I've been spending the last few months trying to pick up woodworking as a hobby, starting from absolute zero. No prior experience, no mentor, just YouTube and curiosity. At some point I started leaning heavily on ChatGPT and Claude to answer questions, plan projects, troubleshoot mistakes, and explain techniques.
And honestly it's been surprisingly good. Having a conversation with something that can explain why wood grain direction matters, then immediately follow up with beginner project ideas that account for my skill level, feels genuinely different from googling around.
But here's what I keep wondering. Am I actually learning faster, or does it just feel that way because the interaction is so frictionless? There's research suggesting that too much ease in learning can reduce retention. If AI smooths over every obstacle before I even struggle with it, am I cheating myself out of the productive difficulty that makes skills stick?
I've also noticed the AI occasionally gives me confidently wrong advice about specific tools or wood species behavior. Stuff I only catch because I happened to double check.
Curious if others here have used AI as a primary learning companion for a handson skill, not coding or writing, but something physical. Did it actually accelerate your progress or mostly just feel like it did? And how do you handle the hallucination problem when you're too new to a subject to spot the errors yourself?
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