AI and a personal project

Yes, another AI post. I apologize, but I think this one will be worth it. I’m tired of posts about companies downsizing because of “AI” (when they really mean LLMs) too, or engineers bragging about workflows with 5 parallel agents (only to throw 95% of the generated PRs in the trash). I’m also tired of companies trying to taking away the joy we found in building. Definitely, we can’t have nice things.

The thing is, today I want to tell you about a project that AI has actually enabled me to do something I wouldn’t have done without these tools: the transcription of a handwritten diary my grandfather left behind. My grandfather wrote this in 1989. They are his memoirs of the Spanish Civil War. He passed away 20 years ago and, when I inherited this notebook, I tried to transcribe it. It’s full of spelling mistakes, common for people of his generation, and the handwriting is quite difficult to read. It took me a whole day just to poorly transcribe a couple of pages. I abandoned the project.

But the other day, I decided to feed the first two pages to ChatGPT. And “magic” happened: on its own, it managed to enhance the image, run it through OCR, and get most of the content right. It still makes plenty of mistakes, which is normal given the spelling and the handwriting, but it has allowed me to decipher the script and finish the sentences myself.

I don’t know where this project will lead me. My boss told me that when you start worrying about your past, it’s a sign that you’ve officially grown old. And I couldn’t agree more :)