Her......and him

The Artist

Her perspective on things

Drawn, literally, from studies

As student

As teacher

And from her own inspiration

People's faces mainly

Backed by textures, colors, lines

Backed by a practiced hand

But works unsigned

Why?

Customary for artists?

Until the work changes hands?

And what about titles?

The bearded man - his name?

The lady who visited Yosemite - her purpose?

Is there more about them?

The boy in the collage - the effect

Seriously... seriously good

The self-portrait... somber, colorless

Yet telling of wisdom

Telling of a life

Lived full

The attributes she pursues

In herself and others

In all these, "... something good and true."

Something "... authentic."

Will there be a posthumous 

"Artist Unknown?"

That captions these fine works

I hope not.

Bot?! I Think Not...

I was invited (thanks again Quilldog) to do a short story about bots and how they relate to marketing, content and leader development and include the “seedier side.” In a page or so no less. My knee jerk (yeah, this happens a lot) reaction was; if I was just slightly thorough, I could write an opus on each of those elements. It would just take a little research into the tons of articles and stories that circulate today. So, I won’t. Instead, I’m going to plumb the seedy side a little.  Just with some recent experience with bots (maybe) and some, not so wild speculation on how they might be used for AGI.

First, a couple of the many definitions out there on both topics so we are sort of on the same page with this: 

A bot -- short for robot and also called an internet bot -- is a computer program that operates as an agent for a user or other program or to simulate a human activity. Bots are normally used to automate certain tasks, meaning they can run without specific instructions from humans. 

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a form of AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks and domains. Here is a link to a good, straight forward article on what AI is and what its current applications are: https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/artificial-intelligence-tutorial/artificial-intelligence-applications

Now, I will share a little recent personal experience that may include some of both, you know, some probable bot stuff and then some imaginary but possible AGI stuff.

In the past 90 days, Bots in Singapore have apparently cruised my blog stories almost 7,000 times.  That represents about 10% of the near 7,000 hits on my “Travel On" stories since I began posting them in 2008.  Lately I have been working on that very blog, along with my other Harley Davidson (25k+ hits) blog to produce a blockbuster memoir tentatively titled; “Hayseed.”  As soon as it hits the NYT bestseller list, I plan to option film rights to Clint Eastwood who I assume will want to assign the other Tom…Cruise that is, to play lead. As evidence, here is a little pie chart from my “Travel On” blog showing reads for the past three months.

This is what I have gathered from that event.  Those little bastard bots are being used to collect and collate information for generative AI. This will quickly turn each of my 600+ stories for “Hayseed” into bestsellers in and of themselves without benefit of further human touch.  Watch for them under the highly suspicious nom de plume; Abbot Miyagi.    

The Singaporean bots, from what I understand, are quicker than I can key in the word “bot.”  Yes, sad but true.  That means by the time I publish “Hayseed” the country of Singapore will be able to sue me for printing my own words.  

In fact, consider that generative AI may very well be keying in these words right now.  Nah, just pulling your chain…or am I?