Salman Ansari
@salmanscribbles
embracing my inner polymath — writing, drawing, coding, playing
Salman Ansari
salman.io
Writer Alejandro Heredia on making art in a world that profits off our time – The Creative Independent
Alejandro Herediathecreativeindependent.com
The first moment where I realized that art and writing has a place in community organizing was during a city council hearing with people in power. It was about the rezoning of Jerome Avenue which would change the landscape of one of the longest streets in the Bronx. During that hearing, I went up there and I read a poem. I hadn’t planned to read that poem. I just decided at the last minute to do it and I saw how much that shifted the room. I wasn’t saying anything that other people weren’t saying. [The poem] encapsulated the feeling, the frustration, the anger and the pride in being someone from the Bronx. It really moved people.
on juggling multiple projects:
it was actually the first time in my life where I’d really consciously been working on two projects. There’s sort of a nice procrastination effect; one of them is always easier than the other, so there’s always something to do.
—A Kendra Greene
Living a multi-pursuit life has kinda been my thing for a while. But I’m alwa
... See moreWriter and illustrator A. Kendra Greene on becoming an artist by listening – The Creative Independent
A. Kendra Greenethecreativeindependent.com
A poet asked me to illustrate a book, and I realized I don’t think I’m an illustrator—I think I’m a bookmaker.
I can relate. Since illustrating my own book, I’ve spent a lot more time drawing, and this has brought up opportunities to illustrate other peoples’ books. But it just didn’t feel right. I want to tell stories, and often they come to me in words as well as drawings, and I like to show both. I think that makes me more of a multimedia storyteller, than what we might think of as an illustrator.
Noam Chomsky Speaks on What ChatGPT Is Really Good For
chomsky.infoAs I understand them, the founders of AI–Alan Turing, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky, and others–regarded it as science, part of the then-emerging cognitive sciences, making use of new technologies and discoveries in the mathematical theory of computation to advance understanding. Over the years those concerns have faded and have largely been displaced by an engineering orientation. The earlier concerns are now commonly dismissed, sometimes condescendingly, as GOFAI–good old-fashioned AI.
I have been stuck. Every time I sit down to write a blog post, code a feature, or start a project, I come to the same realization: in the context of AI, what I’m doing is a waste of time. It’s horrifying. The fun has been sucked out of the process of creation because nothing I make organically can compete with what AI already produces—or soon will. All of my original thoughts feel like early drafts of better, more complete thoughts that simply haven’t yet formed inside an LLM.
I empathize with the author. But it also reinforces a feeling I’ve had lately: One must live in order to write, to have something to say. If you are going out into the world, changing things, changing yourself, then ideas come to you and you can channel them. But the channeling and expression in digital essay writing shouldn’t be the majority, it should be just one piece of a big puzzle.
If writing and thinking about writing is your life, then yes, AI can replace it. But you can become “unLLMable” by having a rich life that you want to live. Out in the real world. Let AI accelerate the expression a bit, if you want. Or don’t. But protect, foster and grow the most important part: human experience.