Like many small businesses, Simon Everett, a long time ChannelX reader and owner of Maldon Jewellery, looked at AI as a new buzzword with not a lot of relevance. That’s all changed in the past couple of months as he’s embraced ChatGPT for coding.
Simon’s been into tech and computers since ever since the days he had a ZX Spectrum and Amiga 500, and yes if you remember these early devices you’ll know this was in the pre-Internet era!
1) ChatGPT for coding
So Simon is definitely not a technophobe, but it was only when trying to do some PowerShell script and a friend suggested asking ChatGPT to assist that he dived into the world of AI. Simon was amazed by the results… Not just the initial result, but when he asked it to change certain things it did! He says it was one of those “Wow, how many things could I get this to do?” moment.
From then on, Simon road tested ChatGPT on some PHP and other coding tasks. He’d already had a failed project where he had paid for a Developer to write some PHP that interacted with the PrestaShop database, and he was so slow that after 6 months he got a refund. Simon then asked Chat GPT, and it whizzed through the task in super to speed, made a few modifications on requestion. Once again, Simon was blown away at the speed and power of AI.
It’s not all been plain sailing, so if you want to try ChatGPT for coding be prepared to be patient. Simon says that he’s been down some very frustrating rabbit holes where ChatGPT some code, Simon told it that it was wrong, just for ChatGPT to explain why the code was wrong! When asking ChatGPT why had it produced the code if it knew that it was wrong, and it just apologised!
2) AI image creation
Next Simon switched to images – Maldon Jewellery sell bracelet charms and accessories and fitting a clip to a charm is all very well, but then it needs a product shot. It turns out that ChatGPT is more than capable of combining the two existing images and the results are amazing.
3) AI Dashboards
Another job Simon did was to create a Dashboard that he replaced his Prestashop orders page with. I’ts basic, but very quick and does what he needs it to do. Again, ChatGPT wrote it and with some tweaks it’s perfect for his needs.
4) AI as troubleshooting tool
And it’s not just code writing that Simon has found AI useful for. When his website slowed to a crawl, his webhost blamed it on millions of requests that the site was being bombarded by, but offered no real help to fix it. Simon fed ChatGPT a few screenshots and logs and it identified that most of the requests were from Chinese IP addresses. It suggested a free account on Cloudflare as a fix. Within a few hours and Chat Gpt’s assistance, ALL Chinese IP addresses were blocked. Millions of hits a day were thwarted within a short time, and normal service resumed.
It’s fascinating to hear how just one business has been able to use AI and it gives an insight into how we’ll all be operating in the future. If you’ve some insights to share on how AI is transforming your business we’d love to hear from you.
One Response
I think that many see AI as a gimmick that will just disappear, but I think it’s the next iteration in computing.
As long as we remember to use it as a tool, then that’s fine. It’s when we rely on it too much that we forget how to do things for ourselves.
The Wall-e movie always springs to mind with these sorts of things!