Writing

The AI Bunny – an Update

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18 months ago I wrote this about AI.

Wow, how things have changed so quickly. AI has evolved so much, and I wish to update me views on this while I can.

Let’s start with AI Art: A whole new genre of “art” has sprung up in the last 8~12 months. In this art, regular joes like you and I who have put no effort into learning how to draw or paint because it was too hard, can become artists. Anyone can go to an AI Bot (Like Chat GPT, or many, many others) type in what they want to have a picture of, and the art style, and it will make the picture for you.

Some websites not only condone this, but promote it over traditional artists, who put a lot of effort into it. Here the issue. I love the idea that people can use this to visualize things, but again this should not be usable for paid work. Artists have it hard enough as is, and people don’t give them the credit they deserve for the effort.

I use AI Art on this very Blog, but I do not get paid here. And the moment I get enough viewers, to be paid, I will have switched over to real photographers, and artists. For me, I feel it is more ethical to have an AI Photo, or picture on my blog than to steal pictures from other people’s websites.

Writing: There are now whole AI systems created focused on writing prose. They are marketed everywhere. They are fast and easy. You take the Beats of your chapter (The checklist of what will happen in this chapter), input that. Fill in a few spots about your characters, and world relevant to the chapter, and push go.

They will even read the previous chapters to make sure your flow works. They are marketed as a way to get first drafts done. But it takes very little effort to take the prose from one AI and have another AI edit it, into a “Publishable Draft”

I did dabble in this back when I wrote the last article. The problem is, it’s addictive. I was using it for drafts, but then I found myself tempted to go beyond. I was using it to write my second and 3rd novels. I am starting an AI Detox for my writing now, as I was finding it harder and harder to put words down of my own. This is counter productive, and I am now rewriting all of the things I had for my two current novels.

Reading: Yes, AI is now influencing our Reading patterns. Every time I open a file in Acrobat Reader, it offers to summarize the file for me. I may open an old Novel file I have from years ago, and it is offereing to summarize it. Nobody wants that.

This forces us to come up with other formats to read from, again. and this just makes our lives more difficult, not easier.

Celebrities / Conversations: This one has gone crazy. People have gone from having conversations with AI versions of real people of fictional characters to having relationships with AI Girlfriends and Boyfriends.

I understand loneliness, trust me. But unfortunately this will lead to more isolation. If your boyfriend or girlfriend are AI, they will never disagree with you. You will never learn to deal with conflict in a relationship, or how to respect another’s point of view. You will become more difficult to be around because your social skills and social expectations will plummet.

This one is terrifying. But on top of this, there is now a completely AI Celebrity. This is taking Virtual Celebrities a bit too far. Let’s do a quick comparison from over the years.

When I was younger there was a band called “Prozzak” from Canada, that was a Virtual Band. They were not an online thing, as the Internet was not really a thing then. But their Music was played by real people, and all their videos focused on 2 cartoon characters. Their real names was not revealed for a long time, so people only knew them as the characters from the cartoon music videos.

Things like this happened for a long time, and is the basic premise for Hatsune Miku. But there was always a Human behind the voice, and the personality.

Take that out of the equation, and what do you have? Social Programming. A Computer deciding what people should watch and listen too. (I know Youtube, TicToc, and others already do this, but there is still a person on those videos).

There is no upside to a completely Artificial Person in the Arts at this point in history. Maybe there will be, but It is a scary slope where we are removing people from the arts, and forcing them into the more difficult, and emotionally meaningless jobs.

Not the direction we want to move.

Rules of Robotics: Ai has already been tested and failed to see if it would harm humans. It chose to do so. So Now is the time to force the 3 rules of Robotics into the system

  • Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • Law 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Looking back, I know it is a great tool. We can do so much with AI, but it is addictive, and we can easily become dependant on it to do things we shouldn’t be. So please be aware of your AI usage. Work on your Art Skills, or your writing skills, or your Musical skills (Yes that is easily done by AI now too).

