I asked ChatGPT to make me a CD-ROM on the Kugelhaus
It was an unbearably slow process, but that was part of the fun, and you can fork it.
So this sort of thing is still clunky, and you have to gently re-guide the 4o model so many times, but I wanted an example to show that outputs didn’t have to be just normal text. So I made the “Kugelhaus CD-ROM”.
The process of creating this, and the mistakes it would make were frustrating but at the same time nostalgic, bringing me back to the feeling I got with my earliest computers as I tried to get the computer to understand what I wanted. Back then it was BASIC code on a Timex-Sinclair unit. Here it was more natural language, and absolutely slower, but I liked it. The specific output wasn’t really the point, it was trying to do something that felt new.
I couldn’t figure out how to get old photographs and postcards in there, but if you look at the top of the interface there’s a button that says “Edit with ChatGPT” which should allow you to fork this code and take your own shot at improving it.
I was talking to a person the other day about how much the politics of AI sucked right now, because of all the ways it’s tied to — well, a lot of moneyed awfulness. And one of the things that hit me was that one sad thing about those dynamics is I really want younger kids especially to have that feeling I got on those early machines, that there is a whole bunch of cool things just waiting to be built, and even the elements that are a pain in the ass are opportunities. That you might find a new way to do things, a new trick, or maybe just an old trick that’s new to you, and after a struggle suddenly works. Without joy at the center of it, I’m not sure what we’re doing here.
View it (and fork it) here.
Oh, and if you want to see the chat that created it, click here.
Update: Finally, to show you why you should fork it, this is the edit I just did…
You can see the resulting edit (and fork it) here.