Remember my article from six months ago where I shared a story around how helpful and revolutionizing AI (artificial intelligence) is even for household tasks and fixes? Forget all of it. It’s crap. I learned this in a painful manner and have been banned from Lowes and home improvement tasks by my wife because of it.
Maybe it was breakfast with Alex Weiss before he headed north for the Superbowl that caused this misguided inspiration. You see, Alex is handy and competent with fixes around the house; I’m just delusional. After Alex left, I figured I’d address the top item on my ‘easy’ task list for the sense of achievement before the Pats game: fix the leaky tub faucet that has bothered us for three months.
As instructed in my previous article, I took several pictures of the tub, spout, handles, and uploaded them to an AI platform. From there I asked, rephrased and repeated the same prompts to give me exact step by step instructions of how to stop water from continually dripping from the spout. I believe (still not sure) that it required valve extraction and replacement. With a strong sense of self-confidence and a lot of ‘can do’ verbiage/encouragement from the AI platform, I began following the instructions. I turned off the water to the house, took out screws, removed faucet knobs and began taking off plumbing bolts to access the valves exactly as AI instructed. I did not run into trouble until the bottom ‘bolt’ that was a bit corroded, would not loosen even as I attacked it aggressively as the AI recommended strength and persistence.
Long story short, the corroded ‘bolt’ was not a bolt at all and instead was a critical piece of pipe that I had now bent and chipped badly. A few hours in, I accepted that this was light years above my pay grade and spoke with two local plumbers over the phone. Both plumbers said that not only had I done irreversible damage, but that they would have to break into the fiberglass tub to cut and plug the pipes to restore running water to the house IF they could even visit today, which they said they couldn’t.
I was deeply upset with a hefty dose of self-loathing as the reality of the situation set in: I had eliminated access to running water for an unknown period with a new baby and unhappy wife at home. While begrudgingly packing up to move to my in-laws, I called one last angel of a plumber named Kirk. Kirk clearly wanted to help and offered to walk me through a potential fix over Facetime to save me some money. For over an hour, he guided and watched me carefully bend and scrape the metal pipe back into position to allow the valve pieces to fit back on, providing access to running water without flooding. Kirk was the hero and denied any payment for his assistance I offered – he was just happy to help.
Moral of the story: I am a fool and AI is certainly not foolproof.
