Maciek Jozefowicz

Artist, Illustrator, Designer, Writer, Creator AI-free, all-natural — natural intelligence, natural talent, natural imagination and natural effort. I am currently adapting Buster Keaton’s silent films into comics, learning to play the Irish flute and training to play table tennis with the intent to play in international tournaments. My goal is to participate in 2032 Olympics. (I am also learning Chinese.) My Books on Amazon

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AI & I — “You Complete Me! (Maybe)”

I didn’t stay AI-free for long. That was to be expected. I love to learn. I love to explore. I love to develop. I love to evolve. And I would hate to deprive myself of a potentially useful tool.

But is AI a useful tool for a talented, skilled creator? After all, I don’t need AI to create for me. I don’t need AI to come up with ideas for me. I don’t need, or want, AI to write for me, to draw for me or to design for me. I don’t need, or want, AI to think for me. So for what purpose can I use AI?

What I want is a tool that does things that I don’t like doing while letting me do things that I love doing. What I love doing is doodling, drawing, sketching, designing, coming up with ideas and concepts.

What I don’t love doing is rendering things realistically. Realism takes time and I don’t find it satisfying. Even coloring my drawings feels like a waste of time and energy. I can do it, but I’d rather not if I don’t have to. That is what I want AI to do for me. I want AI to take my doodles and sketches and drawings and visual concepts and ideas and transform them into volumetrically realistic or semi-realistic images.

While trying the SketchUp AI rendering service in order to create presentations of my house design, “Domestic Wilderness”, I fed it some of my doodles and sketches. I’m intrigued by the results.

Architecture, sculpture, illustration—SketchUp’s Render AI can interpret my line drawings in these three areas of interest and visualize them as three-dimensional objects in space. Some of the interpretations are better than others, and none are without flaws that need further work for me to be satisfied with them.

Some of the flaws are caused by my drawing being either ambiguous or sloppy or both. I can change my drawing by being more intentional and more precise, but the bigger issue is that AI seems to be a tool that lacks control and predictability. A creator needs control and predictability in his tools in order to use those tools to express his ideas with intent. Imagine an artist trying to draw with a pen that changes the thickness and color of its line in unpredictable ways. (Imagine a printer that prints the same document in different colors each time you print that document.) A tool whose output is in continual flux may be a fun novelty for children and for amateurs, but it is near useless for professionals. It’s a toy, not a tool. That seems to be the general state of AI at this time. At least, that is my initial view based on a very limited experience with it.

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In the Age of AI, Human Skill and Talent Still Matter (and Will Continue To)

I was thinking — AI allows many people to do things that they previously couldn’t do because they don’t have the skill and the talent to do them. This is making some skilled, talented people feel cheated — they invested much time and effort (and, often, money) to develop their talents to be able to do things that others can’t do only to see a digital tool that allows the unskilled and the untalented do things that until now only the skilled and the talented could do.

This feels unjust. After all, the tech industry uses the work of the skilled and the talented to teach AI in order to replace the skilled and the talented with AI. (AI is not created for the benefit of humanity. Its development is not motivated by altruism or humanitarianism or philanthropy. Its development is driven by greed.)

AI is essentially high-tech plagiarism. AI’s output is an amalgam of some of the billions of things — words, images, sounds — that humans have uploaded online. The code (AI is a code) scours the internet and puts together some of those things like Frankenstein put together his monster from parts of different carcasses. One big difference is that most of the time AI is better than Doctor Frankenstein at hiding the stitches.

But those that feel cheated by AI and the tech industry should know this and not despair — what the unskilled can do with AI, the skilled can do with AI better; what the untalented can do with AI, the talented can do with AI better. In other words, in the age of AI, skill still matters; talent still matters.

Employers should realize this when hiring — if anyone can use AI, then what sets companies apart from each other is not AI, but the quality of the skilled, human talent that they acquire. And as more people choose the easy path of using AI rather than developing their own talent (assuming that they have talent) and skill, those with talent and skill will become more scarce and thus more valuable.

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“Buster Keaton’s Cops” | Comic book adaptation of the silent film | Adopted by Maciek Jozefowicz

The fifth in a series of comic book adaptations of Buster Keaton’s silent films. The series, Buster Keaton Comics, will consist of a total of 15 adaptations. I am currently working on the sixth one — “Buster Keaton’s The High Sign”.

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“Buster Keaton’s One Week” | Comic book adaptation of the silent film | Adopted by Maciek Jozefowicz

The fourth in a series of comic book adaptations of Buster Keaton’s silent films.

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“Buster Keaton’s The Balloonatic” | Comic book adaptation of the silent film | Adopted by Maciek Jozefowicz

The third in a series of comic book adaptations of Buster Keaton’s silent films.

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“Buster Keaton’s The Blacksmith” | Comic book adaptation of the silent film | Adopted by Maciek Jozefowicz

The second in a series of comic book adaptations of Buster Keaton’s silent films.

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“Buster Keaton’s Day Dreams” | Comic book adaptation of the silent film | Adopted by Maciek Jozefowicz

The first in a series of comic book adaptations of Buster Keaton’s silent films.

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“My Silly Puzzles” | Antidote to Digital Overload | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

Like “My Silly Poems”, “My Silly Puzzles” are irreverent, joyful and inventive. The book is aimed at younger readers, but contains many puzzles that will satisfy older puzzlers. It can be enjoyed by the whole family. It includes a variety of puzzle types — logic puzzles, word puzzles and riddles; some are variants of classic types (like the “knights and knaves” logic puzzle) and some are original inventions. Most of the puzzles are introduced in rhyme and use imaginative, humorous scenarios that make them fun to read as well as to solve.

The book is an antidote to digital overload, an antidote to visual overload. It was designed to be soft and gentle and comforting on the eyes, like freshly fallen snow that covers the landscape. Its visual minimalism accentuates its verbal richness and encourages the readers to use their imagination, the original “virtual reality” created by one’s mind.

Many creators of digital puzzles claim that playing their puzzles is good for one’s brain. Those claims feel dubious. Digital games encourage speed which, if anything, leads not to improved brain function, but shorter attention span. Digital apps provide countless of puzzles, generated by AI or by code, thus making each puzzle disposable. The feeling of disposability, I suspect, leads to less effort into solving each puzzle. But what is good for one’s brain is mental effort and mental strain. Building the brain is not unlike building muscles. Pen-and-paper puzzles are like weightlifting for the brain.

Two important aspects of a pen-and-paper puzzle book are its finiteness and its physical reality. There is a set amount of puzzles in a book, making each puzzle more valuable. The book is a physical object that can be opened, closed, marked, doodled, handled and mishandled. It cannot be turned off. It doesn’t disappear. Its use becomes history that can be passed on. A book is part of the real world.

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.1

This is my first project created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and the Procreate app. The purpose was to learn these tools in order to use them better and to create a reference guide that I will use to decide on the most suitable brush and style of artwork for future projects. I let my imagination roam free, using each of the 200+ brushes provided in the app for at least two drawings. Taken as a whole, the series is a torrent of creative energy.

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.2 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.7 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.8 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.9 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.6 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.5 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.4 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz

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Drawings Volume 1 Solos | Drawings Created with the iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app | P.3 | Created by Maciek Jozefowicz