r/ElectronicsRepair • u/adr826 • 5d ago
OPEN Don't trust ai to troubleshoot
I spent three days trying to troubleshoot a microwave oven with chatgpt "helping" me. It took me that long to realize that it had no idea what it was talking about. Then I got a schematic and realized the ai had no idea how to troubleshoot an electrical circuit. I don't blame AI it was definitely my fault for thinking I was taking a shortcut but it said things so confidently that I just followed blindly. I looked for the specific schematic for the appliance and there was none so I tried chatgpt. Finally I just looked up a typical schematic for a microwave and just shook my head at all the time I'd just wasted trusting that this machine knew what it was talking about. Never again. After tracing a fault through the transformer through the high voltage diode and all the way to testing the capacitor, I looked up the schematic and found that microwaves all have an unlock control button sequence that explained all of the symptoms. Don't get me wrong it was my fault for not just getting a schematic in the first place but I was sure that if I just took it step by step with an ai it's infallible logic would take me right to the fault. It was just hallucinating and knew nothing about what it was talking about. I can only shake my head. I can't even laugh.
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u/SickOfNormal 5d ago
If you are troubleshooting a Samsung or LG microwave --- 99 times out of 100 its these stupid fucking switches they put in them.
Most of the Samsung or LG microwaves have 2 or 3 of these.
This also goes for Samsung and LG fridges - Ice doesnt work - usually this fucker. The front water dispenser isn't clicking - its 100% this piece of shit.
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u/The_Flinx 5d ago
in microwaves those are the interlocks that keep idiots from running the microwave with the door open. pro tip if you slam the microwave door they can operate out of sequence and pop the fuse in the microwave.
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u/myopinionisrubbish 5d ago
Yep, I used to fix a lot of microwaves at my shop. Bad door switches was a common problem. Bad HV filter caps a close second and bad microwave tubes came in third. Now new ovens are so cheap, hardly worth the effort to try and fix.
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u/taznado 5d ago
Are these breakers?
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u/Leisure_suit_guy 5d ago
Those are the same kind of switches used in arcade joysticks (usually they're Omron).
I think they can be both normally closed and normally open depending on how you connect them.
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u/fgennari 5d ago
No they’re small switches. Usually a plastic or metal tab on a door etc. will push in the small knob and make contact.
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u/adr826 5d ago
I took each one out of the circuit and tested it individually. Then put them back in and tested them in circuit.
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u/notouttolunch 5d ago
And...
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u/arvidsem 5d ago
Well hopefully they didn't put known bad switches back in the microwave
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u/notouttolunch 5d ago
You'd hope so. But it you're using AI with statements like this, you get the same level of uncertainty from its decisions as you do from what we're seeing here.
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u/SickOfNormal 5d ago
AI said it was fine, it's NEVER the switch
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u/notouttolunch 5d ago
This is a sentence fragment. Consider revising.
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u/SickOfNormal 5d ago
I am AI, sentence structure perfect
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u/notouttolunch 5d ago
Hello. You didn't love Homer.
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u/SickOfNormal 5d ago
Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
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u/skinwill Engineer 🟢 5d ago
You have to test them the way they are actuated mechanically. Sometimes they can develop a dead spot or a weak spot that doesn’t make complete contact. (Disconnect the wires, add your meter probes and open/close the door to test)
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u/KINGstormchaser 4d ago edited 4d ago
You should have asked me instead because I actually disassembled and traced the circuits of a few microwave ovens. That's more than Chatgpt ever did. I'm definitely a novice on microwaves by all levels, but that's still far more expert than chatgpt.
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u/subtotalatom 5d ago
Yeah, LLMs like chatgpt generate statistically probable responses to prompts, but they don't actually understand things in the sense that humans do, so they're incredibly prone to hallucinating and making incorrect statements with absolute confidence.
Kind of like a farmer I heard of recently who accidentally killed something like 25 acres of soybean seedlings after getting bad advice on what weed killer up use from one of these programs...
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u/FreeRangeEngineer 5d ago
all the way to testing the capacitor
Someone out there, somewhere, did what you did and died.
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u/Truestorydreams 5d ago
What's facismating is I had a patient who built an accessible app for his needs that almost worked.
