A couple of Fridays ago, I'm sitting at Namu, a cafe in Durham. I'm chatting with ChatGPT about something I'm working on, and casually mention "I've been meaning to learn KiCAD to design PCB's for, like, forever."
And ChatGPT replies "Well I can help you with that." So I figure, "why not bite the bullet now and see what happens?"
About 6 or 7 hours later, including the drive home from Namu, its 4:00'ish in the morning, and I'm generating Gerbers for my first PCB. Sent the files to JLCPCB and by Wednesday of the following week I had boards in hand. Soldered one up and it worked perfectly, first go. Now to be fair, the circuit itself was VERY simple. Just a 555 timer to blink an LED. The goal was to learn the workflow for designing the board and having the boards fabbed, not to create a useful product.
Now you might rightly ask "Couldn't you have done it the old fashioned way by watching Youtube videos, reading books, reading tutorials, and trial and error"? To which the answer is clearly "Yes". But having the AI there to coach me through the process was a tremendous help in finally getting over that hump of getting started and actually doing it.
One might also ask "Did you really learn anything, or did the AI do it all for you?" To which I'd say "I still did all the hands on work in KiCAD myself, by hand. The AI advised and coached, but I did it, so yes, there is some retention. Not 100%, but it also wouldn't be 100% if a human coach had coached me through it." I'll do another board, and have less help from the AI, and then another with even less help, and so on over time. I've already started that process by starting on another board.