move along, nothing to see here
I want to write more regularly in my blog but conversely I find myself angry with the state of blogs and the internet and SEO and AI writing everything. I find I recoil from the thought of getting an AI to write a piece of fiction, or even non-fiction, though because I am terrible at art I’m fascinated with what Midjourney and the rest of them can come up with. Like the above, which is almost believable as a piece of art, but straightaway you can tell it’s not been made by a human.
I have a folder with some of the AI art that I was mucking around with. They’re probably only good for blog post headings; I wonder how we will look back at this primative stuff in the future. It’s hard to imagine yourself as “that dunce from the past who did stupid things because she didn’t know any better.”
I asked ChatGPT for a blog writing prompt (though I don’t like using it to generate text I really do enjoy asking it questions about all sorts of things, and I also use the Obsidian plugin ‘Smart Collections’ which uses an AI API to examine your notes repository and suggest links between them)… this is what I got back:
“Exploring the Power of Small Acts of Kindness: Share a personal story or reflect on how small acts of kindness can make a big difference in our lives and the lives of others. Discuss the ripple effect of kindness and provide practical ideas for incorporating kindness into daily routines.”
Like I am Elizabeth Gilbert or something. So here goes:
Despite the grumpiness of this current blog post (sorry about that; I’m not quite sure how that tone kicked in) I am a big fan of random acts of kindness. Though the above refers to “small” acts of kindness. Is the uber-computer suggesting there are degrees of kindness? Does that suggest that some are better or worse than others? Maybe it just means “low-effort kindness.” Like, I couldn’t be bothered to get up from the couch so I sent a text instead.
These are just not my style of prompt. Sorry ChatGPT.
Instead: tonight I ate 1.5 pieces of chocolate cake, then some green tea, though the green tea couldn’t burn away the choking feeling of sugar. I watched two episodes of I Am Not A Robot with Leila, who wanted to see “what a KDrama was like.” I wrote 627 words of the novella, which now stands at a little over 11k. There are even some bits in there I like, though I keep telling myself that I can worry about its crapness once the overall shape is complete. I had an idea that perhaps the inorganic lifeforms that live on my trash planet (are made of trash, you see) might also be hallucinating when they touch a living creature… perhaps I can get some mind-melding going on. The human mind…and trash.
