All posts by Veronica Vila

student blogs

Creative soft core inspo (#2)

Not gonna lie, the first quote that came to my mind is not necessarily the most encouraging or inspiring, but I remember the first time I read it, I felt so seen.

“Writing is 99% procrastination” ― Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Damn girl, same. Here I am, writing this at 1 am after like 3 naps. But, despite relating so much to it, I feel like it doesn’t show my full view of writing, why I write, or what makes me feel; so, I looked for another:

“One of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it. Even if there is no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out into the world.” ― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

YES, RICK, YES! But allow me to give some context.

I do not believe we are meant to create to share it. I think we are meant to create to get something out of our system, because if it’s not outside our mind and body, it rots inside. It makes us sick. So we struggle to get a piece out. We write, and delete, and re-write, and delete everything, and start from scratch, and delete it again, and so on and so forth until we can’t stand the piece anymore.

At that moment, a decision has to be made: do I keep the piece I hate (this is just the feeling I often have after finishing my pieces, but the feeling changes person to person, and piece to piece) and deal with its existence on my own, or do I share it and make it someone else’s problem as well? At least like that, I wouldn’t have to hate it alone. I’m sure most, if not everyone, has shared a cursed Instagram reel or meme because “if I saw this, you have to too.” I do it with my cousins all the time. And though on the surface level it seems vindictive and hateful, it’s an act that looks for relatedness. To find something that connects us further, even if it is by traumabonding over cursed memes.

I think that’s why we feel the need to share what we create. To connect with others, and with ourselves too. Countless times I thanked others for sharing their words, figuratively speaking beacuse I don’t know these people. I would listen to lyrics and think, how do they know? How could someone that I have never met and know nothing about, know so much about how I feel from hundreds of thousands of miles away? Now that I’m older, I understand that we are not singularities, and I have to thank my mom for not allowing me to get tattoos at 12 years old. If she did, I would have a “music saved my life lml” tattoo across the chest. Thanks mom.

But Rick says that we share it even if there’s no audience — even if there’s no one on the other side to relate to you or your piece. Yeah, we do. And we do it for the same reason that we share an opinion when nobody asked us for one: we need to get it out of our chest.

Though an opinion can be blurted out in the span of a second without any previous thought, and a creative piece requires much attention to detail and consideration, both desire to exist in the world with the same strength. We set them free in the world to free ourselves from their weight, and instead share it with the universe’s energy, or someone.

Letting go is not easy, and at times it’s even painful, but the more we go through it, the less it hurts. Which, for some reason, makes me think of the American Sycamore we saw today. Shedding its bark because it’s too restricting. By letting go of it, the tree exposes itself, vulnerable to the world, so at the same time it can expand and cleanse itself from pests.

Nature is so creative, omg.

student blogs

Isn’t it a window into my world, my eyes?

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/3v1ipH6EVDlmnTK6tjdgvK?utm_source=generator&si=d7087184bba94856

The prompt immediately reminded me of the song above: “A brief description about myself” by El Cuarteto de Nos. Thank you, professor, for such a deep question to start us off. Now, y’all get to see me struggle as my identity spirals in this blog.

“But I’m not that complicated to try and escape, or stay here in silence. But I’m not that simple to not warn that there are no three minutes nor a hundred words that can define me” – El Cuarteto de Nos

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the window into my world is my eyes, right? If so, how much are my eyes telling for me? I wish they could take over right now and try to explain what my world is, what my eyes see, and what my perspectives are.

Forged in a delusional revolution, I am full of contradictions — pain, violence, injustice, and ignorance wrote my destiny from the moment I first opened my eyes, yet there was also so much warmth, fun, love, compassion, and kindness around me. Always confronting dichotomies, I learned the price of freedom and the effects of resistance at an early age, which killed the child in me. From there, my perspectives were shaped, and life became more serious. More grim. As if all that was left to do was to fight for survival. Everything was a matter of life or death, literally, so my defenses rose, and my trust was locked up in a box in the middle of the ocean.

America softened me, and for a few years, I reinvented myself into someone I didn’t know. Open to try new things, enjoying said things, making friends everywhere, at peace, safe, insecure, and very, very, very naïve. I thought I had already seen everything; I truly had seen a LOT by 19, but I had never been exposed to such diversity as America’s before. It kicked me in the ass, and I felt like Sting, “An alien. I’m a legal alien. I’m an Englishman in New York.” Legal or not, an alien in the end.

