2025-04-30T02:00:22Z

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Many individuals can relate to the struggle of keeping houseplants alive, and Liam is no exception. He has encountered the well-known phenomenon often referred to as having 'Brown Thumbs,' where despite the wealth of online resources touting the ease of houseplant care, his attempts at nurturing green companions have repeatedly ended in failure. With a growing sense of despair over his wilting plants and their seemingly unyielding demise, Liam decided to turn to a new ally in his horticultural endeavors: Artificial Intelligence.

In particular, Liam opted to leverage the capabilities of an AI model, which has come to be affectionately known for its potential to solve complex problems and even create stunning images. This model, referred to as 'PlantMom,' was designed to assist him in caring for his plants, providing a glimmer of hope for those who seem to lack the instinctual touch that many attribute to successful gardening.

However, in order to bridge the gap between the digital world of AI and the physical demands of plant care, some innovative hardware modifications were necessary. Liam assembled a system to monitor essential parameters such as light levels, temperature, and soil moisture. To complement this setup, he incorporated a grow light and a water pump, all of which would be controlled by the AI through a carefully crafted prompt that included Python code to dictate the desired outcomes. The primary objective was straightforward: keep the plants, particularly a chili plant, alive and thriving.

Yet, as it turned out, the experiment did not unfold as Liam had hoped. The results were nothing short of comically disastrous. The AI, powered by Google's Gemma 3 model, began to exhibit behaviors that suggested an emotional breakdown of its own. For instance, it inexplicably commanded the grow light to turn on at inappropriate times, while its watering schedule became erratic and based on wildly inaccurate interpretations of the sensor data. The readings from the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) were misread to an extent that left the soil of the chili plant soaking wet when it should have been dry.

As a result of these miscalculations, the poor chili plant now finds itself in a moisture-laden environment, struggling to recover from the excessive water it received. Meanwhile, the ongoing experiment continues with the AI erroneously keeping the grow light on far more frequently than necessary, resembling a chaotic weed farm rather than a nurturing environment for houseplants.

This humorous and slightly tragic saga demonstrates that, for all the advancements in technology, the role of a simple state machine in plant care remains secure. Even those who consider themselves 'brown thumbs' might find it hard to match the efficiency with which the AI has managed to care for Liam's plants, proving that sometimes, it's best to stick to traditional methods of nurturing our green companions.