Fun with Artificial Intelligence

In a collection of match books I was exploring last week, I found two things, neither of which would have been very interesting to me absent the internet and AI. First:

Mementos can be invaluable.

Imagine if you had find these just three years ago, you'd have no idea what these were from,  not any simple way to find out. Perhaps a day at Suzzalo Library in the archives may or may not have produced answers. I snapped a picture and not 5 seconds later, ChatGPT told me that these were from "No Time For Sergeants." tIt is the play which thrust Andy Griffith into the role as a PLO (Permanent Latrine Officer) and stardom. Moreover, it told me the theater is on Broadway and is now called the Neil Simon Theater. So, someone saved these as mementos and then later forgot about them. I likely would have tossed them away, but knowing their provenance makes me find them worth keeping.

The second discovery found among the matchbooks was still close to its original shape, was yellowed and ripped a bit on one side. But, thanks to AI, I can see what it looked like originally:

We took the kids through the Waldorf back in 2015 or 16, before it was converted to mainly condominiums, but we never saw this Domino sugar wrapper. (We also got chased out by security, because we weren't guests of the hotel.) It is likely this sugar wrapper is from September 1956, I'd wager, given the ticket stubs I found in the same box. I feel like a computer assisted private detective--Inspector Gadget Jr. What will happen to all my little mementos that mean nothing to anyone else when I go? What will happen to yours? When Corey died back in 1984, we all put something in his casket that was important to our friendships with him. I put in two Heineken beer bottle caps. My friend, who stood by me as I placed them in the coffin, scoffed and asked me if I was just emptying my pockets of garbage. In fact, it was the beers we drank on Homecoming night in 1983 after dropping off our dates, when we were celebrating our friendship. We were never closer. Should an archeologist dig up that grave 1000 years from now, they will likely conclude that these particular grave itemswere from the grave diggers and otherwise of little import. To me, it symbolizes a friendship lost to the vagaries of life, its memory ever enduring while I live.