Ebb and Flow in Everyday Ramblings

From across the street two days ago. This morning it snowed. I am sorry but that is against the rules. Has the weather gone rogue? We all know the answer to that question.

It was pretty snow, big softly falling individual flakes. Much easier to be out in than hard rain. And it didn’t stick.

Yesterday I took my iPad to the upscale coffee shop across town to meet with the guys. Although Walt managed to get a few women to come once, it is basically me and the guys. Our Thursday salon. I didn’t trust using the public Wi-Fi, so I made sure I had minutes available on my phone hot spot. I had completely forgotten what plan I had for that. Account checking was involved. (I think that is passive voice.)

It was a small group. Walt stayed an extra week in New York after the screening of the Shakespeare in the prison showing at the Socially Relevant film festival. He is with one of the guys from the movie and his girlfriend. Neither of them had been to New York before. We paid for the plane fare of the actor in the film and Walt, who has many friends there.

Just after we started chatting about the big painting on the wall that one of us had copied (which turns out not to be as bad as I thought it was) Walt Facetimed us from New York to say hi and tell us he’d be back today, and the film has made it into a festival in Barcelona in September.

We all asked if we got to go in person to that. A joke, of course, but Walt might go.

Our fill in facilitator, a retired gestalt therapist, started us out with a quote from the New Yorker about the gift and benefits of a good conversation. Eventually we got around to talking about AI. It was a bumpy conversation as there is a lot of unease in the group about this whole idea of generative artificial intelligence.

I told them I had been playing with it, and our facilitator had also set up a Chat GPT3 account and dipped his toe in. We asked it a bunch of questions. Why is learning important, in what way could trolls misuse it, and a couple of big existential questions. Then we asked it to write a song. The prompt was…write a song about love, loss, and German shepherds in the style of John Prine and Willie Nelson. It did, amazingly fast.

The lyrics were both appropriate and sad and very very bad. It had us all howling with laughter. Which is sort of why I wanted to show them how it was working.

It did not provide music. Give it six months, okay? We did learn that you can dictate your prompts because everyone at the table was 68 years or older and fast typing on an iPad is not a skill we possessed. I heard this morning that very soon people are going to be hired to write better prompts and they will be called prompt engineers.

We talked mostly about social impact, the influence of people who do not currently practice discernment, the end of human civilization, dystopian novels, and who owns creative output created with AI as an assistant, and fun ways to utilize content created this way. I basically explained the Dark Web to them and how AI is already in use over there. We talked about how much bad art (in various iterations) is out on the web and no wonder it was writing achingly bad poems and songs with all that stuff out there.

Although I felt it was a bumpy and unsatisfying conversation overall, I did get an email from the facilitator today thanking me for sending a copy of the bad song to him and that it was an interesting discussion and for sharing what I knew.

Perhaps I need to modify my expectations of what a good conversation is. We do all listen well to each other. That is what grown-ups can do if trained well enough.

My unit coordinator (currently well hydrated) said this morning in class that she bets everyone of the guys will be talking about the conversation with others today.

Speaking of class. I didn’t have anyone in my class again last night.

I am going to make a concerted effort to see if I can find an alternative time and a day that works for the three regulars who have been attending. I know that they all benefit from taking class and I want to accommodate them. Time zones are an issue as well as changing schedules. It would also be great, too, to see if another day and time can provide an opportunity for a few other new folks to practice with me.

I need to be realistic though. Setting up for and prepping for a class that no one is able to attend is not a good deal for me either. My other classes are doing fine.

These things have an ebb and a flow to them. But still, change is a challenge.
It arrives, whether we want it to or not.

Last updated March 24, 2023