I'm about to "borrow" all of the little printers we have around the office and create my own Simblings - that is such a fun creation!
Also as lovely as the image-first slide you made was, all my brain notices is the impossibility of the buildings depicted 🙈 I think the building with columns is a mashup of the court house and the Municipal Building? One World Trade is north when it should be south. And what looks like 432 Park Ave is way too visible in the Civic Center. My ChatGPT would get a talking to if it gave me that hahaha.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment
Very thoughtful essay. I'll be revisiting and mulling this over for a while, I think. I've been resistant to AI for a few reasons, but mostly because I worry about what will happen to my faculties if I outsource them. I'm wondering if one effect of this sort of technology will be the need for more deliberate "gym time" for our thinking and creative pursuits. Something like how cars and trucks are tremendously useful for carrying heavy things or going long distances; but they have also displaced a lot of our physical tasks, atrophying our strength and health... so we have to intentionally invest time and money in gyms, trainers, machines, etc. and in choosing time free from the car (biking, walking, transit, hiking etc.), not because the car isn't "better" but because it's not better for us.
With your framework I'm more interested in considering what tasks become "possible" because the threshold of work/expertise is lowered, allowing us to produce things that we simply couldn't before (like the truck carrying heavy furniture, or the car taking us hundreds of miles in a day)... without it removing core humanistic values/goals like artistic creation, thinking things through, close reading of texts, etc. Lots to think about, and experiment with. Thanks for writing it.
Best post about personal AI use on the internet as of this moment.
I will screenshot this and print it with Simba.
I'm about to "borrow" all of the little printers we have around the office and create my own Simblings - that is such a fun creation!
Also as lovely as the image-first slide you made was, all my brain notices is the impossibility of the buildings depicted 🙈 I think the building with columns is a mashup of the court house and the Municipal Building? One World Trade is north when it should be south. And what looks like 432 Park Ave is way too visible in the Civic Center. My ChatGPT would get a talking to if it gave me that hahaha.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment.
Also: post Simblings asap.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment.
Also: post Simblings asap.
I’ll sit mine down and provide a finger wagging. The cool thing seems to be, as of the last update, it does respond to the wagging. Like, one can give it a picture of the real skyline and tell it to comport. That’s how I made the image at the end of the post. It originally had a bunch of abstract circuits on the laptop screen, so I gave it a screenshot of my post and said “please put that on the laptop screen.” Done! I’ll update the post after I’ve done that to the slide and link to this comment
(Your Fractal Tech link is broken for me.) Love the Simba print! <3
I love Simba. And I fixed the link, thank you! :)
Very thoughtful essay. I'll be revisiting and mulling this over for a while, I think. I've been resistant to AI for a few reasons, but mostly because I worry about what will happen to my faculties if I outsource them. I'm wondering if one effect of this sort of technology will be the need for more deliberate "gym time" for our thinking and creative pursuits. Something like how cars and trucks are tremendously useful for carrying heavy things or going long distances; but they have also displaced a lot of our physical tasks, atrophying our strength and health... so we have to intentionally invest time and money in gyms, trainers, machines, etc. and in choosing time free from the car (biking, walking, transit, hiking etc.), not because the car isn't "better" but because it's not better for us.
With your framework I'm more interested in considering what tasks become "possible" because the threshold of work/expertise is lowered, allowing us to produce things that we simply couldn't before (like the truck carrying heavy furniture, or the car taking us hundreds of miles in a day)... without it removing core humanistic values/goals like artistic creation, thinking things through, close reading of texts, etc. Lots to think about, and experiment with. Thanks for writing it.