Holy shit, I cannot believe that we are at a full two months of daily blog posts! Honestly, what have I done haha? Just kidding, I'm definitely enjoying writing daily as it gives me purpose and something extra to add to my to-do list!
Kia Ora! Happy Monday blog friendos and fam! Melbourne weather today is kinda warm outside, but not too warm. I would say that this is just right for me. I feel like I haven't achieved much today and should be doing more but I'm also trying to allow myself to rest and recover but that's not going well either. Anyway, this morning I was planning on waking up super early when Luke got up for work (like 6am) BUT I had one of the worst nights of sleep. I think I woke up almost every hour and I was so tired, I went to sleep pretty early too (like 10pm I think) but I did wake up because my nose was blocked and bleeding a little, then had a weird dream where I was in a reality TV show - I don't remember much more about the dream but I'm going to google it now and see what it means.
Okay okay so after googling it, I kinda relate. So the meaning of a dream where you are in a reality TV show means that you need to grow as a person (so I guess that's true - I'm always trying to grow and evolve to better myself). But yeah, after the dream, I woke up a lot. I remember looking at the time at 12am, 2am, 3am, 4am, and 5am and so when the alarms started to go off, I just struggled to get up. I did manage to get some sleep until about 7:30am but then I got a notification that a package was coming (that I had to sign for) so I quickly got dressed and ready for that to come. The package came just after 8am and was one of my new lenses (a wide-angle 14mm lens) so I am excited to try that out soon! After this, I didn't want to rush getting into the shower or anything so I chucked on some YouTube and made myself breakfast and a coffee, and then the IBS pains started and the attacks started (you can argue that it's the coffee but I never have more than 1 a day and haven't had this bad attacks prior to the meds I am on now). I finally felt okay enough to have a shower, so I did that and decided to play around with some of my tech like setting up one of my microphones and formatting all my SD cards. I also started doing my Christmas shopping and managed a really small walk outside. Although it looked like some high school kids had had exams as they were outside around 1pm waiting for the bus and I don't know if it's just me, but high school kids are terrifying - probably the scariest types of people out there. Like I don't think I was that scary in high school? But when they're hanging around your front yard, what do you do? I just waited for them to get on the bus before I came back from my walk and thankfully, they'd gone by the time I came back. But they don't move out of your way or say sorry if they accidentally push you. I don't know if it's a post-pandemic thing or an Australia thing or what. I mean, we went through earthquakes during high school and I think we were still nice to strangers HAHA?
After my walk, I tried to tidy a bit of the kitchen but just felt a bit sore again so took my iron and B12 with a smoothie to see if that helped me for the rest of the day and I was starting to think that I might be okay for a little workout today but nope, I had to get my wheat bag to help with the tummyache and then sit down because of the nausea so now I'm just chilling at my laptop watching the world go by out the window and writing my blog, not feeling so great either BUT I digress because I have at least achieved a few things today, as mentioned above so that's a positive. I've also decided on Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner and there's plenty of things for dessert (plus we still have a whole bunch of cheese and crackers left from the other night) and starting Christmas shopping early can't be a bad thing. NZ homies - presents will come to you next time I come to NZ (I'm sorry if that makes me cheap or what, but it's probably the most cost-effective way to do it). Please don't send me anything either, I don't need it (Luke gets me enough presents hahaha jk jk). I've also spent some of the afternoon playing around on Canva, which I've been quite slack at lately. I think because I can't stare at a screen for too long but it's definitely something I want to put more time and effort into. I also want to play around more with the AI features because they're pretty interesting (as I've mentioned in previous blogs). And with that being said, I thought we'd take a look at the most recent AI news! I've taken most of these from "AI news".
On the 6th November 2023, Ryan Daws wrote an article about the leak of GPT-4, a custom chatbot creator said to have more capabilities than what we know as "Chat-GPT" today. Some of the enhancements include data analysis and web browsing (gosh are humans ever going to be able to work again LOL?) You can read the "linked" X post about what is rumoured to be in the next upgrade. I understand some of it but I think the users' post is best read directly rather than paraphrasing here.
Ryan Daws also wrote an article on how U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an executive order to ensure AI development is being done so in a responsible way. To me, this shows that Biden is willing to help AI and keep people safe at the same time. Although the next few articles I plan on sharing are a bit scarier.
According to David Gilbert (Nov 9th, 2023), from "Wired", violent extremist groups are exploiting generative AI tools. I can't find any solid proof or an example but the article discusses that people are worried that image manipulation is going to be used heavily by extremist groups for things like manipulation and images specifically designed to change the narrative of what Big Tech companies track from these groups (or the government, I'm not 100% sure who is doing the tracking) but basically extremist groups and posts online are heavily monitored to help stop terrorist attacks happening BUT now they have more power through AI and image manipulation. That stuff is pretty scary.
One last article that I want to touch on today is "this one" - an article written by Sydney Journalist Kate Hennessy who put Chat-GPT's travel itinerary to the test. Like Kate, this was the first negative article or post I've seen online about travel with Chat-GPT. I've seen heaps of influencers (including micro-ones), use this to create their own itineraries but after reading what Kate experimented with in just one day, it's really sad that a bloody AI (so not even a human) can be racist. You will need to read Kate's article for the full effect but this quote really stuck with me -
"I don’t want to even dabble in information that casually swirls intelligence with undisclosed ignorance, especially one that doesn’t provide sources. Is that not how we become inured to the contours of misinformation; to shrug it off as “everywhere”? Maintaining faith in credible sources is just as important as maintaining cynicism in dubious one." - Kate Hennesy (2023).
Seriously if you're going to do anything, read that last article, stuff like that is so important to learn about.
Anyway, for today's question, I thought we could do something a little different and stick with the AI theme. I want you to generate an AI piece of art and post it below. I'll use Canva for my one! But there's heaps of free tools out there and I want you to make sure you generate text for it and then create a brand new image - no Google searching for this one (unless there's something really funny that you know I'd like).
The first thing I put into Canva AI image generator is "dreamy" as the style and then "A gorgeous rainbow pastel filled milkyway that also has witchy cottage core vibes." Here's what it came up with:
I think this one is pretty cute. Let's try another one!
For the next one, I put in "photo" style and text "An epic sunrise with pink and purple tones on a sandy beach with a unicorn and some rabbits playing in grass" and honestly, some of the images were too scary to post (like something out of a nightmare - but there's two I can post that haven't quite hit the mark yet)
I mean these ones are kinda yikes so the other two were even more yikes!
I think I'll do one more for today and then leave the AI gods alone LOL. Is AI going to become the new religion? That would not surprise me.
For my last AI-generated image, I left the style blank and just picked one of Canva's examples to try so this one was "A panda eating bamboo in a tropical forest" - I was not expecting it to be animated but this one is very cute and I'd probably pay for this type of art OR it would make a really good cartoon.
Anyway, what did ya'll think of these AI-generated images? Let me know and don't forget to post your own in the comments below.
See ya later alligator!
Much love,
Ash xx
The panda is cute but the others look a bit uncanny valley