This is an /ai page.
I believe agentic, generative AI is empowering for people interested in IndieWeb principles. I know people will read that sentence and think it is an oxymoron, but it allows people to build personal sites and add features they would not otherwise have. If not for Claude, I would not have migrated my /books log from Goodreads to my personal site. It's also allowed me to start my /watching log on my personal site. Claude allowed me to develop the necessary scripts to syndicate my posts to Mastodon and Bluesky, which allowed me to cancel my Echofeed account. That's empowering.
I agree with the AI critics that there are many problems with LLMs, but I'm unconvinced most of the problems cited are unique to LLMs. Instead, the problems cited are more related to modern society. I agree that LLMs are bad for the environment, but so are automobiles, flying in jets, and producing electronics. If we're not going to abstain from those other modern conveniences, why should we abstain from LLMs?
The most distasteful thing about LLMs for me is how these companies trained their models on the internet. They effectively stole from people and are now trying to make money from it. That's shitty and it's the thing I struggle with the most.
My AI Usage #
I do not use LLMs to generate written content for this site. I write all my posts and pages myself. I use Claude to review my posts for spelling and grammar. I'm especially bad at compound sentences and commas. I also tend to write in passive voice.
I do not have anything I'd consider 'art' on my site so I can safely say I do not use AI to generate it. I used a person to help me with my favicons. I did purchase the cat outline used in my open-graph image from icons8.com, which I asked Claude to put on a dark background.
I use Claude to help me develop my site using 11ty. It helped me build my templates and set up the Node.js scripts to support all the functionality included so far. I used it to perform accessibility and semantic reviews of my site and fix issues.
I used Claude to review my server setup, including security and Caddy configuration, and I feel my server is more secure and better configured than what I could have done on my own.