chatgpt

Chris Knight's avatar

On Independence Day some friends asked if I wanted to join them at the theater to see the new Steven Spielberg movie Disclosure Day.  I went with them and we agreed afterward that it’s a great movie!  Not Spielberg’s best but it’s definitely tapping into “old school Spielberg” that a lot of us remember from our youth, with a dash of the “mature Spielberg” who has been with us since Schindler’s List.

That is how I gauge our greatest living filmmaker.  There is the Steven Spielberg that I met at the Boy Scout Jamboree in 1989: the “big kid” who was as giddy as a schoolboy, dancing around in his Scout uniform.  That’s the man who brought us E.T. and Indiana Jones and Jaws and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.  He had a childlike twinkle in his eye and we were fortunate to have him.
Then Spielberg went
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
My best friend since third grade Chad has encouraged me many times over the years to start running.  Chad knows something about that, being an active runner and also the veteran of numerous full marathons and countless shorter races.  Running is how he and his wife first met, during a running ministry at their church.  So maybe it’s something I should have looked into a long time ago already.
Now, I can run very fast over short distances.  Maybe even faster than a lot of seasoned pros.  It’s just the way I’m built and it came in handy a few times when I was at the state department of mental health.  But perhaps running a mile or so a day, if that much?  Nah, that just hasn’t seemed feasible.  I have harbored doubts all this time and it didn’t seem that anything could dispel them.
But then I saw this
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Lately there’s been a little bit of a fad on Facebook: where people are asking ChatGPT to make a caricature of them based on what the AI knows of them.  ChatGPT asks for a photo and some information and it chucks out a pretty neat likeness.

I joined in on the fun.  This is a rather accurate facsimile of my life right now (note the Vault Boy poster from the Fallout games behind me):

Of COURSE I had to include Tammy!  She is certainly a major component of the operations here at Knight Shift Headquarters.  Of my life in general actually, more than I’ve let on.

...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I swear, the craziness that pops so seemingly randomly across my synapses sometimes…

For whatever reason, this afternoon I found myself thinking of Andy Kaufman, the “song and dance man” who entertained millions with his unique shticks.  Sadly, Kaufman passed away in 1984 at the much-too-young age of 35.

Or did he?

Andy Kaufman’s sense of humor was notoriously eclectic, to put it mildly.  And among other things there were a few times when he did state a desire to fake his own death.  It would have been the biggest joke of his life, to make everyone believe he had passed only to show up ten or twenty or… maybe forty years later.

Now, I do not believe that Kaufman really faked his death.  His family has testified many times that he did indeed pass on in May of 1984.  There is no disputing that.  And yet, this is...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
I regularly work with artificial intelligence as an AI trainer.  I also have a lot of experience in the mental health field, as both a professional helping others and also as a manic depressive who has been a “consumer” of services at various times.  So this article both fascinates me and also greatly disturbs me.

The website Futurism has published a VERY disturbing article about “ChatGPT Psychosis”.  Ever since the rise of that and other popular artificial intelligence “chatbots”, there has been an ever-increasing number of people who have become consumed by the technology.  Maggie Harrison Dupré has turned in a remarkable report illuminating the issue.

From the article:

And that’s not all. As we’ve continued reporting, we’ve heard numerous troubling stories about people’s loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.

“I

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I love this story!!

I’m impressed by ChatGPT.  But I’ve also got a healthy respect for Atari Chess, a cartridge for the classic Atari 2600 Video Computer System from 1977.  I got Atari Chess when I was nine years old in third grade.  I’d just learned how to play chess and already wanted to get better by having a computer opponent to practice with.  Atari Chess beat me EVERY time.  Then again I’ve only won a single time at chess but that’s beside the point…

Anyhoo, a Citrix engineer set ChatGPT against the Atari 2600 in a game of chess.  And the Atari from almost fifty years ago clobbered the modern AI.

Here’s the full story courtesy of Futurism....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Yesterday a couple of dachshunds I follow on Facebook (the inimitable Barney and Fred) posted some pics of themselves that their “pawrents” had rendered by the ChatGPT artificial intelligence system.  It made me curious about how my own little girl Tammy would do.

If you use the free version of ChatGPT it limits you to three renderings a day.  Here is what it generated this morning…

I have no idea why the AI put a glass of iced tea into that last one.  It does make Tammy look like a proper southern lady though 🙂

EDIT 05/24/2025: Here’s another cartoon rendering of Tammy:

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar
 
But it’s time to move on.  ChatGPT has its fun uses but it’s a tool, not a toy.

I would be lying if I said that I haven’t had fun though.

So, here is the final bunch of artificial intelligence generated “art” that I’m putting on this blog.  Be sure to click the pics to enlarge them…

 

The Joker with a “Hello Kitty” bomb:

 

Eowyn, from The Lord of the Rings (I especially like the horse detail on her outfit):

 

Santa Claus with a flamethrower:

 

“The Horror of Taxation”:

Young Al Capone:

 

Jesus confronting a Dalek (this was made for a friend who teaches Sunday school and I think he was going to use it for that):

 

The Hamburglar and his attorney (I tried to make this ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Still playing around with AI, for the first real time ever.  Consider it research.  I’m getting professionally involved with an endeavor that is heavy on artificial intelligence so I’m having to see what the thing is capable of doing, exactly.

(I’m adamantly sticking to my policy of NO writing blog posts with AI.  If you see something written here and it’s not otherwise stated, you can be assured that it is absolutely entirely written by me with my own gray matter.)

Yesterday I experimented with having ChatGPT compose a poem about the Orks from Warhammer 40,000 (the faction that I play whenever I do a game of 40K).  You can, errr… enjoy the results here.  Tonight I went further, so after upgrading to the subscription I started playing around with image generation.

The results are, ummmm… interesting.

Here’s the one I’m most proud of: a dachshund sitting atop a ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

No, I am still not going to “write” a blog post using artificial intelligence.  I’m sitting in front of a keyboard composing these words.  If you ever do see a product of AI being displayed, it’s going to state as much.  Which is what I’m doing now.  What you are about to read is definitely the product of artificial intelligence.  It also represents the first time that I’ve used a “chatbot” to generate text.  Up until now I’ve avoided such things.  But as I’m currently involved in a project necessitating some familiarity with AI, there was little choice but to see what it is that I’m getting into.

A friend encouraged me to try ChatGPT.  I’ve been playing around with it since last night, firing hard at its walls.  And I have to say, I am intrigued.  One of the things I asked it to do was to describe the ...

Read more