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23 Words from ChatGPT

Sally5 Comments

Warning: I’m going to go way over my limit today.

I was going to cheat by asking ChatGPT to give me a profound quote of 23 words. What it gave me was 13 words and they weren’t terribly profound. I shouldn’t have been surprised — I mean, it’s not a person. What does artificial intelligence know about profundity? I thought that it would at least be able to count.

My oldest daughter had introduced me to ChatGPT on our road trip. For her work, it can be invaluable. It can summarize sections of Medicare policy that would take her hours to review. I played around with it and asked it about some local historical research I had been working on and it was less than helpful.

Over and over this evening I asked for 23 words. Not a single 23 word anything.

When I asked for funny, they were funny. Here are some of the best ones (word count in parentheses):

  • Yesterday I saw a guy spill all his Scrabble letters on the road. I asked him, ‘What’s the word on the street? (22)
  • I used to play piano by ear, but now I use my hands. (13)
  • Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. (10)
  • Did you hear about the kidnapping at the playground? They woke up. (12)
  • “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.” – Groucho Marx. (12)
  • Whenever I try to eat healthy, a chocolate bar looks at me and Snickers. (14)
  • Parallel lines have so much in common. It’s a shame they’ll never meet. (13)

Finally, I asked it to count the words in a sentence. It couldn’t.

Here are two screen shots to illustrate my point

So I asked to show me how it arrived at 23 words in one of the sentences it had given me:

Does this make sense to you?

Travel

As I was going…

Sally7 Comments

As I was going to Virginny, I met a Mat who was quite skinny.
Upon each hand, he wore a mitt.
Upon each mitt, a mot* was writ.
Within each mot, there was a mutt.
Inside each mitt, a hand was put.
Met. Mat. Mitt-mot-mutt.
This may mean something; I know not what.

*My new word for the day — MOT (pronounced ˈmō ). It’s short for “Bon Mot” or a pithy saying.

Here’s a mot with a mutt in it:

A mutt is couture-it’s the only one like it in the world, made especially for you.

Isaac Mizrahi

I’m a little punchy after a long day of driving yesterday. I worked 5am – 11 am, then left my house a little after noon to drive to youngest-daughter’s college where I was meeting up with oldest-daughter who was driving with me to visit middle-daughter. Got that?

I think the sun was out when I left home. After collecting daughter #1, we drove off in the snow. “Winter Advisory” signs flashed at us all along I-81.

And I had opted to drive first. Ugh.

It was slushy sloppy slippery slow driving for about 4 hours. Shortly after she took over driving, the weather and the road cleared.

I dozed.

A lot.

We didn’t meet a single Mat, skinny or otherwise. (Side note: I really do know a Mat with one “t”) No mitts, no mots, no mutts. But that was the prompt given for Stream of Consciousness Saturday: mat/met/mitt/mot/mutt.

All I could think about was going to St. Ives.

For those of you not familiar with the St. Ives riddle, here it is:

Blather · collage

The Obliviousness of Tigger

Sally8 Comments

The other day I was trying to explain to someone my artistic process. It was an odd conversation from the get-go because I don’t consider myself an artist and I don’t know what my process is.

“The collages happen,” I said. “I start cutting out pictures not really knowing what the final piece will be. Somewhere along the line, it takes a turn and I’m looking for specifics. For backgrounds or animals or people. It’s like shopping for a gift for someone you love; I know it when I see it.”

Today the Stream of Consciousness writing prompt is “wild animal.” I knew immediately what wild animal I wanted to do — a tiger. I had been to the zoo a few weeks ago with my granddaughter. The tiger there fascinated me.

It was so beautiful and huge and sad, pacing back and forth along the fence at the far side of its enclosure. Padding, padding, padding, down and back, its huge paws silent and powerful.

I read the explanation at the zoo about how tigers are losing their natural habitats to human expansion. According to the World Wildlife Fund, they have lost 95% of their historical range. They are also poached and their body parts traded.

We “save” them by putting them in zoos.

So tigers — for a collage. I cut out half a dozen of them last night, then sat down this morning to create my collage.

My favorite tiger didn’t make the cut.

I mean — he made the cut from the book, a beat-up scribbled in copy of Where is Christopher? by Anne Lawrence. He didn’t make the cut for the collage. Tigger, however, did.

Oblivious Tigger. Goofy smile. Happy-go-lucky. Oh, the wonderful thing about Tiggers, right?

I think his obliviousness is less about the danger from the tiger and more about the greater plight of the tiger, don’t you think?

It would be so easy to extrapolate this to humans. We are oblivious to the plights of our fellow human beings.

It would be so easy to jump on a soapbox about this, but I will be the first to admit my own obliviousness and my ignorance.

It feels like too much for me to take on.

I will pad back and forth in my enclosure.

And pray.

Lord, help me to see.