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Showing posts from 2024

Why Generative AI is Extremely Bad: Trees, Poems and People.

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NOT a human brain (via Guru99.com) Making an artificial brain is NOT the same thing as what all marketing is calling "artificial  intelligence," what is marketed as "AI" is an incredibly inefficient SQL severely limited by the absurd volume of data dumped into it AND the bottlenecking of generative software technique. Having scraped countless giga- if not terabytes of data to create images and text using a mere sentence or two is quite bad, but it is especially bad for visual art.  NOT an SQL Server (via HopkinsMedicine) AND NOW IT'S TIME FOR A METAPHOR:  If you wanted to create a generative AI that makes "trees," you can't just feed one tree into it, because it will just keep making variations on that one tree. You can't just feed one type of tree into either, because again, it limits its tree-generation ability.  You have to give it as much variety as possible to get it to successfully generate a believable tree. Not a tree that's reali

You Have A Serious Business. So What? So Does Everyone Else.

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Humor, Business and How It Isn't About You Content is not just king. It's queen, rook, bishop. However, a pervasive issue that AI is not helping with is aggressively bland text that doesn't stand out in any way. Thousands of words that are blander than crackers and far less fulfilling. One thing AI can't do - because a lot of actual people can't either - is a humorous tone. When you're writing any kind of copy a little humor is a solid bet because it evokes a strong, positive emotion and people will remember that. Every year the Clio Awards are roughly half humorous advertising.  Everyone has expectations about how topics are written about. There is an endless supply of writing - from medium to substack - about *ANYTHING* and any sampling based on a topic will likely give some clue about the pervading tone.  I regularly read about warfare. The pervading tone? VERY SERIOUS©️  However, a wise old Navy Chief once told me "The military is too goddamned dangero

Never Dance Again: A Story Told In Remix

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By wiredforlego from Portland, USA - Day 1 : Celldweller, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147338547 Blue Stahli is an American electronic rock music project by Bret Autrey, a proflic musician with an astonishing decade of creating truly compelling music across an incredibly broad spectrum of sound and subject.  Battle Tapes is an American electronic rock band, based in LA, formed in 2010 with four members: Josh Boardman, Riley Mackin, Josh D'Elia and Pete Kraynak. On December 1st, 2017, Blue Stahli released the album Starlight under the nom de musique Sunset Neon with the track Never Dance Again .  On May 10, 2018, Battle Tapes released a  remix .  The lyrics (after the article) are identical in both versions.  However, these songs are incredibly different.  The original version is an upbeat dance-rock track with vocals vocals harkening back to the Pet Shop Boy's Can You Forgive Her? in its auditory tone but with a gleeful edge of revenge in term

The Same Song on Repeat

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Or Why You Really Need To Stop Talking Shit About Young People When You Only Understand One Part of the World They've Had to Live In Via The New York Times The kids today don't have it "easier," they have it VERY different in some ways that may actually be entirely incomprehensible to someone even as young as 35 (give or take).  A pervasive way to talk about "the youth" is to cite precisely one thing, and speak to that one thing as though it's the lynchpin of an entire generation's behavior.  This is as stupid as it is unscientific which is to say very.  For example? An American 18-year-old today was born in 2006. They have never known America to not be at war.  Mass shooter drills have expanded exponentially since Sandy Hook.  In a decade, training to only be ready to survive against a shooter while they are unarmed is the most standard part of American education than reading any book.  COVID is a real thing that happened. Now, look at this chart f

Ghostbusters: Franchise

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In honor of Ghostbusters' 40th Anniversary here are four ideas that have been bouncing around in my head ever since I realized that, in the first movie, Venkman said "The franchise rights alone will make us right beyond our wildest dreams." These are merely ideas and I do not expect to be involved in their further development creation and I'm putting them out there just because I can for the love of the stories, the concepts, and the ideas that Ghostbusters fosters in and of itself. One of the core concepts of the entire franchise is a kind of cross-generational justice and overcoming obstacles with a combination of teamwork, technology, and willpower.  Rather like filmmaking itself.  Courtesy Variety Ghostbusters: Neon Spectres Three best friends, Diego Willis, Walter Sanchez, and Leena Tacarelli buy protonbacks at an auction and hang out their shingle in Los Angeles.  Willis is a software programmer with an eye for detail. Sanchez is the hardware/industrial design g