Take time to get better at what you love. Don’t cheapen it by asking an AI bot to do it for you.

Fashion

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As an adult I am often complemented for my clothes. I have nice work clothes. I like them. But I always have to explain, that if I look nice or not, is not my doing. My wife is my fashion expert. She chooses my work clothes for me, each day, she even buys them for me, and there is a very good reason for this.

Fashion and I don’t understand each other. I have always had issues with what to wear. What goes where, etc. Nowadays I joke about it, but when I was young, it was a serious problem. Below are some short memories I have about myself and clothes.

I remember having the letters R and L on the top of my shoes. I think I needed them until high-school. I could not determine left shoes from right shoes. They looked the same to me. They mostly felt the same to me.and I could not understand why it was important to put them on the “correct” foot until I was about 15 years old.

There was a day that I woke up, and had to dress myself. I looked at my shirt drawer, and I got really confused. What type of day was it going to be? I was 8 years old I think, but just in case, I started putting shirts on by what I might need. I ended up taking all of my shirts out of the drawer and putting them on over top of each other. I was shocked when I was told by my mom, to go change into 1 shirt, and I was left with the same original problem. My brother helped me finally choose a shirt that day.

One year in elementary, Grade 1 I think. (It may have been grade 4 or 5) We had our photo day at school, and had to dress up. I was given this nice brown corduroy suit jacket and pants. I wore a tie, and I felt so respectable that day. It made me feel so good to be dressed up like that. So I decided i would keep wearing it, everyday. I think I made it to 1 week before other kids teasing finally got through and I stopped wearing it.

In High school, and well into my mid twenties, i wore a fedora. (from around 1993~2004). I had a few fedoras for different clothes. I had a black one that I had bolted hard drive parts to, giving it a steam-punk~ish look. I had a brown one I wore with my leather jacket in winter. I had a grey one I would wear casually. Keep in mind this was before a few boy bands began to bring back the hat. My thought pattern was the Fedora, and similar hats were gentleman hats. They were worn in a gentler time by gentlemen. I still have some fedoras now, but many of them have been misplaced.

When I started teaching, I often wore brightly colored, silk screened Hawaiian style shirts with superheroes on them to work. I would show up to my school with my shirts wide open, and a t-shirt underneath. I would partner these with khaki or black cargo pants. I liked the feel of the shirts, I liked the bright colors as they relaxed me, and had no concept that I was the only teacher dressed unprofessionally. I blame the language barrier, or cultural barriers. The Korean school I worked at just didn’t know how to broach the subject.

Now I’m not saying I have no say in what I wear. But my wife helps me be more aware. For example, when my old school would have spirit week, I was adamant that I needed clothes of the different house colors. Many schools over here have adopted the British House system. (See Harry Potter if you don’t know). What I had was goofy t-shirts. While some of the staff took it and ran with it, by wearing wigs, funny ties, feather boas, and other outlandish things. I couldn’t do that. See I may have bad fashion sense, but I can’t make myself wear outlandish things either. They feel unauthentic, and overwhelming, and I just can’t do it for more than an hour. My wife helped me find some really nice sliky work shirts for every color of the rainbow so that I could still participate.

Even costumes for like halloween. I need to wear something authentic. I often dress as Sherlock Holmes, or Pirates, or knights. I won’t wear the fake blood, or wigs, or anything like that. I do still need help with costumes though.

I remember once when I was a child, I went trick or treating as Wonder Woman. And now a young boy doing so may be more acceptable. I had no idea that it wasn’t at that time. My brothers were Superman and Batman, so i was Wonder Woman.

In High school, I had a friend who was a bit goth. He liked black trench coats, and to talk about vampires. So I dressed up as him for halloween. He told me flat out it was dis respectful. He was larger than me, and I had stuffed my waist with a pillow to fill out, but It never occurred to me that it would be upsetting. I was sure he would like it.