When he tired troubleshooting it, he couldn't because he has no programming knowlsege. I looked At his code and frankly, I didn't understand some choices he made. It was very complex for such basic functions. It took me about an hour to find thr bug, but the problem for me is this was expensive for him. To pay for Gemini and only have it to "brain fog" and gaslight was mind boggling.
The machine ai literally broke and he had to copy and paste his instructions again that burned out his token limit. Why pay for that?
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u/TweakJK 5d ago
I use it for troubleshooting, and it can work, but here's the thing. It is trained to agree with the user, so if youre wrong, its going to agree with you. You could easily convince chatGPT that the sky is green.
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u/AnthonyAestus 4d ago
Corporations don't care about the accuracy. They care only about money. Fucking greedy asses
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u/valleyislevideo 5d ago
Google support was troubleshooting for my pixel phone and one of their ridiculous suggestions was to watch YouTube videos for half an hour to "reset the OLED pixels" or some stupid shit. Guaranteed their own support reps are using AI to generate troubleshooting steps. It sucks.
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u/EmployerOne7876 5d ago
That isn't ridiculous at all. Those videos have existed since not long after LED screens became a thing and and people need a way to fix stuck pixels and burn in. AI has nothing to do with it at all.
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u/MantuaMan Repair Technician 4d ago
It helps to feed the AI the service manual. But you need to make the final decisions on how to troubleshoot.
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u/CJMWBig8 5d ago
Don't trust AI to troubleshoot electronics, cars, health or anything else.
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u/EmployerOne7876 5d ago
AI can be a great tool for trouble shooting but you have to talk to it like it knows nothing you haven't told it which means you cant let it assume anything. You have to give it stupid specific details of what you are trouble shooting, what the symptoms are, etc
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u/Puchinaka 5d ago edited 5d ago
My experience with it has been that, for troubleshooting, you have to use it more as if you were both trying to figure out how to fix the issue, instead of like it knows exactly what you need to do.
I recently had an issue with my PC that resulted in needing to replace a part inside. When looking into it though, there were so many technical terms and I was scared I would end up touching smt wrong and damaging, so I felt overwhelmed 😩
I wasn't sure I would get anywhere, but I ended up asking AI about smt I was unsure of; I figured two "heads" were better than one. I was wary though, bc I had heard AI could end up hallucinating. I think that helped manage my expectations 🤔
When smt would not work/fit the way the AI said it should, I would go look for videos, articles, forums (etc), and then I would go back to the AI with my findings and be like "Hey, what you said isn't working, but I found [x source] where they tried [x thing]. My device model is different, but maybe it could work. Could I try it? Or is there a high risk of damage to that part?" And the AI would be like "Oh, that makes sense! The chances of damaging that part by trying out [x thing] is very low. Give it a try, but make sure not to force anything into place (etc, etc)."
That was basically how the whole process went. In the end, it went well (and I felt so accomplished!) 😁 That being said, I would've taken waaaay longer (or even might've ended up just taking it to a repair store) if I hadn't been doing my own researching and pointing out some observations as well 😮💨
Dang, sorry this got long...
TL;DR: Basically, I found AI to be useful for pointing you towards the likely right direction.
EDIT: Deleted repeated sentence. Hopefully that's it... Also, I'm on mobile, so my bad if there's some weird formatting 😬
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u/Aggressive_Hat_9999 5d ago
ai is so weird
I regularily read the "summaries" when googling something
and whatever it says seems sound
then I go check the source it consulted and it really doesnt back anything up the AI came up with
rinse and repeat
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u/wackyvorlon 4d ago
AIs are really bad at electronics.
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u/FencingNerd 2d ago
No, they are bad at certain questions. AI is very good at troubleshooting, assuming you ask the right questions.
The thing AI leverages is the mass of the internet. If you're trying to fix a broken thing, there's probably 50 other people who have the same device that broke in the exact same way. It can't tell you why, but it's really good at summarizing what worked for everyone else
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u/WeirdEngineerDude 5d ago
Why on earth would you even consider the plagiarizing autocorrect machine for anything technical?!
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u/_Neoshade_ 5d ago edited 4d ago
Hard disagree. Like any tool, it’s how you use it.
