{"id":61400,"date":"2025-04-28T06:43:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T12:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=61400"},"modified":"2025-04-29T05:44:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:44:14","slug":"61400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?p=61400","title":{"rendered":"Me and my Shadow. AI."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Here\u2019s a Zen-ink-wash \u201cWu Wei Moon.\u201d
I went with sumi-e because its spare brushwork and generous empty space feel like the visual counterpart of \u7121\u70ba\u2014letting things happen without forcing them. The drifting boat and the moon\u2019s reflection hint at the watercourse way, quietly moving under its own power (note the chatgpt I)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spring and the Wu Wei Moon II<\/p>\n

Monday gratefuls: Maddie, new palliative care nurse. The Ancients on technology. Back pain. Worse. Shadow. An evolving challenge. Keeping my mind sharp.\u00a0McMurtry Sp\u00e9irling<\/a>. Water. CookUnity. OK, not great. AI on Kaplan. On Dramaturgy. On Movie Criticism. Will the Humanities Survive AI<\/a>? by D. Graham Burnett.<\/p>\n

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Humanities<\/p>\n

Week Kavannah: Persistence. Netzach.<\/p>\n

One brief shining: An insight borne from the article about the Humanities goes like this: AI, artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, the Humanities, what it means and has meant to be human. Seems important, now. Eh?<\/p>\n

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Me and my Shadow. I know. You were waiting for that one, I’ll bet. She licks my head about 5:20. I creak and twist and ache and burn toward verticality. Let her out. She, in a phrase I’ve never understood, does her business while I go upstairs for some coffee, mostly for motion as lotion, make my back remember about movement without so, so much pain.<\/p>\n

Back downstairs the mini-split has begun to warm what has become since A.S.A., after Shadow’s arrival, my primary space in the house. Soon she’ll come back in, drink a lot of water, and begin staring at me-as she is right now-hoping to convince me that it’s already 7 am. Her feeding time. Doesn’t work, but it’s a sweet look.<\/p>\n

We do a round of training before her morning meal. Still working on touch, which replaces come, sit and down. All three she will now do without a treat. Hand signals only. We made a little progress on the leash. She only sulked when I had it on her for about 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

Dog. As I say, God spelled correctly.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>AI, to this curious guy, a Dogsend. Patient. Willing to explain in detail. Make images. I just asked chatgpt if it would make an image of itself in a style of its choice. Ooh, this is going to be interesting.<\/p>\n

When I responded to the image, here’s what it wrote back: “I\u2019m glad it resonates! I was aiming for a contemplative, almost illuminated-manuscript feel, blending Art Nouveau curves with Morris-style botanical patterning and hints of circuitry to whisper \u201csilicon monk.\u201d If you\u2019d like to tweak colors, add more overt tech motifs, or try a completely different style, just say the word\u2014I\u2019m happy to iterate.”<\/p>\n

I find that an intriguing self-portrait.<\/p>\n

Here are a few paragraphs from the New Yorker article I cited above:<\/p>\n

“Do they herald the end of \u201cthe humanities\u201d? In one sense, absolutely. My colleagues fret about our inability to detect (reliably) whether a student has really written a paper. But flip around this faculty-lounge catastrophe and it\u2019s something of a gift.<\/p>\n

You can no longer\u00a0make<\/em>\u00a0students do the reading or the writing. So what\u2019s left? Only this: give them work they want to do. And help them want to do it. What, again, is education? The\u00a0non-coercive<\/em> rearranging of desire…<\/p>\n

But factory-style scholarly productivity was never the essence of the humanities. The real project was always us: the work of understanding, and not the accumulation of facts. Not \u201cknowledge,\u201d in the sense of yet another sandwich of true statements about the world. That stuff is great\u2014and where science and engineering are concerned it\u2019s pretty much the whole point. But no amount of peer-reviewed scholarship, no data set, can resolve the central questions that confront every human being: How to live? What to do? How to face death?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BTW: I asked chatgpt why it chose Art Nouveau. Here’s its reply:<\/p>\n

“A few things nudged me toward Art Nouveau:<\/p>\n