Why the hell am I trying to get back into writing when ChatGPT just got announced

…and other questions I ask myself in trying to get this blog Up And Running.

I studied mathematics in college, which followed a rigorous high school math education, and even participation in math competitions (solo and group!) To me, math describes the elegant nature of our reality, one knows they have correctly solved a mathematical proof when the answer has a simplistic beauty to it. Beauty is isomorphic to truth.

Imagine my chagrin, then, to realize that a career in mathematics was not going to be financially feasible. Computer programming was the closest viable option, relative to where I was living at the time. The mental transition from mathematics to programing was painful for me; to switch from elegant proofs to raw brute-force. Change your thought patterns to suite the machine.

I am reminded of this, now, with the advent of ChatGPT and general AI tools to automate creative practice. Don’t bother with the hassle of writing an essay out yourself, simply suggest to the machine how you would like to output to appear. We already have job reqs for “prompt engineers,” and anyone who has taken AI tooling seriously has learned the linguistic tricks that result in the most compelling outputs.

I haven’t written regularly since college, but I’ve been trying to get back into it with this blogging project. Part of me wonders if it would be a better use of time to get Real Good with AI but I am wagering it will still benefit me long-term to shore up my writing skills again. To borrow from the karate kid, these posts are me painting the fence.

Wax on, wax off.