Why NeutralPick runs no AI of its own

Every visitor would cost money

A website that runs its own AI pays the AI provider a small amount every time someone uses it. If NeutralPick ran its own AI, every checklist a visitor wrote and every search for vendors would add to that bill. The more people used the site, the bigger the bill would get.

NeutralPick is free to use. A free website with a bill that grows with every visitor has to get money from somewhere. Usually that money comes from one of two places: showing advertising, or charging the companies that are being compared. Both would break the one thing NeutralPick exists to do, which is to help you choose without anyone paying to influence your choice. An advert next to your comparison, or a vendor paying to keep the site running, is exactly the kind of pressure we want to keep out.

So we made a simple rule. NeutralPick pays for one server that runs the website. It pays for nothing that gets more expensive each time a visitor uses AI. That way the site can stay free without needing money from anyone who might want to influence it.

You probably have an AI assistant already

Many people already use an AI assistant at work or at home, and several AI assistants have a free plan. Any of them can do the jobs NeutralPick's own AI would have done:

• Turn your description of what you need into a checklist of questions for vendors.
• Suggest companies you could add to your comparison.

You do not need a paid AI plan for these basic steps.

You decide who sees your information

What you are buying, your budget and what you need can be private business information. When you use your own AI assistant, you decide which AI company sees that information, under terms you have already accepted or choose to accept. NeutralPick does not send your information to an AI company of its own choosing. If you would rather not use any AI at all, you can write the checklist yourself, by hand.

How to use your AI assistant with NeutralPick

There are two ways.

• Copy and paste. This works with every AI assistant, including free plans.
  1. NeutralPick gives you a block of instructions to copy. The instructions already include what you wrote about your needs.
  2. You paste the instructions into your AI assistant and send them.
  3. You copy the AI's whole reply and paste it back into NeutralPick.
  4. NeutralPick reads the reply and fills in your checklist. You can then change any question.
  The same steps work for finding vendors, and for asking your AI which vendor to book a demo with first.
• The AI link. When you are comparing vendors' answers, you can create a private, read-only link to your comparison and give it to an AI assistant that can open web pages. The AI can then read your checklist and every vendor's answers. The link never shows your email address or your private link to the comparison. It stops working after 30 days, and you can switch it off at any time before that.

The Use with your AI page explains both ways in more detail. If you ask an AI assistant to help you use NeutralPick, it can read that page too.

The limits

This approach has downsides, and you should know about them before you start.

• Some AI assistants cannot open links. Some free plans cannot read web pages at all. With those, the AI link will not work. Copy and paste always works.
• Some AI assistants cannot search the web. To find vendors, use an AI assistant that can search the web. One that cannot will only suggest companies it already knew about when it was built, and that information may be out of date.
• AI assistants can make things up. An AI can name a company, a website or a product feature that does not exist, and sound completely sure about it. Before you send anyone a link, open every company's website yourself and check that the company is real and sells what you need. NeutralPick's instructions tell the AI not to guess, but that does not guarantee it won't.
• Web searches favour companies that spend on marketing. When an AI searches the web, it finds the pages that rank highly, and companies with bigger marketing budgets often rank higher. Treat the AI's list of companies as a starting point only, and add any companies you already know about yourself.
• It takes a few more clicks. Copying and pasting is slower than pressing one button. We think a free site that nobody can pay to influence is worth those extra clicks.

What stays the same

The most important parts of NeutralPick never needed AI:

• Every vendor answers the same questions.
• You see all their answers side by side.
• You make the decision.
• No vendor can pay to be shown to you or to be placed higher.

To start, build a checklist, either with your own AI assistant or by hand.