Can AI Really Teach a Novice Wood-worker How to Complete Their First Project?

What began as a "simple" thought experiment quickly morphed into a complicated and potentially dangerous hands-on experience in the real world of woodworking

- By Courtney Linder

It was my first time using a miter saw-or any other power tool, for that matter-and I had just finished meticulously crosscutting four 7-inch faces for a plain wooden box. Despite being a novice woodworker, I was proud of my accuracy, with each piece perfectly square at 90-degree angles.

But when it came time to rotate the saw to a 45-degree angle to cut the miters along each edge, I ran into a dire situation: The sides of the box were too tall to fit against the saw's fence and safely make clean, accurate cuts. My design was flawed; I should have planned to create a smaller box from the get-go. Should I attempt the cuts anyway and risk sending wooden shrapnel flying in unpredictable, erratic patterns around the woodshop, or should I go back to the drawing board?

ChatGPT, the now-omnipresent artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot taking over the internet, is what got me into this mess in the first place. And when I desperately needed advice, the disembodied computer brain left me hanging.

A "SIMPLE" EXPERIMENT

A few weeks beforehand, I had provided ChatGPT with what I (mistakenly) thought to be a straightforward prompt: "What's a basic woodworking project I can start with?" In a matter of seconds, it cranked out a suggestion for a "simple wooden box."

I was heartened: It was finally time to revisit a skill I had written off completely back in middle school after a botched attempt at building a gumball machine. A substitute woodshop teacher had "helped" me cut the wood by taking over completely, severely burning the wood.