A prediction about mathematics led me somewhere I did not initially expect. Jacob Tsimerman had suggested that artificial intelligence could become better than mathematicians at doing mathematics within two years. I began by asking how such an abrupt transition could be possible. The obvious question concerned capability: had AI suddenly acquired mathematical intuition comparable to that of the strongest human researchers? But another explanation seemed increasingly important. Mathematics may be among the earliest disciplines to experience this transformation because it…
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AI
Wer erschafft wen? Kunst, KI und die Transformation des Schaffenden
Mein vorheriger Essay, Building a Generative Artwork That Can Change Its Maker, endete mit dem Gedanken, dass das Kunstwerk geantwortet habe. Dieser Essay setzt dort ein, wo mir diese Formulierung nicht mehr ausreichte. „Antworten“ lässt noch immer zwei relativ stabile Partner vermuten: auf der einen Seite einen Schaffenden, auf der anderen ein vollendetes Werk. Was sich tatsächlich entwickelte, war weniger geordnet. Ein visuelles System erzeugte Formen; die Formen veränderten meine Fragen; die Reaktion eines anderen Menschen veränderte, wie ich…
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Who Creates Whom? Art, AI, and the Transformation of the Maker
My previous essay, Building a Generative Artwork That Can Change Its Maker, ended with the thought that the artwork had answered back. This essay begins where that formulation became insufficient. “Answering back” still suggests two relatively stable partners: a maker on one side and a completed work on the other. What actually developed was less orderly. A visual system generated forms; the forms changed my questions; another person’s response changed how I understood the forms; an old theoretical vocabulary…
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Eine generative Kunst schaffen, die ihren Schöpfer verändern kann: Von der Generierung zur Begegnung und wieder zurück
Drei Tage nachdem ich einen Artikel darüber veröffentlicht hatte, wie sich der Aktualisieren-Button meiner Website in eine künstlerische Geste der Komposition verwandeln lässt, lud mich Prof. Yvonne Dohna-Schlobitten unerwartet dazu ein, an ihrem sich entwickelnden internationalen Projekt als Künstler teilzunehmen – und beinahe im selben Atemzug auch in wissenschaftlicher Funktion. Dieses konkrete Werk hatte sie zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht gesehen. Ich schickte es ihr, erklärte, dass jede Aktualisierung oder Navigation eine neue Komposition hervorbringen könne, und bat sie, es…
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Building a Generative Artwork That Can Change Its Maker: From Generation to Encounter and Back Again
Three days after I published an article about turning the refresh button of my website into an artistic compositional gesture, Prof. Yvonne Dohna-Schlobitten unexpectedly invited me to participate in her developing international project as an artist—and, almost in the same breath, in a scientific capacity as well. She had not yet seen this particular work. I sent it to her, explained that every refresh or navigation could produce another composition, and asked her to try it. Her first response…
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Rethinking Yin’s Background Studio with Agentic AI (When the Harness Joins the Project)
I built Yin’s Background Studio through a semi-automated conversation: AI proposed bounded changes, I ran them on a live WordPress server, and the resulting logs and screenshots determined the next move. The system eventually grew from one repeating background into classic mosaics, scattered collage, persistence, density and colour controls. Now I want to try the next workflow seriously: let an agent inspect, edit, run, see and verify the project itself.
The existing method is my evidence base, not the method…
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From Patch-and-Verify to Managed Agents, and What I Would Automate Now
After building a multi-site WordPress backup system through a long patch-and-verify conversation, I wanted to revisit the entire process without assuming that its present form deserved to survive. Managed agents can now maintain state, operate tools inside sandboxes, enforce hooks, delegate evaluation and continue for hours. What would happen if that infrastructure were applied to the same project? Which manual loops would disappear, which controls would move into code, and where would human judgment change?
This is a comparison, not…
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An Inspectable Human–AI Workflow: Agency, Evidence, and Judgment in an AI-Assisted Project
Over several days, I built a centralized WordPress backup system by working with AI one verified change at a time. The AI wrote a great deal of Bash, Python, PHP and JavaScript, but it never independently controlled the production server. I inspected the evidence, ran each bounded operation, questioned incorrect diagnoses and decided when a procedure was finally reliable enough to automate.
This was neither ordinary manual coding nor fully agentic development
When people discuss AI-assisted programming, they often imagine…
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