TV trouble
A few days ago, the sound on our new 55” television went out suddenly. In the days before generative AI, I would have turned to Google for help. (It was 6AM on a Sunday, so no tech support from the manufacturer.) You know the routine — google “no sound on a 55” Toshiba television” or something similar, then wade through a bunch of websites and videos until you find something helpful. This is always a bit of a roll of the dice — sometimes you get something useful right away, but more often you have to go through several sites or videos to find what you need. You’ve probably had similar experiences. Have a problem, wade through search results and hopefully find something that works. It’s just exhausting and frustrating.
Enter AI (specifically Gemini). This time, instead of turning to Google’s search, I went to Gemini. Here’s the exact prompt I used:
My Toshiba 55 inch smart TV sound suddenly quit working. The sound works through external devices like speakers, but not through the television. The situation is the same whether I’m on Amazon prime or on dish. Any ideas on what might be going on?
The prompt is more detailed than my search would have been since I wanted to avoid some potential solutions that I’d already considered. Also, I successfully got the sound to play through Bluetooth speakers, so I included that information. Gemini responded with a list of things to try.
Power cycling (a fancy term for unplugging and waiting a couple of minutes) was among the suggestions and, to my relief, it worked! (Yeah, I would have tried this … eventually.)
The whole process took no more than a couple of minutes. If I hadn’t already tried a couple of the suggestions it might have taken a little longer, but even then the process would have been MUCH faster and easier than scanning websites and videos looking for the right solution.
Later, I realized that I’ve been using Gemini for tech support frequently. In fact, Gemini is almost always running in a Chrome window on my secondary monitor. I use it so frequently that it’s just handy to have it open all the time. I don’t do that with ChatGPT or Claude, even though I love both of those.
Gemini is useful for almost any kind of “how to” or troubleshooting question. Here’s a partial list of the topics Gemini helped me with in the last few days:
Fire ant control for a pasture
Finding the fair market value of a Honda side-by-side I might sell
Identifying a wild plant (which turned out to be an American Beautyberry)
Figuring out how to change the text that shows up in an Acrobat tab
Disabling Proton Calendar notifications
Trying to reduce the striping when cutting a pasture with a zero-turn mower
Comparing GPS dog collars (our Collie Dolly is an escape artist apparently)
Finding the year of an EZGO golf cart,
Finding shortcut keys for Foxit (a pdf editor),
And lots of other things
That’s just a partial list. Like I said, I use Gemini a lot for this sort of thing. Another favorite use for Gemini is getting help on obscure Excel functions. (That’s not on the list above since I haven’t needed that help in a few weeks.)
None of these prompts were complicated. Basically, I just asked the question and provided a little context. In some cases, Gemini just gives an answer or list of suggestions, in others it provides links to helpful websites or videos.
I think Gemini’s association with Google helps it be especially good for these kinds of tasks. There’s no need to tell it to search the web, it just does so. It also integrates with YouTube, which is often helpful.
All of these questions could have been addressed by searching, but that would have taken more time and often would be more frustrating. (Do YOU like wading through videos and websites to find a simple answer?)
There are a couple of meta-level points I want to make here. First, I want to point out that none of this is complex and you don’t need any AI expertise to use Gemini in this way. You basically just ask the question. So, if you have colleagues or friends that are reluctant to use AI, get them to try using Gemini for these sorts of question. The payoff is huge, which makes this a good way to ease into AI.
Also, it seems to me that this is the sort of application that will really bring generative AI into the mainstream, especially when voice and virtual assistants like Alexa become better integrated. That day will come, probably soon. When that happens, I’m not sure most folks will even realize that they’re using AI. They’ll just get an answer.
The next time you have a technical question, don’t search, just ask Gemini. I think you’ll be happy with the results. If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them below, or email me - craig@AIGoesToCollege.com. I’d love to hear from you. Be sure to check out the AI Goes to College podcast, which I co-host with Dr. Robert E. Crossler. It’s available at https://www.aigoestocollege.com/follow.
Thanks for reading!