C

• Developer solves a Jeep problem with Claude and an Arduino
• The AI was able to reprogram the on-board computer system
• By fixing problems with the car, it could pass its emissions test

What do you do when your 32-year-old Jeep Cherokee keeps failing the California emissions test because it’s producing too much nitrogen? In the age of AI, you connect Claude up to the vehicle and get it to diagnose and fix the problem for you.

That’s what developer Muhammad Zulali did, using a $3 Arduino microcontroller to sit between Claude and the Jeep’s computer system. As you can imagine, the 1994 on-board system was rather outdated, and there wasn’t even an OBD2 port to make use of.

Undaunted, Claude figured out how to retrieve live vehicle information, and as Zulali drove around, temperatures, voltages, and fuel consumption could be analyzed. However, the real breakthrough came when the AI copied the Jeep’s entire computer system.

That revealed what was potentially the crux of the problem: there was a California-only quirk in the programming that reduced fuel delivery under certain scenarios, which would in turn increase the amount of nitrogen produced.

Reverse engineering prowess

Not only did the combo of Claude-plus-Arduino figure out what was going wrong, they were able to put a fix in place, writing and applying custom code that changed the fuel delivery settings on the Jeep.

Ultimately, it was enough to get the vehicle passed, around a week after Claude had begun to get to work — another example of how advanced these AI bots are now, and their ability to reverse engineer everything from webcams to Adobe software suites.

“Claude did most of the diagnostic work and Codex did pretty much all of the memory work,” says Zulali. “I didn’t need a mechanic or a Chrysler dealer tool for any of this… and so the question is, what else can you plug your agent into?”

That said, we wouldn’t necessarily advise trying this at home: AI is still very much prone to mistakes, and there’s a less than zero chance that meddling with your car with Claude will cause problems rather than fix them.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.