Zeitgeist!

                                                       Example: Woodstock was part of the zeitgeist of the 1960s!

According to the (zeitgeist/characteristics/happenings) of our specific time—2023—academic benchmarks of AI artificial intelligence systems will bolster deep learning. Yikes!

There is a tiny sense of optimism hovering around my brain. Am I capable of understanding AI and its many ramifications? I picture my brain busily computing, inserting, plus a whole lot of deleting as I digest the ideas that all these really, really smart people want me to fall for.

And I also really, really want to. So therefore, I have high hopes that if you are reading this you’ll join me and help me to understand.

One such avenue to travel on is the use of bots, short for robots. To me, a bot is a representative of an entity— it is not tangible or human. It is computer generated. Give it instructions and it does what it is told to do, a soldier following orders simulating human activity.

A BORG IS A HALF HUMAN & HALF BOT (for all you STAR TREKKIES)

“Software bots are simple or complex programs designed to do specific actions. They are designed to perform repetitive tasks and reduce human effort. (A chatbot example is Siri).”                                                                                                             

CROWD OF BOTS WAITING FOR ORDERS FROM A HUMAN BRAIN

Now for the latest biggie! A company titled Open AI created the ChatGPT-4 engine in March 2023 with its updated ability to write humanlike text and code. There are a multitude of other programs in this AI engine, but right now we are about to explore and compare its writing talents.



The following selection includes text of paragraphs and slide pictures taken from my Power Point lecture on SURREALISM. This is an exceptionally challenging topic for even the most experienced design historian to explore during a lecture.  The pictures, in this case, help provide imagery and color to the story.  Let’s take a look at a piece of my presentation material and we will then compare using AI (ChatGPT-4)  presenting the same information.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Surrealism was fueled by the lions share of some wonderfully outlandish artists. Please meet two of the early Surrealists: Apollinaire was the forefather of Surrealism and a poet, playwrite, novelist, short story writer. His life was cut short from WWI wounds and he died shortly before the Armistice in 1918 at age 38.

A key figure of Surrealism was the French writer André Breton, who published the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Breton was interested in exploring the potential of the subconscious mind to create new forms of artistic expression. He believed that the irrational and the unconscious held the key to unlocking the mysteries of the human psyche.

In WWI, Breton worked in psychiatric hospitals with soldiers. He focused on the work of Sigmund Freud to help alleviate the traumatic episodes experienced from that war. His doctrine pushed artists to bypass reason and rationality. The heart and soul of this group was to get attention using concepts of their unconscious dreams and thoughts, plus utter nonsense.

Andre Breton, last row final figure. Salvadore Dali, second figure, 1st row.


The above photos and writing are from a small window of my 45 to 50 minute lecture. In order to present Surrealism, I used multiple resources such as living at the University library, haunting used and new bookstore and collecting mini libraries of books that I still treasure today. I loved research and I am still impatient to know more. Too bad,  [winks] you will miss all my clever anecdotal stories.  

Following,  we have a computer bot writing an opening lecture for our subject.Let’s see what a computer bot can do.        Here is AI writing on the same topic – please notice how it automatically grabbed some of the same colorful characters.  

My question to AI chatGPT-4: “Explain early proponents of Surrealism” It’s reply:

Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that emerged in the early 1920s, and its early proponents were a group of artists and writers who were interested in exploring the realm of the unconscious mind, dreams, and the irrational. These individuals sought to create a new form of art that would challenge traditional ways of thinking and break free from the constraints of rationality and logic.

One of the key figures of Surrealism was the French writer André Breton, who published the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Breton was interested in exploring the potential of the subconscious mind to create new forms of artistic expression, and he believed that the irrational and the unconscious held the key to unlocking the mysteries of the human psyche.

Other early proponents of Surrealism included Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Joan Miró, all of whom were artists who embraced the movement’s emphasis on the power of the subconscious mind to create art that was imaginative, dreamlike, and often strange and unsettling.

Together, these early Surrealists sought to create a new kind of art that would challenge conventional modes of thought and expression, and explore the full range of human experience, from the mundane to the fantastical. They believed that by tapping into the power of the subconscious mind, they could create a new kind of art that was both deeply personal and universal in its appeal, and that would help to shape the artistic and cultural landscape of the 20th century.

The above explanation from the bot is spot-on and would truly have saved many months of research years ago. It does not cover the original inspiration for Surrealism, Apollinaire, but I do think it is a viable research tool covering pertinent info—————as long as you do not claim it verbatim as your own writing! That would be plagiarism/cheating!  Not worth it!  Go with your own human brain, spotlight and use your computer brain and remember,

It’s the Zeitgeist of the times!


Sy’s Salient Points:

Chatbot GPT-4 from the company Open AI is easy to use and I felt I was communicating with a live person.

I sent a comment/compliment to the company—”Excellent coverage. ” The machine spontaneously  answered,

“Thank you.”

I felt like we were buddies working together, My Machine & Me.

“How great is that!”

 

  Happy Easter Darling Blaire!