Day of the Overseer, 49th of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Yes, this blog uses AI-generated imagery for its pictures and has for several years now. I like it, and at least for me it solves the ethical problem of appropriation of other people's artwork. If your argument is that AI is stealing the work of others, you need to educate yourself on how generative AI actually works. 

However, the writing here is 100% human generated, assuming as I do that I'm a human. How would I know, though? Does merely believing I'm human make me one? But that's a sidetrack I don't feel like following today. 

Just for laughs, just to see what happens, I asked ChatGPT to write a post for this blog. Taking the title of this blog, here's what it came up with:

Some of the most powerful transformations happen when like meets like. In a world obsessed with differences, we often overlook the quiet, almost invisible ways similarity creates change: ideas blending into new perspectives, emotions finding resonance in others, communities forming through shared experience. Just as water seamlessly merges with itself, dissolving boundaries without resistance, we too have the capacity to connect, adapt, and evolve when we recognize what we have in common. Maybe the real lesson isn’t about chemistry at all, but about how fluid life becomes when we stop trying to stay separate.

If a person had written that, I might think they were trying a little too hard to sound "deep" or were virtue-signaling a tad too much, but otherwise say a job well done. Considering how little it had to go on, just the prompt "blog post for Water Dissolves Water," it's actually not a bad attempt at all. I'm pretty sure most people couldn't do better given that small bit of input and only one minute to write a paragraph.

I'm old. My formative years were in the 1960s and 1970s. I grew up pre-internet, and computers were things that filled rooms in places like IBM headquarters and had spinning reels of magnetic tape. Now, I see self-driving Waymo cars on the street, phones have become indispensable pocket computers with all the world's information at my fingertips, and artificial intelligence can create images and write essays as good or better than I can. I didn't really think that I'd live long enough to see science fiction become reality.

In any case, I'm not turning this blog over to San Altman. AI hasn't and won't start writing these posts. Even if you can convince me it can do that better than me, I still need something to do, some outlet to directly express myself, and I'm not about to start outsourcing myself. 

Even if I am fairly impressed by that paragraph above.