A Case for AI - Tracking Notes

I've been messing with AI for about 2 ½ years. The first thing I produced using AI was a t-shirt that read:

"I have limited knowledge of the world and events after January 17th, 1972. I may occasionally produce incorrect or biased information."

My wife was annoyed by this, and it has since disappeared. But AI is still a problem waiting for a solution*. Oh, the asterisks spell out the problem. ChatGPT’s original disclaimers had clunky grammar, which I corrected myself before putting it on a $10.00 t-shirt. Why would a language model have clunky grammar? Don't know, that is not good. 

Let me share one of my daily pains with AI. I work in tech support. At least once a day, I receive a ticket clearly written by AI. The first issue I have is that the user has self-diagnosed the problem and maybe wrongly. That’s neither here nor there, but if they understood the issue and the AI’s response, it shouldn’t still be a problem. If only they had tried what the AI told them. But they didn’t, because they couldn’t understand the words, instructions, or concepts.

Don’t do this.

It’s incredibly obvious when AI writes something for you. AI isn’t particularly good at mimicking your style and tone, so it doesn’t sound like you at all. Also, AI is extraordinarily good at punctuation. It will happily use the Oxford comma, or worse, the semicolon. Most people don’t use semicolons; they can’t. I do use the Oxford comma because I am weird. 

<Rant mode off.>

This weekend, I found a good use for AI. 

While working on my Pavonis Sector posts, I noticed that AI was really good at tracking characters. It told me where they were and sometimes what they were doing. It wasn’t just good, it was great. If I mixed up character names or professions, it would let me know. For example, if I wanted a medic on an away team and another back on the ship, it would warn me that Bill and Merci were in the same group or that I mixed up a name and profession. If I needed two engineers to stay on the ship, AI would remove them from the away roster. It understood that only certain crew members could engage in specific RRR activities.

When I write the Pavonis Sector sessions, I keep digital notes. The first time I blogged about Star Smuggler, I played for about 15 minutes and posted immediately, Mistakes still crept in. This time, I can run through a week’s worth of digital notes, and the AI will track characters, locations, money, inventory, etc.

This means I can be more concise and clear when writing. AI is not writing for me; the AI is just keeping track of the major items. 

I will be back with more Pavonis Sector sessions later this week.

Topical Topic

I haven't been posting regularly and tried to lead my Dungeonland review with a massive tangent on current events. I have made this its own post. 

I've mentioned my love of Disney. but I have yet to mention my wife's love of Lewis Caroll. When we first met, I pigeonholed her as a non-reader. I was very wrong, she is merely a non-book collector. I was shocked to find that she had read everything by Lewis Caroll, Poe, and T.S. Elliot plus many, many more. She reads something and disposes of the book. 

Blasphemy! How could you get rid of books you read and liked? We are still working on this issue.

This is one of those odd times where our interests collide on a topical subject and also highlights the need for patrons of this website.

How do a D&D module, Lewis Caroll, and patrons merge with current events?

AI, of course. 

I imagine that most of the people reading this site expect me to produce my own content, with my own opinions no matter how odd or off-beat they may be. It's a matter of getting a different perspective. By way of example, I did a review on dx/db. The author dropped in to say thanks, while some of my readers on social media absolutely hated this title and said so. 

Well, I engaged with both and everyone is happy. This website is a service to people of all kinds and perspectives. And I thank them for those differing views. 

Let me take a moment to thank some major backers of this website: Blackrazor, Pulp 716, and a co-worker. 

Blackrazor provided dozens of games after the house fire. Pulp 716 provided a safe haven for my family after the same. It's a wonderful place to meet up, buy THEN read comics, and relax. And my unnamed coworker provided a fabulous Macbook, which comes in handy for writing posts for These Old Games. 

My coworker hit the nail on the head when he asked, "How is that useful? What can you do with a computer too old to connect to the internet?" 

The answer to that is easy, I use it to disconnect from the internet. He didn't see the value in that until I showed him my workflow and then it all made sense. Basically, I write my text and note what sort of image I want in my post on the iBook. Then I can sneaker-net a USB drive between computers and use Blogger's integration with Photos to get the images from my phone. 

Very rarely do I type directly into the Blogger interface, usually only to change wording or kill a typo not found by Apple Works and whatnot. Today, I tried to use it for speed and ease of use. 

Yeah, wrong. 

The interface has broken down. I am experiencing a corporate AI takeover. I use Chrome and Blogger plus Grammarly. At some point, the various spell-checking options switched to highly aggressive mode. It's crazy, I can't really type anything in the standard interface without getting a mess of suggestions that make no sense.  

I've turned it all off which was about as effective as turning off Skynet was. 

On top of this, I have noticed the integration with Photos has gone off, like 6-day-old Chinese food on a soft taco shell. It could work, but I am taking chances. 

If I didn't have the refuge of my good ol' iBooks, I'd be screwed. 

(Ab)Using What You Got

I like to use random ideas. Generally, I hate spam but spam comments have caused some of my better writing to come to the forefront. In this week's version, "a better life with Spam", I'll post images of artwork based on Artificial Intelligence. 

This was a project I started a few months ago. I like the unicorn but needed to figure out where the rest of it was going. 

Queue up the spam suggesting Artificial Intelligence gets things done more efficiently. Since I was lost on this image, I didn't know how to proceed. I upload it to Deepart.io and the results are lovely. 

I've tried redoing this image in oil paint, but that seems wrong. I think I will try colored pencils, which isn't my favorite choice, but I think it could work. 

On a side note, I generally don't delete spam. Some of it is amusing, such as the guy at a consignment shop that tried to imply that his goods were magic items to tie into my 52 Weeks of Magic posts. Classic. 

Let me take a second to shout out Fat Goblin Games, 3dMakerworks.com, and Goblin Clan Miniatures. These 3d printed products came to my awareness via a spam link. They have suspended their affiliate program, but they are so nice, I can't help but suggest them for your table.  

Having said that, I have noticed an uptick with tech-themed spam which has been deleted. The problem with tech products and spam is they can do nasty stuff with your data. I will implement a policy of report and kill from here on out. If you have noticed missing comments, that is why. 

My apologies, but I can't host something dangerous. 

As always, if you have a product or website you want promoted, post a link in the comments or hit me up at Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Dice.Camp or Mastodon. I am always looking for new stuff and content for my site, I would love to do a write up on you.