I Asked AI to Help Me Choose a Hobby. Judging Its Suggestions, From Beekeeping to Astronomy

Wasting time is a matter of opinion. One person's enjoyable afternoon putting the final touches on a detailed Lego Death Star build is another person's mind-numbing chore. Then there's the investment. You could spend a fortnight and a prince's ransom only to discover miniature ship building does not, in fact, float your boat.

Model trains, running clubs, robotics and coding classes all sound fun -- until you realize you'd rather fly, running shoes cost far more than they should and you're less of a front-end/back-end person and more of a "no end in sight for how boring Java can be" person.

I asked three different AI systems -- Claude AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT -- about what my spouse's next hobby should be using the exact same prompt, and the results were surprising.

Claude: Getting a clue

Here's the prompt I wrote: "I am a 39-year-old man in the United States of British origin. I live in Los Angeles, California, and am married with a dog and a cat. I live in a house with some backyard space. I enjoy travel, reading, playing video games and am looking to add a new hobby to my list of activities. I also enjoy getting deals, as that's what my career deals with. Can you suggest three hobbies that I should look into for my review? Please give me information on the financial and time commitments needed, as well as what you would consider to be the plusses and minuses of each one. I work a regular 9-5 job so would need to be done around that constraint as well."

Gardening is a hobby many people only come to appreciate in their golden years, but all three AI systems recommended it as an easy way to pass the time with minimal effort and expense.

The second suggestion was reselling and thrifting vintage finds, followed by homebrewing beer, cider or mead. It gave a lot of detail into the time and financial commitments, pros and cons as well as why it assumed those hobbies would suit my husband based on that short prompt.

Claude/Screenshot by CNET

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