The Practical AI Revolution
For a while, AI felt like a collection of flashy demos—cool and impressive, but not always useful in practice. That’s starting to change.
For a while, AI felt like a collection of flashy demos—cool and impressive but not always useful in practice. That’s starting to change. The latest wave of AI tools isn’t just about what they can do but how they fit into real workflows.
Claude 3.7 is a prime example. Instead of just answering questions, it adjusts how it thinks based on your needs—quick and snappy when you need speed, methodical when you need depth. Google’s PaliGemma 2 Mix is streamlining visual AI, replacing a mess of specialized tools with one model that can caption, analyze, and even read text in images. And Perplexity’s Deep Research is turning AI into something closer to a true research assistant, capable of sorting through the noise and delivering real insights.
The shift here is subtle but massive: AI isn’t just helping us work faster; it’s starting to change the nature of work itself. Instead of spending time gathering and organizing information, we’ll spend more time deciding what to do with it. Instead of manually optimizing content for SEO, we might soon be optimizing for AI assistants that act as decision-makers for consumers.
That last part is worth thinking about. If AI models are becoming the new gatekeepers—deciding which products, services, and brands to surface—how do we ensure they actually see us?
Let’s get into it.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet – Thinking on-demand
Anthropic’s latest AI, Claude 3.7 “Sonnet,” is being hailed as the first hybrid reasoning model that can toggle between near-instant answers and extended, step-by-step analysis. In practice, this means Claude can swiftly handle simple prompts or “think longer” on complex ones, revealing its reasoning chain to the user.
Early tests show dramatic gains in coding and problem-solving, but Anthropic deliberately trained Claude 3.7 on real-world business tasks rather than just puzzles. The result is an AI that feels equally at home debugging code or brainstorming a marketing plan. Executives can use Claude’s extended thinking mode for nuanced tasks like campaign strategy or in-depth data analysis, then switch to the fast mode for quick copy tweaks. Notably, Claude 3.7 is widely available (including via API and cloud platforms) at the same cost as previous versions, lowering the barrier for enterprise use.
Alongside the model, Anthropic introduced Claude Code, a command-line AI that can read, write, and even execute code autonomously. While aimed at developers, it’s a glimpse of AI “agents” that could one day handle repetitive digital tasks—imagine a future AI assistant that updates your CRM or generates reports on command.
Why it matters:
Claude 3.7’s dual approach marries speed with strategy, which could help teams automate routine work and tackle complex projects with one AI partner. It also increases the competitive pressure on OpenAI and others, as Anthropic leapfrogs into advanced reasoning capabilities before GPT -5’s expected similar features.