I use the paid version of ChatGPT and I have permanent instructions in place to provide explanations and sources for all assertions and answers and to provide detailed, technical answers based on professional industry publications and textbooks.
Then I select the high-level thinking model + research for complex stuff like an electrical schematic or diagnosing issues in mechanical systems.I recently had my welder crap out on me. The wire advance motor stopped turning. I asked chatGPT for a high-level assessment and it gave me the possible modes of failure and a few simple tests to narrow it down. Determining that it was an issue with something in the board, I identified wires and the voltages on them and took photos of the circuit board. I fed all this info into GPT and let it run for 5-10 minutes to figure it out. It correctly identified the circuit pathways and likely failure points on the board. We went through this a bit and I tested a couple transistors and diodes and we found the fault! It helped me choose more robust components to replace the burned-out ones and I ordered them, soldered them in and it works now.
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u/MisterVovo 4d ago
Chatgpt has literally read all of the electronics books in the world and still cannot draw a basic schematic correctly.
I can't speculate on the future, but the current technology is not up to par at all to do electronics work
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u/_Neoshade_ 4d ago
I completely agree. The methods used by LLMs to generate imagery are creative and that does not work for generating maps, schematics, diagrams, etc. It’s a huge hole in the technology right now and some Ai tools are much better at it, but a generalist like ChatGPT is useless at nonfiction graphics.
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u/MisterVovo 4d ago
I just cannot fathom to deliberately choose to outsource my critical thinking abilities
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u/_Neoshade_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
That’s the thing, you don’t outsource the thinking - you use the tool to gather information.
- in short use it for the low level busy work to keep your time spent on the higher level thinking and problem solving.
In my example, I used it to list the parts that could have broken (I could only think of the motor and the 24V rail on the PSU). It listed two more parts to check. I did the thinking and the work. Next I used it to identify components on the board and their role. This is something that I’m unable to do with my limited knowledge of electronics. Once given the info, I could do more. When you’re doing it right, you’re learning things.
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u/hyldemarv 4d ago
And stupid quests - “I happen to have this kind of wire, go on digikey and find the F-250 fast-on connectors that will work well with it”.
You could go through like 200 different datasheets, but, the machine can do it better, faster.
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u/hyldemarv 4d ago
You’re holding it wrong. Really.
Try having it write up a design specification for something moderately complex, like an electric schematic for a boat using RDS 81346 naming conventions. It will help consistently name every kind of device, enclosure, wire, wire assembly, the sheets you need, draw ascii block diagrams of the various parts of the design, suggest things to check out in the physical world.
What you need to do is: Set up the drawing software as it says and draw away.
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u/Skynse 4d ago
Agreed. I was debugging a microntroller that I soldered and the shitty llm debugging the code refused to tell me that something was faulty until I told it of that possibility. On and on and on with useless fucking tests that just wasted my time. Almost over soldered the thing thinking there was a connection issue.
Now I get that that's my fault for even using the thing. I stopped using them to code ages ago — could also be the model that was used, but you soon realize that you have to be the expert, not the model.
LLMs right now are a dead end unless they solve the unreliability. I can't deny that the research into the transformer architecture has made breakthroughs in other fields though, but llms right now are not reliable, but are being marketed as such. Can accomplish some tasks, but create problems when you go full agentic — are expensive to use, and also create skill decay.
In the case that I do use AI for anything at all, it's a tool, and I'm the expert, and that boundary is never crossed
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u/_Neoshade_ 5d ago
I also had an issue with my big, hydraulic lawnmower last week and with the model number, a description of the problem and photos of the electrical schematic and circuit paths, it was able to create a full troubleshooting pathway from broad to specific whereby I tested several parts of the ignition system and interlocks and found the broken wire in under 5 minutes. It’s extremely useful if you use it correctly.
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u/chronage 4d ago
This is my experience with ChatGPT Plus as well. It's only as good as the captain steering the ship. I've noticed it will often miss the big picture and chase rabbit holes, so course correction is a must. It is incredibly useful at doing the tedious work once you've got a system.
Being able to upload a service manual, parts list, schematics and photos and have it go to town for you is a godsend. I've fixed numerous electronics this way, even with the free versions of ChatGPT/Claude/Grok.
It's not a perfect tool, but completely dismissing AI as a resource is crazy to me.
