AI and creativity

I've thought a bit about my attitudes towards it.

If I could get the stupid system to do what I want, I'd be seriously tempted to use it for making a book cover, even though I'm assured that this is a terribly foolish plan for someone with no layout or design training or skills. I can't draw very well and don't know what communicates genre best in Amazon thumbnail images.

But if you suggested that I use AI to write the story, I'd object that this is my story and I'll write it my way. Maybe there'd be fewer typos, but it wouldn't be my story anymore.

Maybe I'm acting like the toddler who insists that he's going to take off his (laced) boots all by himself. Perhaps, but I don't think so.

I've been working on a small problem in math for a few weeks; one that is probably understood already. Maybe AI could solve it for me (or halucinate something plausible). But this way I understand it better. If I can, I want to do it myself.

Predatory conferences?

Are there Predatory science conferences?

Yes. For about a dozen years I've gotten email invitations to speak at physics conferences where the topic had nothing to do with my field--sometimes it seemed to be more about chemistry. I couldn't be bothered to learn about them--if they didn't know what I did well enough to target me better, there was something wrong with their pitch.

Predatory journals aren't new either--I remember a student (who went on to better things, fortunately) who, needing a publication in his record, wrote up the meaning of the terms in the Bethe-Bloch formula and submitted it to a journal that took anything. Although, to be fair, I don't know if he had to pay for publication. Somebody does, one way or another.