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More'a Pandora

Hopefully GregMutt graces us with another review.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 10:30 PM on May 11, 2022

Robots Are Writing Poetry, and Many People Can't Tell the Difference.

Interestingly, the biggest thing holding GPT-3 back from competent poetry is not some intrinsic lack of ability (as it can generate other forms of writing with convincing aplomb), but rather a weakness in the way it encodes language -- it tokenizes words at roughly the syllable level and without any phonetic data, so has a hard time understanding rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay.

If you want real examples of AI poetry and not some imagined straw man, check out Gwern Branwen's… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 8:42 PM on May 11, 2022

The day I saved ‘The Greatest Showman’ (it’s not who you think)

It pains me to think how much better Spielberg's West Side Story could have been if they cast Jordan instead of sex pest and charisma void Ansel Elgort. His take on "Maria" at the 2016 Hollywood Bowl production is definitive, imho.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 8:06 PM on May 11, 2022

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

I've seen the copyright argument in relation to GPT-3, and it doesn't really hold water. None of the training data is stored inside the neural network, only the (unfathomably complex) web of patterns and relationships gleaned from them, a conceptual understanding of form and function that's encoded in billions of numerical weights and vectors in a complex multidimensional space. Even if that understanding is derived from copyrighted material, it's not really that different from how the human… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 4:19 PM on April 15, 2022

Foosnark: "To me the scary thing is, it's probably not a huge leap from DALL-E to full-blown deepfake video."

Video Diffusion Models (published one week ago!)

Edited to add: This New AI Makes DeepFake Videos
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:30 PM on April 15, 2022

/u/Yuli-Ban, creator of /r/MediaSynthesis and author of the final link in the post, has a new post up from a few days ago laying out predictions for the next few years. Excerpt:

we're currently seeing a handover from GANs to transformers in terms of the premier generative methodology. GANs are something of a false start for the modern era, still useful but being replaced by the far more generalized transformer architecture. Transformers can do everything GANs can do, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:50 PM on April 15, 2022

I'm stunned. I think I'm going to always remember where I was and what I was doing when this was posted.

I put it up there with a few very rare moments -- discovering the scope of Wikipedia, running Google Earth on a desktop for the first time (and a dozen years later in VR), the original iPhone keynote, and having a conversation with GPT-3 -- where it really felt like touching the future.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:12 PM on April 15, 2022

In the post, I had to shorten a lot of the captions to squeeze as many in as I could; I've also since realized that a few of them link to smaller copies instead of the original 1024x1024s. So for completeness, here are all the text prompts (with sources) for the images linked above the fold, with larger versions underlined, all rehosted on Imgur in case any of them are ever deleted:

"A raccoon astronaut with the cosmos reflecting on the glass of his helmet dreaming… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:39 AM on April 16, 2022

Well in GPT-3's case at least, the model has 175 billion parameters and requires about 350 GB of memory, but was trained on a 45 terabyte text corpus. I don't know the stats for DALL-E 2 offhand (or whether they've even been released), but I seriously doubt it's large enough to contain the billions of images it was trained on. Even with great compression there's simply no way to store all that training data within it, only the overarching patterns. It's also telling that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 4:09 PM on April 16, 2022

New techniques:

Using DALL-E's interpolation feature to finally show how to draw the rest of the fucking owl.

You can stitch together multiple overlapping frames to create continuous panoramas much larger than the default 1024x1024, for instance: Salvador Dali, flowers, Heironymous Bosch.

You can also shrink an existing image, and then use the "inpainting" feature to fill in the rest to make an… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:37 PM on April 21, 2022

Another round-up!

"Oil painting of a sad girl looking out the window of a school bus" [source]
"avocados dancing, drinking, singing and partying at a Hawaiian luau" [source]
"Photo of an athlete cat explaining it's latest scandal at a press conference to journalists" [source]
"men's fashion pinterest board" [source]
"brutalist dining room furniture made of concrete"… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:24 PM on April 26, 2022

braciopod, I think you meant to link here?

