Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
LLMs have been VERY helpful to me around the house when I hit on normal homeowner problems that (usually) have surprisingly simple fixes or workarounds. Its probably saved me 1000's of dollars in theoretical professional repair bills (blunted by the time I actually have to spend to implement the solutions).
It once diagnosed a simple plumbing issue from a single photo and basic description of the problem. It helped me fix my water purification system by finding specific parts that I needed based on a couple photos.
However, certain real world issues with complex physical interactions seem to elude the thing.
I'm trying to diagnose a water leak in my washing machine, and I give it photos of the washing machine, along with model info, and photos of the water leak and general description. It has me go through some diagnostic steps but is very shaky on what the most likely failure modes are.
One of the issues, I think, is that I can't convey to it the SOUND that the machine is making very easily, or feed it video of the thing while its operating. I'm describing things to it, then it tells me to take a particular step and describe the outcome, and I think too much is lost in translation, and a washing machine is more complex than most appliances.
So its telling me workable steps to diagnose and possibly fix it, but its prognosis is all over the place depending on how exactly I describe the problem, and some of the fixes are involved and probably uneconomical.
So once I pop the washer open and figure out how bad things are, I'm almost certainly just going to buy a new washer.
Its not that I expected 'better' from the AI, but I think if I just had a handyman or repair guy come out they could figure things out within 5 minutes just by looking, listening, and poking around a little. THEN I could query ChatGPT as to whether their proposed price was fair or if they were likely yanking my chain.
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