To produce something for many people was once an expensive endeavor, capital was required to open a factory or obtain a printing press.
If you’re reading this, you probably own a factory and a printing press. It’s the object attached to this screen. But you might need workers to help you turn ideas into products. This is where LLMs can help.
I’ve long been fascinated with fractals, these entities so rich in detail that they seem to live between dimensions as if overspilling the plane but not filling the volume. But I’d never bother coding them, the idea was enough, the work was too much.
With ChatGPT4 I created the above HTML5 fractal in a few steps, starting with the prompt to use the Multiverses palette:
Draw a Mandelbrot fractal using the palette #A66021 #07091C #19837E #11C55A #FFFD34 #B9FB4F #732401
Using the Code Interpreter this, pleasingly, produces an image in the ChatGPT window using Python. A few more prompts created one in HTML5 that zooms on click with overlay text that disappears.
What I’m feeling right now is a fractal sense of accomplishment — I’d be more proud if I’d coded this from scratch — to have been an artisan rather than a foreman. I’ve overspilled the plane, but not filled the volume.