I’ve Tested It
With the looming threat of an AI takeover of the world in Terminator or The Matrix fashion, I’m sure that I’m not the only one concerned about losing my job to AI. In an attempt to alleviate (or maybe confirm) my fears, I got onto OpenAI (ChatGPT) and asked it to teach me how to grow cannabis, and as someone who has been growing for 15 years, let’s just say that the results were not good. If I had followed the advice of the cyborg, I would have been in a lot of trouble. Here is the fundamental problem with AI as it pertains to growing and, honestly, anything that is very complicated (at least at this current juncture): as advanced as AI is—and it’s come a long way, particularly in only a year—it still has significant limitations. Firstly, you do have to ask the right questions, and while Chat is very good at distilling down the questions that you do ask to the core questions you are trying to get the answers to, you still have to know how to fundamentally operate AI.
Put more plainly, you don’t know what you don’t know, so you still fundamentally have to know which questions to ask in order to get the results that you want. And I can tell you that when I was a new grower, I had no idea what to ask. My first visit to a grow store was a rude awakening. This was also after reading The Cannabis Grow Bible from cover to cover. I figured after reading that book I would be in good shape to go into a grow store and speak the language. But as soon as I got in there and started talking with the grow store guys, it was like they were speaking a foreign language. It’s important to mention that the first thing I told these guys was that I was new to growing and that I was there to get my supplies to start my first grow. They still talked in a way that was way over my head.
Can AI help? Sure, I think it can if it’s a simple problem, but understanding the problems that you are facing as a grower is very hard to diagnose, and since AI is a machine-learning system and not a farmer, it doesn’t have the experience that it needs in order to properly diagnose your problems. I’ve mentioned this before in a previous blog post, but problem solving is what I spend the majority of my consultations on. Most people start growing on their own because A. they can’t find me (c’mon Google!) or B. like me, they try their hand at growing on their own because they don’t understand how fundamentally challenging it can be. Then, just like me, my clients will inevitably have problems that they can’t solve.
My Last Three Clients and More to Come
Literally, my last three clients all told me they tried to problem solve using AI, and all three hit a wall. And for similar reasons. Basically, they could not figure out why they were experiencing the problems that they were having. This directly pertains to the fundamental value of working with a consultant. I’ve mentioned this multiple times, and I’ll continue to mention it because it’s so fundamental to growing: your plants can only show you a handful of stress signals, but there are a seemingly infinite amount of mistakes that you can make with a grow. So Chat doesn’t know how to get to the root of your problems, but I do.
How I Address and Fix My Clients’ Problems
The first thing I do with clients is—based on their message to me on my website—to develop a questionnaire that will get me the information that I need in order to make recommendations. Here is an example from a client a couple months back. He came to me and he said he had a potassium deficiency. Well, most times when people have such a specific claim, I first want to make sure that what they think they are experiencing is in fact the problem. I do want to first mention that he was technically right; he was experiencing a potassium deficiency, but that’s because he was experiencing a nutrient deficiency in general because he was experiencing a condition known as nutrient lockout. He came to me to fix a nutrient problem, but the reality was he was just green and was experiencing many problems that needed to be corrected.
In working with me for only an hr via a video chat, I was able to diagnose and solve eight of the problems he was facing. And this is really my bigger point: new growers don’t even know where they are going wrong because you will essentially have to experience these problems and amend them properly first before understanding what the problems were to begin with.
Those same eight problems, I had experience with every single one of them, and it took me YEARS to figure out what was wrong with my crops. I fixed all my client’s problems in an hr of consulting, and it only cost him 100 bucks. I can tell you firsthand it took me hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars over time to figure out all of those problems. The most important thing to mention is perhaps just how annoyed and stressed out this client was when I first started working with him, and I could relate. He really reminded me of myself when I first started growing, and it was really satisfying to help out a new grower who experienced so many of the same trials and tribulations I did when I was new to growing. So hit me up if you are struggling with your grow. I can help you to solve your problems before they get out of control, or if they are out of control, I can help you to get back on track. One Love.
Related Articles:
Problem Solving as a Grow Room Consultant
Beginner Growers Don’t Need More Information They Need Better Direction
Perpetual Grow Cycle What is it and How Does it Work?
Why are my Cannabis Leaves Turning Yellow?
