My Fun with Artificial Intelligence

Grzegorz Makarewicz (last modified 4/08/2025)

It may seem strange, but at my age and with my passion for retro technology, I still tend to observe what's happening to the reality around me. The conclusion is clear: it's becoming less and less real and more and more artificial. Of course, I'm kidding, because I can. I have administrator rights to this site, and until it's shut down, I can write about what's bothering me, even in a way that borders on decency. But back to the point. Although I'm not a fan of Artificial Intelligence (AI – and I'll use that commonly used acronym) invading every corner of my life, I simply have to accept it. I'll devote a separate article to this topic. In this post, I'd like to explain the fact that, as part of my descriptions of cool tube devices, I allow myself to post drawings based on my own scenarios, created by the AI ​​I so reluctantly accept.

On my favorite forum (Forum-trioda), a colleague criticized me for including drawings generated by AI in my device descriptions. It's hard to disagree with him. I realize that they don't always fit the content of the articles. Their nature is somewhat "childish." My explanation is that creating these types of illustrations is a kind of testing and proving that AI (at least at this stage) isn't very good at handling such artistic challenges. Of course, I play a role in this. After all, I'm the one creating the description of the drawing to be generated.

I took the comments regarding AI-generated drawings to heart and, to enhance the site's appeal, started adding illustrations and drawings from old magazines and books from defunct publishers. Some date back as far as 100 years! If possible, I include the author's or publisher's details and the year of publication on the drawing. Of course, if I find any information regarding copyright infringement, I immediately remove such a drawing from the site.

I've included a summary of the drawings scattered across the site in the table below. Anyone interested in the drawings scattered throughout the site can view them. As the collection of drawings is completed, I will add them to this table, and when it exceeds a certain number of rows, I will include them in the descriptions created in this section.

	I couldn't force the AI to make all the vacuum tubes be bodyless and only have small hands that they use to eat semiconductor components.
These were supposed to be very bright electron tubes. Unfortunately, they weren't. AI treats bright electron tubes on a par with incandescent bulbs.	All the buildings were supposed to be constructed from tube amplifiers. This was never achieved. Instead, the buildings are shaped like electronic scrap, and the tubes are individual objects.
This drawing was made almost according to the script.	This was supposed to be a lecture on electronic circuits with bored students sleeping on their desks. I made several versions. I'll show some later in the presentation. None of them met my expectations.
This singer should be surrounded by amplifiers with large vacuum tubes exposed. For reasons unknown to me, the AI system insisted on keeping the devices retro-style, but the vacuum tubes hidden. Just a little AI mischief.	This was intended as an illustration for a description of an "Amplifier on a Board" using 6S33S vacuum tubes. I didn't want the distinctive-looking tubes to be included in the drawing. Instead, I wanted the board's dimensions to be overwhelming compared to the amplifier's dimensions. It was intended to demonstrate the size of the wooden base on which I assembled the amplifier prototype. Despite numerous attempts, the AI system insisted on the amplifier being the dominant element. It refused to acknowledge that the board might be more important—even in a symbolic sense.