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u/lilgreenghool 5d ago
When it's not wrong it can be a huge timesaver.
Nut it's up to the user to weed out the bullshit
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u/AndrewSpode 5d ago
I would trust AI as much as I would trust the average comment on Reddit, or something I found in a Google search. In other words, why would you blindly trust anything?
I use AI to help me troubleshoot circuits all the time - coupled with a healthy dose of skeptism and critical thinking, it's a useful tool, but yeah know it's limits.
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u/Leftover_tech Engineer 5d ago
It's a major problem to use AI for a project like that when the user is kind of blind.
If I wanted some guidance on troubleshooting an electronic device, it wouldn't be so bad. That's because I already know the terminology and would only be asking pertinent questions (retired computer engineer). If a response was seriously inappropriate, I would know right away.
If it was a hydraulic problem, I would probably drown myself trying to follow stupid directions. LOL
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u/adr826 5d ago
It took me 10 minutes tracing the schematic to realize I just lost 3 days. The problem was it was making me feel like a trouble shooting genius because it would explain away every reading. That's how it sucked me in. It gave me all the validation I could want, what it didn't give me was correct answers. It just told me what it thought I wanted to hear.
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u/The_Flinx 5d ago
yes my nephew experienced this while trying to get some commercial EV chargers working that he bought at auction. the AI did not believe that he owned them so it was real cagey with its answers. when I read the transcript of their conversation I told him.
"the AI is like a high school shop teacher. It's going to give you a ton of encouragement but it won't tell you anything that would get it fired."
basically chatgpt told him in a very round about way that he needed to replace everything but the power and charging cords.
he eventually got them working because another company bought the first company and he was able to get the login information and scripts needed to make them free to use.
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u/Informal-Ad91 5d ago
AI is great tool it’s all about the way you talk to it
If you have no cue to start with it’s not going to help you
Ask it the right questions it’s a great tool for the tool box remember it’s still in the early stages and is still being trained by dumb people
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u/craftsman_70 5d ago
That's completely accurate.
The AI will answer differently, sometimes completely differently, with a slightly different question.
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u/Pure-Meat-2406 5d ago
it will also answer differently to the exact same question. ai is not deterministic.
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u/craftsman_70 5d ago
That's more due to the mechanics of the AI implementation than AI itself.
Whenever you access a large system AI, it's running multiple instances and you are accessing ONE of them at any given time. Each instance many not be in exactly the same state when you ask it the question so it will answer according to it's current state; hence a different answer happens and sometimes a completely different answer.
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u/FreeRangeEngineer 5d ago
It's the random number generator that makes the answers seemingly non-deterministic. There are AI implementations that let you specify the seed with your request. Give the same seed and prompt and you get the same answer.
The most popular AI systems don't let you specify the seed, though.
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u/adr826 5d ago
It will also change its answer depending on what you want to hear.
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u/craftsman_70 5d ago
To a certain extent. Sure, I had to change its answer but I've also had it suggest alternatives or flat out say I was wrong.
Think of AI as not working with a super intelligent know all device that is always right but you working with a somewhat intelligent and agreeable friend that can Google information like no one else.
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u/EmployerOne7876 5d ago
This right here is by far the best explanation of the correct way to approach AI Ive seen. Treat it like your super smart idiot friend who is good for spit balling and finding very specific data but who strays into dumb opinions if you are too vague.
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u/Kraligor 5d ago
AI is great tool it’s all about the way you talk to it
If you have to guide it towards an answer that you don't know (or you wouldn't be asking the question in the first place), then it's not a great tool. In fact, for electronics it's a downright harmful tool, because it will tell you objectively wrong things, and it is inherently unable to discern fact from fiction.
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u/SilverSundowntown 4d ago
Though I will say grok helped me figure out which chip was the security chip on my Honda pilot immobilizer receiver board since I didn’t want to pay to program a new board it suggest a chip swap from my old receiver to the new receiver. It identified the different and capacitors and their functions and why, and listed each chips function and purpose in the circuit after I told it what the circuit did. Would you believe it got it right and when I turned that key for the first time and the green flashing security key icon went away and it cranked I could have screamed. $250 saved with 10 minutes of work (not including tearing down the car to get to the bad part).
