- Plan my garden
- Identify plant issues
- Help with planting tips
- General research/better google
- Systems Engineering
- etc
Maybe the code generation isnt great but it is really good in a lot of areas.
A recent example I had was fixing a toilet that broke. I don't know the name of the components within the tank, but I can understand what they do. I took a picture of the broken component and asked what it was - chatGPT was able to tell me, I was able to get a replacement, and that was that.
I have to remember I'm relatively spoiled in the sense that I know how to get that information out of Google. But for a less technically inclined person, I don't know how they'd even to do this themselves. Best I can think of is take a picture an ask a plumber(if you know one) or someone at a hardware store(if they themselves are even knowledgeable about this).
https://kagi.com/search?q=toilet+tank+diagram&r=us&sh=wnbKX0...
The other question is, would you have fared any worse without gen ai? Personally I find old school sources more comprehensive. I once picked up a book for free at my garden center, it contained all information about tomatoes including color photos of most every possible deficiency, pest, and disease. If something goes wrong with my tomatoes in a 30 second trip to my bookshelf I have access to high quality information. Meanwhile, what is the genAI trained on? Is my book in the training set? Maybe it is. But maybe its also polluted with the blogspam slop of the last 15 years on the internet, and that isn't easy to parse out without having a book like mine on hand, or better yet the horticultural training the authors behind that book I have on hand have had. Trusting my book is therefore trusting the highest quality output from the corpus of all humanity.
And it is like that with most other things. For most things you might encounter in life, there is a high quality source of information or book for low cost or free available. Why reach into the dark and pull out words from the sack when you can get the real deal so easily?
ChatGPT provides sources and so does Gemini now. For example, today, I was doing some brainstorming prompts and found this regarding ideal soil mixes and settled on Soil Mix #3 because I am going to be using Jungle Growth