AI has become incredibly powerful, and most of the time, it is what entrepreneurs talk about. That makes sense, because business use cases are where AI feels the most useful and where people are willing to pay for it. There are many apps built around this idea, tools like Cursor, Google Nano, and others. But beyond these products, there is a more personal question that often gets ignored. How can AI help you in everyday situations?
I am currently learning how to code. I understand most of the basics, and I have worked on a few small websites for myself, including a Photo Album project. Recently, while trying to deploy a newer version of this project with updated images, I ran into a problem. The site was not publishing.
Since I was stuck, I asked my father for help, as he has far more experience with deployments and servers than I do. He sat down on a Saturday morning to look into the issue. At first, everything seemed fine, but soon we ran into another error. GitLab kept showing a 403 permission error. Even though the SSH key had been added, the error refused to go away.
After trying several different things, he ran out of time and had a meeting to attend, so he could not continue debugging. That was when I decided to try fixing it myself. The problem was simple. I had no idea what I was doing. I did not even know what SSH was or what role it played. And SSH, as I later learned, is one of the core pieces involved when deploying through services like GitLab.
Normally, I would have just waited for my dad to come back and fix it.
Instead, I turned to AI.
I did not ask it to simply fix the problem for me. I asked it to explain what was actually going wrong. I started by pasting the error message and asking for a simple explanation. Then I asked what usually causes a 403 error. Rather than asking AI to jump straight to a solution, I focused on understanding what was happening, because once you understand the problem, you are far more capable of solving it yourself later.
Slowly, everything began to make sense. I ran commands I had never even heard of before. By asking ChatGPT what each command did, I was able to not only fix the issue, but also understand why it was happening in the first place. AI did not just help me solve a problem. It helped me learn.
That, I think, is where AI is most useful. Not as a shortcut, but as a guide that helps you think, understand, and grow.
