@emilymbender and as for factual questions, since you'd have to fact-check all of its output anyway (not that most users are rigorous about that!) how much time is it actually saving you from just doing the research? it almost feels like part of its appeal is to monetize the ongoing rot of web search engine results quality (itself caused by "AI" initiatives within google et al!) and if so those quality problems will continue to converge (as bad info feeds training data)
@emilymbender as a creative worker i haven't used it, mostly on personal moral grounds (specifically i do not want to add value to openAI's data hoard of "things people ask the oracle) but also because it doesn't seem like nearly as powerful a creative tool as people imagine it to be. everything i've seen people post from their sessions is this milquetoast, satisfying-the-requirements-of-the-assignment-and-no-more slop. people are mostly just amazed that the dog is talking.
https://archive.is/HAIuz relatedly, just a reminder that everyone who identifies with "the grey tribe" has basically galaxy-brained themselves into sharing intellectual company with neoreactionary ghouls. if someone you care about is getting into this shit, sit down with them and talk it out.
"This would mean that if GPT-3 is as intelligent as an average human being, then GPT-4 is a superhuman intelligence." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HguqQSY8mR7NxGopc/2022-was-the-year-agi-arrived-just-don-t-call-it-that great illustration of how iteratively disconnected from reality these people have become, how distorted their notions of "intelligence" are, and how psychologically and culturally invested in those notions they are.
@Hoskingc i expect it will feel as if some company, designing their GDC booth, just used a photo with a giant Shutterstock watermark over it, and everyone who sees it is like "really?", but there are various investors with 10-digit sums on the line who want everyone to do their art like that now and for that to be socially and aesthetically acceptable.
@Hoskingc it's not known what the creative process behind those images was beyond "they used MidJourney" but it seems like the right way to do it would have been to work with one of the many artists they already employ (costume & set people etc) or commission one same as any program, and then the tool used becomes a relatively minor detail. and they almost certainly would've gotten a better quality, more interesting result. i suspect there will be a lot of this kind of thing in the coming years.
@Hoskingc there are tons and tons of cases where something like a website, a marketing campaign, or an event "needs some art" and if the people running it are operating under the default shitty techie framing they will think, oh hey i don't need to pay an artist for any assets i can just whip something up and drop it in. despite being quite well funded the SF ballet's nutcracker production did that this year and the results don't look great. https://www.sfballet.org/tickets/2023-season/program-books/
@Hoskingc replacing someone's actual talents vs replacing someone's place in a paid labor hierarchy are two very different things; i'm 0% worried on behalf of artists about the former and 100% worried about the latter. because we know how little capitalists care about quality when they can save a bit of $$.
@llamasoft_ox there is so much potential truth and beauty in a "homeostatic" society, that has figured out how to live on this planet in a truly long term sustainable way, loves its animals (human and non) and leaves no one behind, cherishes its history and its culture, ever seeks to improve itself but is always willing to learn from its past, gazes at the stars but doesn't try to conquer them, accepts its limits but not without questions. that's the earth i want us humans to work towards.
@kissane any idea if this is true of other clients, eg @Tusky? i'm finding it hard to confirm just looking at my own browser vs this 3rd party app... (tbc my preference would definitely be to see an replies by default - and sorry in advance if this is answered elsewhere in this thread by this very issue!)
boutique handheld discourse has me really wishing there was a homebrew platform that excelled at: - cheap, widely available, open (as much as possible) hardware - SDK + simulator that runs on anything - large community of people hacking on it & sharing knowledge - diverse, welcoming culture that views games as an art form, doesn't care about the boundary between "game" and other stuff
real talk: i remember the Razer Boomslang brand mouse coming out at the turn of the century, and i'd somehow never heard of the snake species "boomslang"; i thought it was either a marketing word made up just for that product, or a silly gamer exclamation - think fragging someone in Quake 3 and yelling "Boomslang!". but nah, it's a snake species! it was years before i found this out, and had a good laugh at my ignorance when i did. https://mastodon.social/@moshboy/109441593430993977
@parismarx tech is pushing on multiple fronts obviously. lately the Financialize Everything (crypto, web3) front has been falling apart of its own accord. and nobody cares much about the Pretend Space Is Habitable front (and hey NASA is doing actual cool shit at the moment that has nothing to do with Bezos et al's colonization dreams). so i think the strongest arm left they have to punch with is the Put Lousy Computer Programs In Charge of Everything (aka "AI") front.
TIL there were at least 3 different dudes running around claiming to be Nero after the real deal kicked the bucket in 68 CE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Nero