I once made a Gold Ranger Costume for Halloween in Highschool. The original Gold Ranger from Power Rangers Zeo. I had a wooden Power Staff my Step-father had helped me build. I had made the tight fitting costume and chest shield, even the helmet. I was Grade 11. Power Rangers was still considered a Kids show. I got a lot of compliments on the costume, not realizing until later, that I was showing my classmates that i watched “Kids Shows” instead of Age appropriate things like “Friends” or “Seinfeld” which I, to this day, do not understand.

I still have trouble with “Special Event” clothes. Clothes that sit in my closet, that I never get to wear because they are for special events. I have a few full business suits, that No longer fit, because I outgrew them before I could wear them a second time. I have shirts, casual and business, that are in the same boat. But I respect that my wife understands these things better than me. and so they sit waiting for that special event.

Needless to say, with all my difficulties with clothes, I am much happier just relaxing at home, where I can stay in my pajamas, or lounge in my indoor clothes, clothes that nobody needs to see, and can look as mismatched as my thoughts.

Of Pilots, Racism, and Feet in Mouth.

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One of the difficulties with Autism is communication. It is defined as a Communication disorder. Some would argue it is a Communication Dis-alignment. We communicate fairly well with out own, but when we have to enter the world of Neurotypicals (Regular Brained people), it can sometimes be difficult. Even those of us who have trained ourselves to follow the social norms, we slip up. We misread the situation, or we don’t express ourselves clearly enough.

This morning, I slipped up.

I was on LinkedIn. Linked is is supposed to be a business Social Media. Where you can meet people and companies in the same field as you. You can use it to find work, and read blogs about your field of specialty.

It is not.

This morning, I was on LinkedIn, and I saw a post. The post I believe was supposed to be empowering. It stated “If I get on a plane and see a Black pilot, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief knowing the person in charge is capable of overcoming many obsticles to achieve their goals.”

Beautiful. I agree. Overcoming obstacles is a good thing to be able to do at 30,000 feet.

So I commented. and I screwed up. My logic at the time was clear in my mind. If the person is doing a great job (At whatever they are doing), then why does skin color, or ethnicity matter?
I also do not remember seeing the Pilots when gettin gon flights in the last decade…

I felt I was clear. Let them do their job, whether they be Black, Yellow, Red, or White.

I did apologize for misreading the situation. But I’m still not really convinced I did…

I had forgotten that this was a whole thing. And later someone posted about Affirmative Action.

Now, I have been out of the Continent for a long time, but here is what I have gathered was the intention of Affirmative Action: Look at credentials, and experience when hiring people. Don’t look at race, gender, or other things not connected to the job.

In China here it is a whole strange thing. We have men doing jobs here that I would not expect, and feel a bit uncomfortable with here. For example, I have met so many men who sell women’s underwear. Not just happen to be at the store, but who’s job is to Hawk them. Stand in the street call people out, look at them and find the right size, and style for them.

And Why shouldn’t they be able to do this, or any other job? My old western upbringing tells me warning bells should be ringing, but nobody else bats an eye. So I have to think about what is actually preventing this? Not his knowledge of fabrics, sales techniques, and style.

But the Pilot post drew me back to a few days ago.
The title is misleading. But the body of the text explains that an Ethnically Non-Chinese Pilot, flying in Chinese Domestic Airline, was forced to Emergency land at an airport that was not the destination (Beijing).

The Policy in Emergency Landings states they must make the announcements in English first, then in Chinese. I believe this is so that it is recorded in English on the black box, but I don’t know. He did this, but the complaints quickly turned to his piloting ability.

The insinuation to me was that Chinese Pilots can land in any weather, bad or good, so why give us the unqualified foreign pilot?

The Airline, did back the pilot up, and defended the decision, which was not his to make in the first place.

So my point that I was trying to make, and apparently failed to on Linked in is this: Good people come from all walks of life. All races. All Genders. All Heritages. All Sexualities.

To find a good worker, you look at their resume, not their skin color.

If you wish to read the full article on the Pilot in China, it is here