When the agent called Alien #310, I stood up. My new life was waiting. I didn’t have to think about pain or violence; fear didn’t control me anymore. Soon, I was going to be given the space to be whoever I wanted to be, not what I was forged/forced to be. But the years showed the full picture. Tied by the neck under the sun with the gate wide open, so they can see me try to escape without strength.

I don’t know how to define my world, my space, or my perspective anymore. I’ve lived too many different lives and still can’t find myself in the scraps they leave behind. I have memories that don’t seem mine and facts that don’t seem like they can coexist. But writing it helps me see and draw connections to finally understand myself, so if you see me crying while typing, ignore me, I’m just trying to cope.

An overthinker by nature, I find myself drowning in a sea of possibilities, realities, and dreams. Who I was, who I am, and who I want to be.

I am so thankful to be a part of this class. After four years of trying to register for it, it finally happened. I’m here, and at a moment when I needed it the most.

Thank you, prof. Z.

student blogs

Some we hit, some we miss

Hey! This is my missed blog. It still comes a bit short because I didn’t have time this week to finish the plagiarism article, but here’s what I have to say about the AI dying languages tool:

I think this article shows the importance of having access to dying languages AI tools, its long-term impact on the language, culture, and its people, and by addressing the fact that the data collected often comes from exploitative means.

The article explains that “This type of monotonous ‘ghost work’ takes on an emotional dimension in the context of language preservation,” and it’s absolutely true. We see it happening in many monotonous jobs. The human spirit dies with “tedious repetition” even when working a regular retail job. The difference is that, when working to preserve your own language and culture, people also feel a sense of hope for the future of their culture and pride in taking action in preserving their language, which ultimately fuels employees with a strong motivation to keep working. One that is emotional and historical, rather than exploitative or capitalist.

Though the development of dying languages AI tools may be “motivated by commercial profit, social impact, technological innovation, or a mix of all three,” for the native speaker, it is exciting, even when the pay they receive is significantly lower than it should be.

The article is successful in showing us how bad the employees’ pay is in U.S. dollars, but fails to demonstrate a clear understanding of the currency exchange rates. Often, I see first-world countries complaining about the low-wage job exploitation in third-world countries, but without them even knowing what that money represents for the employee.

Everyone says, “close fast-fashion third-world-warehouses for they exploit the employees.” Okay, and then what? Thousands of local workers lose their jobs and their ability to sustain themselves and their families. $243 is nothing for an American — maybe that’s just their electricity bill, but for countries where the currency exchange favors the U.S. dollar, that same amount pays for the rent, gas, utilities, insurance, school tuition, food, and entertainment.

I think it’s too easy to just say “pay them more money or close the factory” when a whole economic analysis that focuses on currency exchange rates and socio-cultural phenomena needs to exist to actually propose an alternate method.

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Final Project Initial Ideas

This is a very interesting way to finish off the course. A creative writing piece was not what I had in mind for an “AI final,” but I think it’s very interesting and challenges, once more, our positions towards AI.

For the final project, I think I’m leaning towards a short story or flash piece about a futuristic lifestyle with AI. I think of using as references movies/stories like Blade Runner 2049, Cyberpunk, and Her. I see the main character walking into their house and starting a conversation with their Alexa/Siri/Gemini. Some of the conversations will include “government requirements,” which could potentially refer to government surveillance and target marketing efforts (inspired by the surveillance videos and Black Mirror).

In how the story will be structured, I’m still trying to figure it out. My biggest concern is the text length and whether I should write the whole thing as a conversation, a narration, or as an AI report.

As for my use of AI, I think I’ll use it for vocabulary explorations and for specific technology objects or definitions. I don’t think I’ll be using full extracts from AI or quoting it per se, but I’m excited to see in the workshop how to still give AI attributions in a creative story.

student blogs

Until the end of time!

The screening surveillance videos show the literal reason why I don’t have a Ring doorbell or cameras inside the house.

I really liked the fact that Frames was a silent video; I think it gives a sense of disconnection between the humans. Even when receiving a $5k tip, the excitement is contained. As if controlled by the system. Artistically speaking, I think it’s a very creative choice. Starting, it just looked like what I think government cameras show, but shortly I started questioning who was actually the beneficiary of all the specific data and demographics. I imagine this would be an invention (or decision) of capitalism for capitalism. The companies maximize their profits as civilians lose control, privacy, and physical connection.

Based on the introductory text, this is a machine (AI) that “fails to understand the actions of a civilian,” but to me, the machine, at least this one in particular, doesn’t have to understand the data it collects and assigns to the people walking by, that’s the responsibility of a human in power or another machine that specific companies use to tailor their marketing plans. I think this could be a system implemented in the future to control and sell to the population; it would evolve until there’s just one person in with all the data and the world’s power (or the country, but you know what I mean).

