Grave of the Fireflies

Everyone should watch it once and then never again.

I think what's about to happen will be similar to the rise of recorded music. There are still musicians, but prior to recorded music being truly accessible being a musician was a much more viable career option since people wanted music in many places, and the only option was live music. As a result, recorded music eventually eroded the profession to the point that being a musician is only a viable career for a fraction of the people it would be if recorded music didn't exist. That being said, the recorded music industry also created a lot of jobs that wouldn't exist without it, so some balancing took place, but when it rose in the first place it was quite disruptive.

I think AI is going to destroy the market for the lowest tier of art and writing. General copy about mundane and soulless things won't need an army of human writers. It will need an AI of sufficient ability to sift through a database and regurgitate information for the task at hand.

What it won't have is the human experience. I'm as impressed as anyone at what it CAN do, but I can see quite clearly what it can't. I'm attending a conference for my industry and one of the presentations was on the place AI has in our line of work. He used chatGPT as an example and asked it to write his wife a letter apologizing for missing their wedding anniversary because he had to attend said conference.

I can honestly say it would be hard to tell that it was written by AI, but what was clear is that it was trite and clichéd. There was no indication of a shared history, of affection or a deep relationship. It was well constructed with no style. It was exactly like someone else doing your homework without knowing anything about you, your style or personality.

So to sum up, I think we're going to see some serious shake-up in multiple sectors of art and writing, but it will be a long time coming before we see anything like truly insightful and original ideas being wholly constructed by an AI.

I have a job that includes a lot of travel. It's paid travel time, not commute, but I use audiobooks to soak up that time because it allows me to enjoy many more books than I could otherwise. However, I can't stand listening to an audiobook if I'm not doing anything else so I still read physical or ebooks a lot.

I've been enjoying Sanderson's work since he was published but oh boy is the Fandom approaching an insane fever pitch.

I'm a Sanderson fan and I loved Licanius. I also think Stormlight Archives are probably the most difficult of his books to power through. There's considerable character development and lots of back in time sections to establish the issues the characters have. If I was to give anyone advice on reading Sanderson now it would be to read a Stormlight book then do a palatte cleanser with a different one of his books or something else entirely. I enjoy Sanderson in the same way I enjoy the MCU, it's fun, well put together, can be moving but it's NOT trying to be something highbrow, it's accessible, relatable and fun. But maybe not for everyone.