What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Sometimes an AI is not well suited for the job you want it to do.  Try it again in a few years, and do better.  Or perhaps there’s an AI better suited to what you are trying to do.  In this activity, you will evaluate attempts to get an AI image creator to improve some diagrams.

The Goal

Let’s say that we need to create an image for a report, and the goal is to have it resemble this schematic and wiring diagram below.  Can AI do it?  By the time you see this, maybe it will be able to.  As of late 2023, it serves as a lesson for knowing what free, commonly available AI could and could not do as a tool.

Start with the Schematic

Starting with just the schematic (left side of the goal image above), let’s see how Microsoft Bing Chat does.  Not bad really, it understood what we asked for and provided a readable schematic.   

Schematic and Wiring

Let’s try asking it to make both the schematic and the wiring diagram as an image and see what happens.

Image Touch-up?

Okay, one more try.  Let’s see if it can simply touch up the existing image, swapping the Vdd labels with 5 V and the Vss labels with GND.

Try This

• Find a free image creation AI (like Microsoft Bing Chat) and try some of these examples.  Your results will vary depending on the AI, the way you phrase the instructions and the amount time since these tests were done.

Questions:

• What did the AI get right?
• What did the AI get wrong?
• Was the AI ready to do that job on the date it was asked?
• Will AI ever be the right tool for this job?