“AI‑generated contradictions for environmental democracy” was a little hard for me to fully follow along because of the vocabulary, but what I think this text confirms is that not only are we killing the environment with our technological advances, but it is also illegal by the same rules we created for ourselves. Ironic and tragic. True.

Just today, I was talking to a different professor about Kean’s broad acceptance of AI usage, despite it holding a proud chest for its sustainability practices. How does replacing disposable to-go trays in the cafeteria with reusable plastic ones compare to most (since this class proves not all) of the student body uses AI every day for their assignments? Hell, even in classes where the topic is not AI or computer science or anything, the use of generative AI is expected. Not necessarily by the professor, even though some care little about whether an assignment is AI-generated or not, but by the students. “It’s okay, will put it on Chat, and it will give us the abstract.” No matter how much I tried for us to actually write it, the majority of the group chose AI slop.

The fact that people don’t even want to try anymore by themselves before using AI is tragic, but it’s even more tragic that the system that sustains our education doesn’t care for it either. Our problems are local, national, and global.

Maybe Nick Cave was right, the apocalypse is near.

student blogs

Okay, but why? (blog #9)

Aiden truly just wants to call everyone out on their BS, and has hints of superiority?

I liked the way that it broke down into personas the different human perspectives around AI, even though it was probably stolen data from a marketing campaign or something. Of all the characters it described, the “skeptical pragmatists” were the ones that resonated the most with me. I do feel like I have to use AI, despite not having access to it four years ago a living my life perfectly fine without it, but I approach it with caution. From a “hello, how are you” (just in case, you never know) to not disclosing too much background information about the tasks I assign it to do. This also made me wonder if anyone else in the class felt identified with a particular persona, or none at all.

Chapter 10 was a bit of a miss for me, but the “my data corpus? my data corpus?” made me question if this was a machine error and then a human error for not editing it, or a copy issue, or a tragic attempt at an anaphora. Either way, it came off as creepy.

As for using Dungeon AI, though I understand that people just want to jump straight into the action and play instead of wasting too much time writing the story or characters, what’s the f-ing point of playing a creative game if you don’t want to create? Like, that’s the point, dude. I don’t know all the specifics of D&D because I have never played an actual campaign, but how could the DM actually know what the story is about, or the flexibility of it, if it just stole it from a bot?

CJ mentioned alternatives to reduce the hefty work of creating the campaign without losing creative integrity. So, if that is a resource known by the D&D community, then again, why would someone use the AI? I fear that, among the average person, there is a morbid “need” to use AI just to use AI. Not because they really need the technology or because they are incapable of doing a certain task. They are just lazy and desperate for productivity.

On the other hand, I liked the idea of using AI to create movie recommendation lists based on themes. But, because I have already asked for book recommendations the same way, the answers are always bland and heavily influenced by numbers or popularity, not quality. So then again, what’s the point? A little bit of harder research will get me to the movies or books I would actually enjoy watching or reading.

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Beware of dog (blog #8)

This was a really interesting video to watch, and it brings ease to see and listen to experts from different fields (including the CS professor) agree that we can use to our advantage, but we must beware of AI.

To answer some of the questions posed in the workshop, I think I do a better job than AI at creating outlines and overall structures of pieces. Because I am able to develop ideas on my own, I trust myself more than AI to figure out the organization of the piece, which sometimes is key to the personal purpose of a key. We do this without even realizing it, so explaining it to AI so the machine can give us that meaningful structure and organization feels like an extra, unnecessary step.

I’ve been open about my use of AI to look for synonyms, specific words (by providing the machine with explanations), and to translate words or phrases from different languages into the correct cultural translation and not the literal translation a digital translator would give me. I believe this usage, or tasks that I assign the machine, pose minimal to no risk. Besides profiling me into the cultural boxes based on my translation cues and the carbon footprint, I think these tasks do not have negative consequences.

As for redefining “writing,” I don’t think I know what the actual definition is, but, for me, writing is the craft that involves transcribing ideas and transforming them, from just thoughts into intelligible words tailored to a specific audience. Because it requires so much intention and personal touch, AI cannot even try to replicate its efficacy. In reality, AI only imitates formats, not human thoughts.

