Using AI to become a Hacker

NetworkChuck Technology Careers Career & Money

About this video

NetworkChuck shares seven ways he uses AI to study for Hack The Box’s CPTS hacking certification, which he says he publicly committed to despite an estimated workload of over a thousand hours, in a video sponsored by Notion. First, he builds a study plan: he compiles his reasons for taking the cert, source material about the exam, and his available hours into Notion and has AI refine his ‘whys’ and generate a schedule, plus a custom AI block that surfaces a random ‘why’ for motivation. Second, before a lesson — he demos the Nmap network enumeration / firewall and IDS/IPS evasion material — he pastes the content in and has AI quiz him to test whether he can skip it, then asks it to evaluate his gaps and focus his study. Third, he uses AI summaries, including a five-bullet-point custom prompt and auto-updating database summaries, for first passes and review. Fourth, for deeper understanding he generates mind maps, key-point and missing-context lists, concept-comparison tables, common-pitfall lists, practical applications and case studies, deep dives, simplified ’explain it like I’m a third grader’ explanations, and analogies, while cautioning that AI is not perfect and answers need a grain of salt. Fifth, his favourite method, he ’talks it out’: he loads lesson content into ChatGPT and has a voice conversation on his phone where it quizzes him and evaluates his spoken explanations, which he presents as a Feynman-style test usable hands-free, for example in the car. Sixth, he generates non-multiple-choice review questions and flashcards, recommending the flashcards be put into Anki for spaced repetition. Seventh, he uses AI to suggest content ideas so he can teach what he learned, drafting in his own words and using AI to check grammar and errors. As bonuses he shows a cheat-sheet generator and Notion Q&A as a ‘second brain’ that searches his own notes and connected Slack rather than generic training data.

Key takeaways

Build the study plan in AI from your ‘whys’, the cert’s source material and your real available hours, and use a rotating ‘why’ prompt to stay consistent
Pre-test before each lesson: paste the lesson content in, have AI quiz you, evaluate the gaps and tell you what to focus on or whether you can skip it
Use AI summaries, mind maps, comparison tables, pitfall lists and simplified explanations/analogies to understand a lesson, not just read it
Talk it out by voice: have ChatGPT quiz you on loaded content and judge your spoken explanations — if you cannot explain it simply, you do not know it
Auto-generate review questions, flashcards for Anki/spaced repetition and cheat sheets, and keep notes in a searchable second brain the AI can query

Episode details: published August 15, 2024 · 17:03 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: I forced EVERYONE to use Linux · Next: What is DNS? (and how it makes the Internet work) →

All NetworkChuck videos · NetworkChuck profile · NetworkChuck on YouTube