Strong Wi-Fi. Happy wife. Happy life. How ChatGPT helped me fix our home internet.

Terminating a Cat 6 ethernet cable Alistair Barr/Business Insider

A few weekends ago, my wife left on a business trip with one instruction: fix the Wi-Fi before I get back.

Her Zoom calls kept dropping during important meetings, so I tracked an old Cat 6 ethernet cable from our data closet so I could hardwire her laptop to the interwebs. The only problem? It ended as a raw, cut end, and I had no idea how to terminate it with an ethernet plug.

So I did what I do these days whenever I'm out of my depth: I asked ChatGPT .

I sent it photos at every stage. It told me which tools to buy, showed me how to strip the cable, arrange the eight tiny wires in the right order, and even drew little diagrams when words weren't enough. When I got frustrated, it gave me a pep talk.

My first attempt only delivered about 100 Mbps instead of our 1 Gbps internet connection.…