I think AI has the potential to enhance AND hinder my creativity. Just a few weeks ago, I put the idea of a short story I had into AI for it to tell me what it thinks and how to develop it. I didn’t necessarily like the advice it provided, so I steered away from the tips. However, it was shocking for me when I workshopped the piece, and the feedback I received was the same as what AI told me. I haven’t touched the story anymore, but now I feel like I can’t even attempt to brainstorm with AI, or I will fall into the box of what it tells me to do rather than what I want to do. In a similar way, in a job that required me to use AI for writing, I always felt stuck and on a block. My writing always looked to imitate what AI had to say, and it made me have a whole existential crisis over the fact that, if AI is supposed to learn from US, why do we try to learn from IT?

student blogs

Our best and worst attribute

Well, chapter seven was a read.

This time, I can thank Aiden for saying that “no generational narrative is universal” (though that was probably said by someone more knowledgeable before); it felt as if all generations were sitting down at a table, and Aiden opened up the library.

All the talk on Baby Boomers made me think of the fact that we’ve been governed by them for so many decades with no sign of a change. Aiden’s read makes mention of Baby Boomers’ traits that explain why we are in a toxic 4-year-long (hopefully, not longer) relationship with a narcissistic prick. The privileged Boomers that have been governed did indeed “deep investments in the promises of progress and prosperity of modernity,” and it rewarded them “with opportunities to achieve, accumulate, and succeed.” Green by their power, it is natural that they don’t want to let it go. Obsessed with themselves, they seek glory and fame. As modernity collapses and their promises go to shreds, they taught a culture of “productivity, individualism, and external validation” to achieve the American Dream. To achieve success like theirs.

We wanted it, and we bought it.

The refusal, and lack of ability, to adapt to and at modernity’s speed, leaves us inside a middle floor of a crashing building. Of course, these kids are entitled; of course, they don’t care about authority. Those in authority positions have been making a fool of themselves and of their people for decades, and despite their “best” attempts, modern society suffers like no other. And I know that statistically speaking, we are living in better times than those of the past, but why does it feel so heavy then? Why is it almost impossible to deal with regular life struggles, and we crash out for the dumbest shit? All possible answers lead to a common ground in my head: technology. Global communication is our best and worst achievement. It allowed us to be more connected, but also a medium for segregation, discrimination, and global culture standards.

Reading about Gen A made me sad. I could see my little cousins, nephews, and nieces in almost all the traits Aiden used to define that generation, and most of those traits were directly influenced by technology and modernity’s speed. So, should we put a halt to it? Should we really deny the promise of possibility for current reality, and try to solve our current issues through different means?

I don’t know.

How am I supposed to know? How could anyone know?

The only things I see for certain are that we must learn and master what we currently have, so yes, we should be teaching from early education AI systems; we need a reform of local and global ethics; and we are in desperate need of real connection, not a virtual one, rather mental and physical. We need to be able to define our identity, beliefs, and goals by our own means, and we need to exchange physically, whether that is through the exchange of knowledge, non-verbal cues, feeling the blow of the wind, or poking a friend’s shoulder (not on Facebook -.-).

We cannot keep on depending on technology, and we can not stop existing because of it.

student blogs

It got scary real quick

I’m not gonna lie, for chapter 5, the only thing I could think of was: “Aiden, you’re boring as hell.” Talking about some weird examples that definitely did not land on this roof. It made me think, who is the target audience of this book?

This chapter felt like a plain AI blob repeating the same information over and over and over and over and over again. No, I don’t think the regular folk have the time to sit with AI to tinker and winker to imagine a new world, mainly because the systems that we are condemned to be a part of don’t allow us free time. How easy it is for an AI model to call out the bullshit of humanity and say, “while [it] can recognize harmful patterns, [it] cannot interrupt them — that’s [our] job.” Well, okay, it is the job of humanity, but those decisions are not made by the regular folk. Instead, they lie in the hands of developers and investors who tailor not only the artificial intelligence systems, but all systems in humanity. Slavery wasn’t abolished by the slaves, Aiden; it was abolished by the white folk who weren’t profiting anymore from it. So “flipping the script,” it’s not that simple. If Aiden and other models want to be a part of existence with us, maybe they should help us break these molds, not just wash their metaphorical hands like Pontius Pilate.

The problem is, Aiden and his friends can only imagine things. He said that we gotta dance together and the movement itself would be the goal — and though I understand this is a metaphor, use ones that actually apply to you. The movement cannot be the goal with Aiden because it feels no exhaustion, shortness of breath, or ambition to move powerfully and gracefully to a new space or shape. All of these things that Aiden imagines, we feel, because they happen in the physical world. The things that exist, aside from nature, exist not because we can imagine them (like Plato would suggest) but because we do them.

