05-23-2026
It is no secret that AI has assisted in the design of this website, and for the most part it fit within the spirit of the site due to the fact that once the information was gathered and things were generated, I owned it. Ownership has always been a big aspect of what I do. There is a cost, however, to using it to quickly get things designed and deployed: the lack of actual skills, learning, and knowledge.
There is a lot of practical knowledge I already have, and I never consult AI for things such as: setting up a reverse proxy, installing an Operating System, deploying a server, deploying docker containers, etc. But I've used AI to help with code and HTML. I do not actually have alot of experience using AI beyond just this. This ends today regardless.
From now on, any edits and changes to my website I make I will go and learn the right way to do so before I build it. This is about gaining the skills so that I can be truly independent. If I were to continue to use AI and then it became unavailable, I would be unable to replicate some of my work in a meaningful sense. This makes it no better than just googling everytime I do something instead of actually learning it.
Then, there is environmental and moral side of the problem: polution and supporting big business. I have a very big problem with lining the pockets of greedy technology oligarchs, as they are responsible for the attestation-based practices that are slowly killing the internet, preventing freedom and privacy on our devices, and locking down features that were common place 10 years ago. These corporations are also building datacenters at an expedited rate, for no gain over the quality of the AI itself. AI has a maximum potential it can reach through training. The reason is because with every generation it is trained it will take in less and less human content and more content created by other models. AI also occasionally hallucinates and creates false narratives, gives facts that don't exist and then publishes those false facts to make them seem legitimate. This means these datacenters are only being built so that independent entities and corporations can have their "own" model, instead of making one big "good" model, which would take significantly less resources. This is killing the environment and wasting resources and killing jobs. I want to support this as little as possible.
I recently have been working on a project to release a tape cassette bootleg (blessed by the artist for me to do so) in a music community I am active in. I recruited a friend to help me do the tape sleeve, while I was going to handle the boxset, and included goodies, and mastering of the cassettes. The artwork they provided me was partially AI assisted and generated. When this was shared with my community there was immediate reaction politely letting me know that any amount of AI would not fly in most places due to the fact we are big on DIY practices and making things from scratch. It was a lapse in judgement on my part, but since it was a draft I immediately recanted and shared an earlier version that was fully DIY that I made to much better sentiment. It goes to show the most important part of art and AI: What makes good art is the HUMAN experience. The worst human art automatically outclasses anything AI can create due to the fact that AI has never had a lived experience.
This is why I will not be using AI going forward and will press on with the knowledge that I have to create things that are actually real, and compelling. If my website looks a little less polished going forward, or my code is a little more buggy going forward, then that just makes it real, human, and something that I can be proud of.