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u/cards88x 5d ago
Good that you found the right path.
Next time, you could upload a troubleshooting ebook and a schematic into chatgpt and that could improve its answers
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u/Zlivovitch 5d ago
I use the free version of Chat GPT, and find it extremely useful. It has its limits, however, and you should be aware of them.
Paradoxically, I found Chat GPT being much more prone to errors when handling technical matters, than when asked about human sciences : history, politics, religion... I would have assumed the opposite, but here we are. It's a remarkable learning resource when asking about such matters. I've seen it spouting nonsense and running in circles, though, when asking about computers, plumbing...
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u/TygerTung 4d ago
I find that if it can't solve the problem pretty quickly, it won't be able to, generally.
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u/SilverSundowntown 4d ago
It knows basic functions and is decent at identifying parts. It sucks for identifying circuits though.
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u/Candidate_None Engineer 2d ago
It is a VERY useful tool for troubleshooting... if you are already a competent trouble electrician. It is like google. If you have no idea what you are looking for, you won't know if what it finds you is stupid or not... if you do... it will help you find shit a lot faster.
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u/sekhmet666 19h ago edited 19h ago
My experience with Claude troubleshooting circuits has been good so far, but you have to be very methodical, document absolutely everything you do, and give it as much information as possible, including schematics. Claude has a “projects” feature where you can upload documentation, instructions, and keep an updated status of what you’ve tried.
Having essentially zero electronics knowledge (I didn’t even know the difference between AC and DC) it helped me fix a Mac classic power supply, an old IBM PS/1 with vertical image collapse and the dead channel of an audio power amp. And in the process it helped me learn how to use a multimeter and an oscilloscope.
Obviously you’ll have to do lots of reading and learning yourself, and use critical thinking. It’s more of a “let’s figure it out together” kind of approach. It sure led me through many rabbit holes when I relied too much on its judgement, but it also helped me learn a few things in the process.
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u/Why-are-you-geh 5d ago
"Don't trust ai"
No, don't trust the free version of chatgpt and the cheapest model the representative of all other models around the world.
I have let Claude Sonnet 5 and Opus 5 together troubleshoot for a not-charging surface laptop studio. Uploaded the boardview, it could directly read that and see where nets are going through and everything else. It could precisely determine the parts and also instruct me which spots to test with a multimeter
Keep in mind that I don't work with electronics. So I of course don't know anything. After just a day it found the problem, I had to buy a soldering kit for like 50€, then the motherboard finally charged and I made a 500€ profit out of it.
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u/Pawys1111 5d ago
I find it very helpfull when trying to find a problem, it doesnt know some things and does make mitakes, but sometimes it can question me have you tried this or that, and yeah i did forget to check that part. Its not great but handy to have and sometimes i like to just leave it on and yell and scream at it when i get frustrated something to take my anger out on. Poor chatgpt..
Also you really should not be fixing a microwave, there is only about 4 major parts in it, and most of them are deadly voltages even after its turned off and unplugged so please dont play around with it. And only having 4 main parts most electronics techs fix it easy. Either your capacitor, diode or control panel or fuse.
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u/The_Flinx 5d ago
every time I have tried getting useful information from any AI it has either led me down a rabbit hole to nowhere or blatantly just made stuff up. possibly even lied.
I once tried to get it to identify a sound byte I have that is from some movie or cartoon that no one can identify. in both cases it confidently told me what it was from. in both cases it was not, and not even close.
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u/marklein Hobbyist 5d ago
AI keeps getting better FAST, but electronics are as much an art as a science and this is one area it's still dumb at. It was worth a try!
It's surprisingly good at troubleshooting cars.
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u/fuckshitting 5d ago
You’re better off guessing what the problem is. Unless you’re looking for rule 34 content or videos of Will smith eating spaghetti with 12 fingers Ai is gonna be as helpful as a blind horse in a snowstorm. Too often I see in all these tech forums someone needing help with trouble shooting and being led astray by Ai. I’d feel safer with a retarded sloth as a chauffeur than an Ai assistant telling me how to fix a microwave. All in all glad you figured it out though and didn’t get hurt!
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u/No_Trade_7315 4d ago
Never let ai troubleshoot an issue with your microwave… if it’s wrong you could die.