Also, I'll try to stick to updating here once every few days till the thread closes, but I couldn't wait to post this one because the prompt is just brilliant:

"An IT-guy trying to fix hardware of a PC tower is being tangled by the PC cables like Laokoon. Marble, copy after Hellenistic original from ca. 200 BC. Found in the Baths of Trajan, 1506." [source]

If you're… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:48 PM on April 27, 2022

Missed the edit window, but this Towards Data Science article by Merzmensch on his experience with DALL-E versions 1 and 2 is illuminating: DALL·E: an AI Treasure Chest in Action

Among other things, he notes that the terms explicitly ban NFTs and give the copyright on all images to OpenAI for now (though they do encourage personal, non-commercial use).
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 1:07 PM on April 27, 2022

"digital painting by studio ghibli solarpunk, utopian san francisco mission district with dense housing and greenery at day break" [source]
"A famous BulletTime scene from the movie Matrix with Neo. Neoclassical style, oil painting, very detailed." [source]
"baby capuchin monkey looking through a magnifying glass, detailed, portrait, dark background, caustics" [source]
"Batman by Picasso" [source]
"Dogs… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 2:22 PM on May 1, 2022

From LessWrong: What DALL-E 2 can and cannot do

overview:

DALL-E's strengths:

• Stock photography content
• Pop culture and media
• Art style transfer
• Creative digital art
• The future of commercials

DALLE's weaknesses:

• Scenes with two characters
• Foreground and background
• Novel objects, or nonstandard usages
• Spelling
• Realistic human faces
• Limitations of the "edit" functionality

posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:53 PM on May 1, 2022

Paper: A very preliminary analysis of DALL-E 2 [PDF]

The DALL-E 2 system generates original synthetic images corresponding to an input text as caption. We report here on the outcome of fourteen tests of this system designed to assess its common sense, reasoning and ability to understand complex texts. All of our prompts were intentionally much more challenging than the typical ones that have been showcased in recent weeks. Nevertheless, for 5 out of the 14 prompts, at… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:42 PM on May 1, 2022

I was disappointed to see that and told him as much, but apparently he's using a niche eco-friendly blockchain and doesn't actually use DALL-E 2 imagery for it (more of a cross-promotional thing for his other art). Still propping up the web3 scam (and even suffered a wallet theft recently, hint hint) but at least he's mostly doing it for the art.

On that note, some more recent faves:

"watercolor painting of an off-white cowboy hat on a… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:32 PM on May 5, 2022

DALL-E 2 Inpainting / Editing Demo, including limitations and workarounds

2.7 hour DALL-E 2 demonstration video (Spanish language, but English subtitles are available)

One user has discovered that the model understands emojis, leading to this fun request thread

More favorites:
"A photograph of a young jackrabbit grazing in a vegetable garden, early morning light, 85 mm lens, 70 mm entrance pupil… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:38 PM on May 11, 2022

Devs Explain Why Forced Updates Are A Preservation Nightmare

You want outrage, how about Disney buying up a mobile game publisher only to liquidate its assets and pull all their titles from the App Store, including at least one BAFTA Award-winning puzzle game.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 4:42 PM on May 7, 2022

> a building that looks like Holly Herndon

I despise crypto/NFT/web3 bullshit, but this is a thoughtful probing of a deeply fascinating and soon-to-be-world-changing topic and derailing it with "btw they have bad opinions on something unrelated" does the post a disservice I think.

I've been absolutely stupefied at DALL-E 2 for the last month -- we've basically taught a computer to imagine and can also see its thoughts. I check the unofficial subreddit on a dall-e daily basis just to… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:38 PM on May 5, 2022

Abortion rights under imminent threat?

I'd rub this travesty in the faces of everyone who ever told me they wouldn't be "held hostage" by the Supreme Court seat in 2016, but then again did they ever give a shit about reproductive rights in the first place?
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:45 PM on May 2, 2022

Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.

Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company to stage My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro, one of master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s most beloved works, will be treading the boards in England very soon. The 1988 anime masterpiece about two little girls and their very big furry friends will be a stage show courtesy of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and Totoro composer Joe Hisaishi.

While the show will feature the music from the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:07 AM on May 2, 2022

…its evolution from dude bro comic to terf Q horror vacui screed.

Sinfest was one of the first webcomics I ever subscribed to back in the mid-00s, and it stayed pretty decent and even somewhat affecting with its gentle satire and pretty artwork until the abrupt shift into "The Sisterhood" and radical feminist ideology in 2011. It was a refreshing message for a medium so often mired in sexism, but Tats drove it so relentlessly and for so long that the strip became preachy and boring, and I dropped it from Google Reader within a year.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 4:21 PM on April 30, 2022

(Note all links above are to mirrors or third-party articles; /r/Sinfest avoids linking to his shit directly and I tend to agree)
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 4:26 PM on April 30, 2022

The Holy Morality of the Supreme Court’s Most Sympathetic Plaintiffs

When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

--Matthew 6:5-6, NIV
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:59 PM on April 27, 2022

Ke Huy Quan and the steps to "Everything Everywhere All at Once"

saladin: "Appears to be off limits in the US; I'm getting a "content not available in your location" error down here in Florida. [EDIT] The individual segment works for me, link here."

Thanks! Here's the DALL-E bit from the same site (10:27 long).
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:53 PM on April 26, 2022

insanely great™️

Meta to take nearly half of sales made by its metaverse creators as fees

Facebook parent Meta Platforms (FB.O) will charge creators around 47.5% on sales of digital assets and experiences made inside the company's virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds.

The overall charge comprises of 30% hardware platform fee for sales made through Meta Quest Store, where it sells apps and games meant for its virtual reality headsets, and a further 17.5% cut as… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 2:13 PM on April 13, 2022

You've made your thread, now free in it

So I've been serving jury duty the last couple of weeks -- first time! -- and it's given me an interesting and often depressing look behind the scenes of the justice system. (TW : abuse ahead)

For starters, it wasn't just regular jury duty, but rather ✨Grand Jury ✨, which meant instead of deliberating one case our group would hear the bare outlines of literally hundreds of cases to decide which ones merited trial. These were typically laid out by a parade of… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 11:04 AM on April 11, 2022

You are now subscribed to Random Ball Facts!

Pretty great -- it's almost hypnotic when it's at maximum frenzy -- but I can't for the life of me understand the point of the "12 Days of Christmas"-style boss progression, where you have to re-beat every previous boss (on a harder difficulty!) to get to the next one. And there are 50 bosses! That's over 1,000 extremely repetitive battles. Really saps the appeal.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 10:35 PM on April 7, 2022

Together you can create something more.

PSA: the canvas has expanded if you want to take a gander at the land rush in real time
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:10 PM on April 3, 2022

Update: Place is now ending... by allowing users to only place white pixels. Should be interesting to see what disappears first (I'm going for crypto bullshit).
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 3:55 PM on April 4, 2022

The final 2000x2000 Place canvas, from a few minutes before the whiteout began (mirror)
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:08 PM on April 4, 2022

This is fantastic: The complete annotated Place Atlas, searchable and with over 7,000 entries

Official 3-minute timelapse with music

/r/Place after 8 hours - 2017 vs. 2022 - Things were definitely more organized this time, largely because the revival was announced in advance

A chart of the top 30 communities represented

A sampling of some of the better artworks

Analysis… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:54 PM on April 6, 2022

A skeptical eye on OpenAI and GPT-3

Like Jairus said, the original article is flatly wrong about how GPT-3 works, but note that this human-behind-the-curtain thing has been used by other companies in the past and is worth looking out for whenever any unproven startup tries pushing AI that seems too advanced. I especially remember an image identification app a few years ago that just forwarded user-submitted pictures to a Mechanical Turk-style labor pool, which was extra creepy.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 1:13 PM on April 2, 2022

clawsoon: "What's "flatly wrong" about it?"

Well, the core premise -- even the title! -- of the original article was that GPT-3's bad answers are being manually replaced by human-written ones to make it look more competent. Besides being a baseless and gross misunderstanding of how the model training works, it doesn't even make logical sense -- how are these bad answers being detected for replacement? And why would they waste… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:52 PM on April 2, 2022

it can't be helped perfectly cromulent in Knife Crime Island English tho

DoctorFedora: "Of course, on the other hand, the literal translation brigade loves to put cusses and stuff in to make things More Mature, even though in Japan about the rudest a word can innately be is on par with English “crap,” so maybe a 4 out of 10."

Saxon Kane: "Too bad subtitles can't also have footnotes."

ChurchHatesTucker: "You’ve never seen a fansub, I take it.… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 12:12 AM on March 10, 2022

Very superstitious indeed

I found another version in marginally better quality if you want an excuse to watch it again!
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 9:30 PM on March 9, 2022

"Very grateful sentient tomatoes busily working on their third opera"

Well how did I miss this?

Starship Titanic Original Soundtrack (1998)

It wasn't a physical release -- they're all tracks pulled directly from the game files!
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 2:39 PM on March 7, 2022

Joe Biden's first State of the Union address

My attention is divided, but so far I'm seeing a conspicuous lack of Manchin and Sinema during these BBB passages.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:39 PM on March 1, 2022

Warning stripes

"Shows Your Stripes" tool
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:47 PM on March 1, 2022

I wonder if any GOP campaign will have the sheer gall to splice Biden saying the phrase "defund the police" into their ads.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:54 PM on March 1, 2022

SHOW MANCHIN AND/OR SINEMA YOU COWARDS
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 6:55 PM on March 1, 2022

Had to rewind and Google, but apparently the boo line was Marjorie Taylor Greene blaming Biden for the 13 Americans KIA in the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Because there would be so many fewer deaths if we were still embroiled in a hot war.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:06 PM on March 1, 2022

FiveThirtyEight: In Texas, Rep. Louie Gohmert gave up his safe congressional seat to come in fourth place in the Republican attorney general primary.

🎻
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:08 PM on March 1, 2022

Clearing-the-lowest-of-low-bars alert:

So far, the candidates who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 (Alma Arredondo-Lynch in the 23rd District and Sam Montoya in the 35th District) are trailing far behind the competition, although there aren’t enough results in either race yet to conclusively project a winner.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:11 PM on March 1, 2022

GOP response link, in case you're into that sort of thing
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:18 PM on March 1, 2022

Oof, she admitted Biden is the president, that's a rookie mistake.

Also why does she keep looking off screen like she's being held hostage, this is super weird.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:33 PM on March 1, 2022

clavdivs: "GOP response is like watching the newscaster during a zombie invasion"

Same energy (and backdrop!)
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:41 PM on March 1, 2022

Iowa nice

The, perhaps satirically named, phenomenon found among Iowa natives of remaining surface-deep at all times. Many Iowans will ask you how you are, but make no mistake, they don’t want an honest or detailed answer. Some bland response is required. Expressing opinions or taking stances on really any topic will be met with iciness. Iowans are repressed and judgmental. “Iowa nice” means let’s not actually connect in any human way, but rather, let’s avoid… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 7:47 PM on March 1, 2022

CNN instant poll of speech watchers (11 points more Democratic):

Topline impressions:
41% very positive (10% less than last year, lowest in 15 years)
29% somewhat positive
29% negative

Percent who said Biden sufficiently addressed:
Russia/Ukraine: 69%
Inflation: 47%
Crime: 46%

How did the speech change your confidence in Biden handling Ukraine?
30% more
56% no change
14% less

More important topic?
64% economy
36% Ukraine
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 8:22 PM on March 1, 2022