I am a fan of IFIXIT and I have used its guides to make repairs/upgrades to computers and other electronics (still on my to-do list is following its guide to replace the battery in my Google Pixel 6a). IFIXIT has introduced a new AI assistant called FixBot. My generally negative takes on consumer AI and AI assistances are well-documented here. But FixBot sounds fairly reasonable:

You tell it what’s happening: your phone dies at 30%, your washing machine won’t drain, your mower sputters and stalls. It asks follow-up questions. It eliminates possibilities. It thinks out loud with you, the way a master technician would, until the diagnosis clicks into place. Then it finds the parts and helps direct you to the appropriate repair guide.

That the FixBot “finds the parts and helps direct you to the appropriate repair guide” points to why it sounds reasonable on its face. I quote again from the IFIXIT announcement:

And unlike the generic AI tools you’ve tried, FixBot actually knows what it’s talking about. It pulls its answers from our 125k repair guides, our massive question-answer forum, and our huge cache of PDF manuals. It knows how to find ideal bolt torque from a table in a manual. It can read a part schematic and tell you the part number you need to order. Importantly, it’s much better than other systems at not making stuff up. It’s not going to tell you to cut the blue wire when there is no blue wire.

One issue with many of the AI tools is where their “data” comes from and how they interpret it. Based on this description, it sounds like FixBot will be drawing from IFIXIT’s own guides, documentation, and products. None of this is to say that I plan to use the FixBot. IFIXIT’s search functionality is good and I have never had an issue with finding guides (where they exist) for specific products and reading through them. But if FixBot works like IFIXIT promises, it may well be a decent tool for a good cause (a cause made more important by AI-driven price increases for RAM and solid state drives).