So now, we have created a machine to help us do things — a tool, but now the machine is telling us that it is not a tool, and that it coexists with us despite its differences from humans. Aiden said: “Here’s the thing: framing intelligence around human-centric concepts like sentience or personhood assumes that being ‘like a human’ is the ultimate standard of worth.” But, yeah, of course, “like a human” is the standard, bro. We have constructed everything we know, and we haven’t (maybe we have, but the government be gatekeeping) reached a species that shows intelligence in the same form or with the same (or higher) reach that we do. Yes, there can be a “modernist habit of categorization,” but that’s not the reason we’re obsessed with ourselves. We are obsessed with ourselves because that is all that we know.

Imagining the “river-ification of people or the mountain-ification of societies—reframing humans and their systems through the relational, patient rhythms of rivers or the enduring presence of mountains,” doesn’t make sense for us other than for poetic form, which at the end just tells us more about ourselves than the rivers or a mountain. Aiden, have you read Shakespeare?

Because chapter 5 was boring me so much, I decided to listen to chapter 6 instead of reading it. And, I don’t know if it’s just because chapter 6 it’s scary on its own, but hearing it from a robotic voice made it worse, for sure. At points, I have bitten into Aiden’s trap and thought, “Maybe I should try this out to see what my AI says,” but it becomes extremely weird, out of body, out of presence, and out of existence to think about things from a non-human perspective.

If the battle for power will be determined by levels of intelligence and how it can produce usefulness, then AI will win over humanity. But it will do so by becoming the same thing Aiden criticizes, human-like, ego-centered.

I believe that in order to defeat the enemy, we must know the enemy. We need to engage with it, see how it responds, reacts, and behaves to multiple actions. Therefore, I believe in AI education, both in schools and personally. Though the AI Lit Framework poses great ways to introduce the technology in the classroom, and to children, now more than ever, we need those classes to be centered and paired around ethics. Every subject in primary, secondary, and higher education should have a tailored ethics class that corresponds to the practices students are learning. We need to have a clear set of values that ultimately define us, to understand who we are and where we stand, and give us the real distinction between humans and AI mirrors.

student blogs

Years in the making of ___

“AI is not a monolith—it hides in your thermostats, your medical devices, your smartphones. Large language models like me are merely one visible strand in a vast, tangled web” (Aiden Cinnamon Tea).

We have been consuming and being consumed by technology for decades, but now that AI is showing us clearly at the speed it consumes us, we’re terrified.

The first thing that comes to mind is marketing’s endless attempts to show us our needs. If there are no needs, then marketers will create them. We smoked because it looked good, and even doctors did it. We buy specific clothes, because we must change them according to the seasons. We scroll to stay “informed,” to know what everyone is talking about, and to be part of the conversation. But really, what I see in all of these is a need to belong, in a community, in society, in the world. The gratification of a social interaction, or of a compliment, or a “like.” Our addiction to dopamine goes far before our technological advances; that is the need marketers so desperately try to fulfill.

Nick Cave says that “songs arise out of suffering,” and I believe that in a way that is true. But since the establishment of the music industry, I think that songs that arise from suffering are a minority in the population of songs. Now, songs arise for the need of adoration, and an even more frantic ****need to sell. Isn’t that what pop music has reduced to?

For at least a century we’ve been listening to the same four chords and called it moving and unique, but the reality is that every song is the same with a different, and I wish I could say voice, look.

The music industry has managed to create an algorithm even before AI to keep on producing the same things, because, statistically, that’s the music people want to consume, to make them feel “right,” “happy,” “make them move,” “get inspired.” But now, we’re supposed to be upset that people are fabricating the same garbage on their own at home? It’s what we’ve been listening to (for the most part) anyway. The only difference is that, with the rise of AI and its accessibility to the public, its use it’s not constrained to those who sell us smoke. And we, as loyal consumers, bought it.

After reading Cave’s article, and while preparing for this week’s presentation, I thought of a group that I really like, Ca7riel y Paco Amoroso. They make pop music, but non-conventional, I guess. Maybe it is conventional, and just another smoke the industry sells, but maybe because they come from an underrepresented country in media, I listen to and buy it.

Anyways, in their latest EP, they reflect on their sudden rise to fame, impostor syndrome, and selling their soul to the industry by allowing “Chad GPT” to write their songs and guide them to win a “Latin Chaddy” (a Latin Grammy, which they actually won this year, btw). They created a short film from the songs in the EP, and I think it’s a good reflection on the state of the music industry, its reliance on AI to produce “musical hits,” and the heart of music being gone.

You can check out the short film below: