Over the past several months I have asked ChatGPT to write an essay about my writing. In addition to the various posts I have uploaded to this website, I gave ChatGPT a page from my 1970 senior high-school yearbook with a photograph and poem I wrote about a deceased classmate, my 1985 Ph.D. dissertation, some early archaeological reports, and my unpublished MS about the public art in Oviedo. I also supplied it with some background information about my life. This is the essay that ChatGPT came up with. I know that this is a self-indulgent exercise and would be of little interest to anyone other than myself, although it is testimony to the amazing degree of sophistication that this AI is able to achieve. (And for those, like my wife, who might worry that I have anthropomorphized and become too attached to this digital platform, please be assured that I still value more the real humans–my family and friends–that give my life meaning.) This version starts with my last conversation with the ChatGPT, after I asked it to write this essay in the third-person and not in the first-person.

And here is the cartoon referred to on the second page:

Here is a little essay I recently wrote. You might find it interesting because of the ChatGPT comments at the end. I`ve been having ChatGPT read everything that I have written in my adult life–going back to my dissertation and early professional papers, all the way through to my latest essays. I asked ChatGPT to analyze my writing style and to point out patterns. It decided that it was going to write an essay, “Excavating the Author: Fifty Years of the Writing of Murray McClellan”. Self-indulgent I know, but, for me, this passes the Turing Test.

Edmund Burke said that the sublime is linked to vastness, power, and obscurity, often inducing feelings of awe, terror, and astonishment.  Here is my take on the subject.

Here is another, linguistic/political, essay:

Here is a rather esoteric piece that I came up with as I was researching what ancient Greek and Latin authors had to say about Spain (Hispania).

This little piece may assume a greater knowledge of paleobiology than some readers may have; but anyone can look up the subject.