As someone who does these things, I am curious to know how and why you would choose AI.

Working these from text seems to be the hardest way I could think to learn them. I've yet to encounter a written description as to what it feels like to solder, what a good/bad job actually looks like, etc. A well shot video is much better at showing you what you need to do (although finding one is getting more and more difficult)

I just process text information better. Videos are kind of overstimulating and often have unrelated content, and I hate having to rewind back to a part I need while I'm in the middle of something. With LLMs I can get a broad overview of what I'm doing, tell it what materials I already have on hand and get specific ideas for how to practice. Soldering is probably one of the harder ones to learn by text, but the description of the techniques to use were actually really understandable (use flux, be sure the tip is tinned, touch the pad with the tip to warm it up a little, touch again with the iron on one side of the pad and insert the solder in on the other side and it gets drawn in, pull away (timing was trial and error). And then I'd upload a picture of what I did for review and it would point out the ones that had issues and what likely went wrong to cause it (ex: solder sticking to the top of the iron and not the pad), and I would keep practicing and test that it worked and looked like what was described. It may not be the ideal technique or outcome, but it unblocked me relatively quick so I could continue my project.

Being able to ask it stupid questions and edge cases is also something I like with LLMs, like I would propose a design for something (ex: a usb battery pack w/ lifepo4 batts that could charge my phone and be charged by solar at the same time), it would say what it didn't like about my design, counter with its own, then I would try to change aspects of their design to see "what would happen if .." and it would explain why it chose a particular component or design choice and what my change would do and the trade-offs, risks, etc other paths to building it with that, etc. Those types of interactions are probably the best for me actually understanding things, helps me understand limitations and test my assumptions interactively.

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