Three serious players. All genuinely capable. Which one fits you is partly workflow, partly taste — but use a paid version or don't bother.

Claude (Sonnet / Opus) — what I use ~90% of the time

Anthropic

My daily driver. Best instruction-following and task completion of any model. Most business-oriented feature set — and extremely extensible and customizable through Claude Code, skills, and MCP.

ChatGPT

OpenAI

Widest adoption; strong all-rounder. Penn licenses ChatGPT EDU with data protections — use that, not a personal account.

Penn licensed

Gemini

Google

Well-integrated with Google Search. Best and easiest image generation of any model — try “nano banana.”

DO NOT USE THE FREE VERSIONS OF ANY AI TOOL.

Free tiers run older, weaker models — what you experience is not what current AI can actually do. They are slower, rate-limited, will use your data to train future models, and have serious data privacy and security concerns. ChatGPT EDU is available from Penn, and Claude Pro starts at $20/month. If you are doing any real work and you are not paying for a pro or higher version of the system, you are doing it wrong.

02 From Talking to Doing

The first wave was conversational — ask, receive, copy-paste. That era is ending. The more consequential shift: AI that does work, not just talks about it.

Then

Chatbot

You prompt, it responds
You copy output manually
One exchange at a time
Passive — you do the work

Now

Agent

Reads your files, writes new ones
Runs code, checks its own work
Works in the background while you don't
Chains steps toward a goal autonomously

Two tools that make this concrete — both available now:

Claude Code

Anthropic · Terminal agent

A separate tool that runs in your terminal. Reads your files, writes and edits code, runs tests, and iterates — all with your approval at each step. Built this page, and the AI Resources portal.

Cowork

Anthropic · Background agent

Available in the Claude app (claude.ai). Hand Claude a task — research, draft, analysis — and walk away. It works in the background and comes back with results. Delegation, not conversation.

Think of these current AI tools as an extremely smart, very capable assistant who is also extremely literal. These tools are not search engines — they are collaborators who need very clear direction. The more you use them, the easier it gets to get them to do what you want.

03 Faculty Resources

Running guides and tools for PCL faculty — updated as the landscape evolves.