June 20, 2025 (3)
Happy fiftieth anniversary to my favorite movie,
June 20, 2025 (2)
So, an important disclosure: I used ChatGPT to create this website. I'm way out of the game on working in HTML, but I really didn't want to fight with Wordpress or any CMS either. I also had a very specific design in mind that I wanted to create, and ChatGPT was able to help me get there.
Would I say this counts as using AI to create art? I guess I can understand that perspective. If there's a Web designer out there who would have preferred I spend the time figuring out exactly how to ensure the text of these paragraphs was a little smaller than the heading (as I said, I had a very specific design in mind), I think that's a valid claim. But I'm glad I didn't have to spend hours fiddling with this when ChatGPT was able to figure it out for me. It still took me about two hours to get all of this done, and in the course of doing so I learned a bit about how to better work with AI, so I do think it was time well-spent.
I think the question comes down to what you consider the act of creating art, and what you consider "using a tool" to create that art. Figuring out HTML was relatively easy when HTML was pretty simple, back when I was messing with it in 1998. I do remember trying out a "WYSIWYG" software program around that time that let me create a website by placing text and images - is that substantially different than using AI to assist me in coding this website the way I want it to look? Because I'm pretty sure no one would have gotten mad at me for using that program back in 1998.
While I'm realizing now this does seem defensive—and it is, a little!—I'm more interested in that question. Is using AI to create this website like using a paintbrush, paint, and an easel to create a painting—or is the AI taking the place of my own brain in that creative process?
June 20, 2025 (1)
So I've decided to create this website as a way to plant my flag here on my tiny plot of digital real estate—and give me a place to publish my random thoughts without those thoughts being on a social media platform owned by a third party. This website is incredibly basic—something I might have created in college back in the late 1990s. But it appeals strongly to my minimalist inclinations and so there's a decent chance I may actually update it on something resembling a frequent basis.