Are you There Bots? Its Me, Lisa

Funny story, I haven’t actually read the book this blog title is based on, so if you are looking for a blog about (*googles book title*) an 11 year old girl navigating through the anxieties of life… this isn’t the one. This blog is about AI, and specifically the AI bots that scrap the internet for any and all information to make them smarter. 

I would like to think that my blog, my life and my general winning personality is worthy of everyone’s attention and that once known, this little corner of the internet would gain popularity and notoriety as an authentic voice of an everyday woman. But I am also a realist and know that the odds of that happening are about the same as owning a two headed pink giraffe for a pet. 

For example, a normal blog post will typically gather approximately 15 views over its lifetime. A big thank you to those that check in on my life regularly. The highest view count I have ever gotten was close to 100 when a post about Anjulee’s wedding (and my award winning bridesmaid speech) was shared by Anjulee on her Facebook page (back when that was a thing). 

So imagine my surprise when I recently checked and saw that each and every post (and I am referring to all 600 plus posts starting back in 2007) now have over 50 views each and the average is closer to 100. Unfortunately there is only one probable answer. The bots have arrived. 

For those that might not be entirely familiar with how AI works, the AI model (let’s use ChatGPT as the example) gets trained on data to understand a question asked, figure out how to answer inquiries and create new things, such as new poems, stories, or the perfect trip itinerary.  The more data it has the better the model becomes, so when I say data, I mean all of it.  These models have ingested every morsel of information on the internet including this little blog to help make them smarter. If something has been posted on the internet, an AI bot has seen it, reviewed it, memorized it and leveraged it for its own purposes (idyllic and nefarious alike).  

I had known this was a thing for a while but I guess I didn’t realize how widespread it was and how often this would happen. AI Bots are devouring the world’s creativity and ravaging what makes each of us unique to, in theory, become creative on their own.  

I feel dirty and used and violated. I feel like my blog and, therefore I in turn, have been covered by a massive swarm of army ants and they are consuming me and my writing blindly, and without consideration. 

And so comes the dilemma: do I continue to write this blog, something I love to do and find join in the process. In fact, this blog is the only thing I have consistently done over the nearly 20 years.  This blog is also the best reference point I have to let me know what I did last week, remind me of the details of a certain vacation or confirm when an event in our life actually happened… it has become my external memory drive.  

Or do I stop or take a break until this whole AI thing has time to settle or burst. 

And I do appreciate that my blog is not the linchpin holding the technology together and without my witty, insightful ruminations the whole industry will collapse. But this could be my own silent protest to how things are changing and how the use of people’s own thoughts and feelings are allowing technology to mimic the human voice and emotions. 

To be determined, so stay tuned! 

A Five Minute Catch Up

How is it November?! It was just the first day of school! And to be clear I am not complaining at all. I am ready for the holidays. 

Here are a few quick blurbs to get us caught up and to keep the history books accurate: 

We rounded out the Summer of Wine Country (no joke, it felt like I was in Sonoma, Healdsburg, Napa, etc every other weekend for the past few months) with Aaron and Scott’s wedding in SLO. The wedding (hosted in a beautiful winery in Paso) was pure joy, with laughter, tears and some incredible movie and song references sprinkled throughout the ceremony and subsequent toasts. 

I had a weekend with Alva in the city where we ate sushi, enjoyed brunch, went to the zoo, played games at Arcade1 and cuddled with older foster dogs at Muttville. With Martin and Oskar away on a bike trip, Alva and I navigated the city using only muni and had a great time crisscrossing the entire 7 x 7 with our fellow residents and tourists alike.

Aussie Ryan and his two beautiful teenage daughters Skye and Asher came and stayed with us for a few nights at the end of their two week Californian adventure.  I warned them that my kids might be shy at the start but would soon become their shadows… Alva and Oskar went instant spider monkey within five minutes of meeting their extended Aussie family.  And both kids refused to let them leave on Saturday morning.

The kids set up their lemonade/limeade stand again this year on the Sunday of Fleet Week. They captured both the foot traffic (from people walking through the neighborhood for fleet week or the Italian heritage parade) and the car traffic (due to street closures thanks to the parade there were bumper to bumper cars stuck at our stop sign creating instant demand). 

Martin took the kids on a one night bike camping trip in the Marin headlands during their Fall Break. 

We celebrated Martin’s 50th birthday with a BBQ and friends at the Bicentennial Picnic area in the Marin headlands. 

We enjoyed a few lazy weekend mornings at home. 

And I spent a few days in NY for work just before Oskar got sick for a few days with a stomach bug. 

Anyways, you are now caught up.  Happy Halloween! 

Granny Fran

On August 14 my Granny Fran passed away at the young age of 100. 

Granny was such a fixture in my life, my family’s lives and her entire community.  She was someone who constantly gave: whether it was her time through volunteering, her energy through her work with kids as a preschool director or through her quick and sometimes snarky remarks that would be deemed inappropriate if made by anyone else. 

I wrote a blog a few years ago about an afternoon I spent with her and Grandpa Vic and it is amazing how much I can still feel and remember this day and her overall presence in my life. 

I will miss her, her unprompted comments and her infectious laugh whether she was laughing at herself or the situation. 

For those who missed the original blog, you can find it here and details of her amazing life are here.  

Lisa Classic

This past weekend, as part of a side project I have been dabbling on, I had all of my blogs and writings printed up at a commercial printer. All in, I ended up with 300+ double sided pages of writings that have spanned the past 19 years: from a twenty something moving to Switzerland, to finding her partner, starting a family and all of the bumps and jumps along the way. I am only half way through reading about my adventures in Switzerland and it feels like a reintroduction to someone I used to know and be. My desire for experiencing the new was insatiable, I made friends everywhere I went, my social calendar and dance card was always full, I saw endless opportunities for fun and turned every setback into a good story. I hope that one day my kids will read these stories to get a fuller picture of who I was and am. 

It just so happened that this same weekend Martin and I finished watching season two of Four Seasons.  If you haven’t watched it yet, stop reading and go do that now. It is that good. And while the show follows a group of friends in their mid-fifties, two comments from the last two episodes really hit home:

Kate (telling her best friend from college that she will miss him now that he moved away): in every other part of my life, I’m a mother and a wife and a scary boss. But when I am with you, you make me feel like the 19-year-old I was when we met. And I feel so far from her. And you will always have that piece of me. 

Similar to Kate, only two things can bring me back to how things were pre-responsibilities: Hanging out with my college besties and now reading this blog. 

And in the final episode, in a previous scene, Anne mourns her old self who was wild and carefree. In the final scene she tells her friends that is not going home but will instead stay in Italy. 

Kate to Anne: Is this Anne 2.0? 

Anne: No, I think this is… Anne Classic 

I officially want to bring back Lisa Classic, that carefree, responsible-lite, world traveling, socially unstoppable individual that I am meeting again via my older writings. Not sure that is possible right now but at some point in the future I hope she makes a reappearance. 

Side note: at the end of the show I turned to Martin and mentioned how I wanted to bring back Lisa Classic. His only comment: “I am not sure I can handle that”. He is not wrong, at least in certain aspects… Lisa circa 2007 was a hot mess.