this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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me_irl
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I asked it the size of the axel nut on my car. It was off my 4mm. I asked it again, it confidently gave me the wrong answer again.
I reached l realized it thought I meant the REAR axel nut, which is in fact 4mm smaller. So I specifically stated FRONT nut, and it still got it wrong.
AI is useful for lots of things, just always always always fact check it.
But yeah... Real search is going away, replaced by forced AI garbage that cannot correctly tell me the nut size.
Yeah, I measured the bolt I had and gave it the outer diameter in mm and the thread per mm. Just asking it blind would have given me all sorts of guesses.
so you had an llm do math. that's a notoriously bad use case for it
I did the math. What the llm did was provide the statistically likely answer based on what other people have asked and answered on the internet.
Unless I'm the first person to look for screws.
I once had to get new bolts in imperial. So I grabbed a metric bolt that was closest to it and went to the hardware store and eye balled it.
No mess, no fuss, no issues.
I do this all the time for work. Better yet, because it's local hardware, I ask the old guy employee who's been there a hundred years to help me find it. Only time is failed is when they didn't have what I needed in the exact metal I wanted. They had it in zinc though 🤷♂️
I'll still use AI for stuff, but it's good to talk to people too sometimes