The beginning of this week we talked a bit more about creativity using AI. We used some text-generation methods in collab notebook. First was with a Markov chain and the second was with OpenAI’s GPT-2 text generator. I had a bit of trouble with GPT-2 so I experimented more with Markov chain and I used a Markov chain a bit last semester in creative coding so I was ready to play around with it more. I used a text file of the short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison. I figure it was a good story to use in this context since it’s a story about an AI and has a very consistent theme that text generation would be able to mimic. I first made a short sentence,
“It was unending pain … And we passed through the path of boiling steam.”
I like this sentence because it is simple but it could easily be added to the original story and feel like it should be there. I then made a little longer sentence,
“AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been when AM had turned him into a shouldershrugger, had made him a little happier.”
This sentence is also good except I don’t know what a “shouldershrugger” is. After that I made a sentence using both “I Have No Mouth…” and a text file of Dante’s “Inferno”
“What is now setting on the new law, had unwillingly entered the city, he gave Dejanira his blood-stained shirt, telling her it would vanish.”
This was cool because it is a little random but I feel like it could make sense if you add context to it and I also liked how it used an actual name of a mythological character, Dejanira, referenced once or twice in “Inferno” I think text generation shows the capabilities of AI and how they can really understand patterns in literature in order to mimic a certain writing style. Similar as to how a lot of the AI art we looked at looked very realistic to traditional paintings.
On Wednesday we did peer teaching again but the topic of this one was about the topics relating to our big projects. The topic of my big project is ethical behavior on the internet so a made a small presentation on navigating the web safely and ethical behavior. The topic is relatively self explanatory especially for people in a digital studies class. Most of my main points were about avoiding certain sites and different things like unsecured wi-fi networks without precaution. Also ethical behavior when it come to things like respecting other peoples privacy and citing your sources.
Dylan G did his peer teaching after mine and he talked about ARG’s which I was totally unfamiliar with. After his peer teaching I understood the concept of ARG’s and I think its a very cool idea. If I understand it correct it is similar to the site used to promote the new Batman movie which had a lot of riddles that revealed information about the film. I actually haven’t really played with that site but I’ve seen videos of people doing it and it seems interesting.
On Friday Emmanuel and Austin did their peer teachings and they were both on topics that had to do with athletics. Emmanuel’s was about mental health with student athletes and I found that to be a good topic especially because a lot of the things he said I was able to relate to very closely. I actually recently started looking for therapy and mental health resources this past couple of weeks and I should’ve done so earlier but with my schedule as a student athlete I often feel like I don’t have time or it wasn’t my highest priority and that was a lot of what Emmanuel discussed. Austin’s topic was more specific to baseball and the underpaid athletes in the minor leagues. This was an interesting topic as well even if I couldn’t relate to it as closely. I was unaware of how little the minor league teams paid their athletes especially since their pay by their teams is limited to the time that they play in the season so in the off season they have to get jobs to maintain a living wage. It really shows that the minor leagues aren’t trying to get their athletes to really improve to the major league levels because when you have to worry about your paycheck year round it’s really hard to focus on your game and evolve as an athlete.
All three of the topics I was taught were interesting and informative. I enjoyed them whether or not I could relate at all to the topic. I think a lot that was due to some well developed ideas and presentations from my peers. I like the peer teaching days because it’s a fun day to learn something new from someone else that is passionate or experienced in a topic that I might not be.
