Post ASeOKJ3cLPIKqRBDvc by film_girl@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by film_girl@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ASe5AHZN7gOuCnXW88 by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T18:45:59Z
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I've been thinking about generative AI tools as "bicycles for the mind" (to borrow an old Steve Jobs line), but I think "electric bicycles for the mind" might be more appropriateThey can accelerate your natural abilities, you have to learn how to use them, they can give you a significant boost that some people might feel is a bit of a cheat, and they're also quite dangerous if you're not careful with them!
(DIR) Post #ASe5iZkC3aHyQ0xBA0 by davew@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T18:50:55Z
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@simon I try to be as careful with AI tools as I am with all sources of information. I don't bet on the value of the info until I trust it. I have learned the hard way to always be critical of what doctors tell you to do. They don't have a real stake in the outcome, you do.It's no different from anything else, I'm pretty confident in that. More here.http://scripting.com/2023/02/13/144105.html
(DIR) Post #ASe5vC31TE08grmG4u by llPK@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T18:51:41Z
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@simon I don’t know, because you can actually own an electric bike. But you can’t own generative AI tools as an individual. So it’s more like a bike you could rent in a world where no bike is for sale, somehow ?😅
(DIR) Post #ASe69qrQWdpzK8LKhk by masukomi@connectified.com
2023-02-13T18:53:16Z
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@simon re "electric bicicles for the mind" 100%example from yesterday: I'm writing a new role-playing game. I need a long list of "magical mishaps". I could write it from scratch, but it's only fun for the first 10 or so and then it's a frustrating slog. I was able to get Chat-GPT to give me a long list of great ideas that i could use a starting points, and radically expedite the end result. But yeah, very dangerous if you assume anything it gives you is "true".
(DIR) Post #ASe6bPKuSEHi4BGzmy by MossyDev@hachyderm.io
2023-02-13T18:57:51Z
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@simon thanks for sharing your AI explorations, as they help paint a more detailed picture.Totally agree that learning to use AI is a skill. Trying to encourage people around me to query because the inflection point between AI and search may arrive very quickly. People with their heads down may be caught off guard.What a time to be alive.
(DIR) Post #ASe6mv3YrMebd8eDsO by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T18:58:03Z
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@llPK depends on the tool - I can run Stable Diffusion on my iPhone and Mac nowI'd love to be able to run a large language model but those are still mostly way too big, though I've had some small wins https://simonwillison.net/2023/Feb/9/weeknotes/)
(DIR) Post #ASe6yMWT563I06coro by ryan_serpico@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T19:00:06Z
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@simon this is an excellent way to think about it!
(DIR) Post #ASe9HywYepWSZTJNia by aaron@social.huslage.com
2023-02-13T19:32:00Z
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@simon it's great at writing code for gluing things together when I don't want to have to think about it.
(DIR) Post #ASeEikEXxKqeXTJ3zM by JoeBeam@mas.to
2023-02-13T20:32:49Z
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@simon Baby Steps, baby steps.
(DIR) Post #ASeFwkvMHksiglZmuO by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T19:04:23Z
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@davew @simon fully agree with both of you. It’s neither the savior nor the end of humanity as boosters/skeptics want to say, it’s a tool. And as Dave says, there is a place. And I find it all exciting. But it is a tool like anything else.
(DIR) Post #ASeFwmS0bqapQJrNRI by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T19:16:53Z
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@davew @simon also, like you Dave, getting an encyclopedia as a kid (Encarta on CD-ROM to replace the expensive World Books my parents bought in the 80s) was like magic. I’d spend all day on the computer looking stuff up. I still miss Encarta sometimes (and the movie focused Cinemania, a sort of IMDb but with clips and Roger Ebert reviews). If I were 10 years old now, I’d be absolutely obsessed with ChatGPT. Heck, I’m obsessed with Copilot now.
(DIR) Post #ASeFwnq9RZUzjUAAi0 by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T19:17:17Z
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@davew @simon It needs to be fact-checked and we need to be able to discern reality from fiction, but that’s true with everything.
(DIR) Post #ASeFwooPpVhkkOMIds by timswan@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T20:39:15Z
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@film_girl @davew @simon It’s true that the ability to discern reality from fiction is always important, but for the written word that has traditionally been the role of editors and fact-checkers. When an AI is trained on a corpus of unknown provenance it can be much, much, harder to know what is true.
(DIR) Post #ASeFwqb1CIB0HQ6d2O by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T20:45:31Z
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@timswan @film_girl @davew it's even worse than that though: even if all of the information it was trained on was correct the language models can still hallucinate, because all they're doing is trying to come up with statistically likely sentences of text - they figure out what word would most likely come next in the sequence and output thatSo even if there were no errors at all in their training text they would still be able to confidently output falsehoods
(DIR) Post #ASeHkypaxAaqFoOQwC by llPK@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T21:05:46Z
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@simon okay, definitely didn’t know that, thanks for enlightening me! At least there is some sense of ownership at times.
(DIR) Post #ASeJ4sJwy6XToAdrcG by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T21:21:37Z
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@simon @film_girl I’d say too that if you only ever ride an electric bicycle, you’d not have the same skill set as people that learned on the “original”. You’d always be lacking that perspective and ability…
(DIR) Post #ASeK42wi4wgQQTwMUa by amills@mastodon.oeru.org
2023-02-13T21:32:42Z
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@simon there’s one key difference. An electric bike can get you to the same place as a regular one, but a language model will influence what kind of writing come out and what ideas are expressed. It may well not get you to the ideas you might have arrived at through the organic writing process.
(DIR) Post #ASeKQv1hgnEEWbBN8y by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T21:34:39Z
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If you like, there's a more cynical version of this where they are electric scooters for the mind: rushed to market without due diligence, irresponsibly dumped throughout cities around the world, quite impressively dangerous, loved by some and a menace to others
(DIR) Post #ASeLYWMpM71UJfFfdo by sil@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T21:49:44Z
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@simon ...and the actual technology is maybe ok! but the issues described are mostly a result of all the examples we see being pushed by rampant VC Valley types
(DIR) Post #ASeLjXquAruQ6jZpqa by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T21:51:47Z
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@sil yeah the neat thing about the scooter analogy is that solving that last mile problem really is extremely valuable, but this might not be the right way to actually do it, especially given the technology in its current form
(DIR) Post #ASeMECo8T4EbodtxxI by cedricr@piaille.fr
2023-02-13T21:57:02Z
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@simon more like diesel chainsaws I'd say...
(DIR) Post #ASeOKJ3cLPIKqRBDvc by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T21:36:01Z
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@Verxion @simon eh, I don’t think so. That’s like saying that if you can’t code in assembly, you’re not really a programmer. Or that if you can’t conjugate Latin, you’re not a writer. Or that if you can’t drive manual, you cant drive a car. It feels like gatekeeping that really is just about edge cases.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKJbIKCEWWsw7Q8 by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T21:47:46Z
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@film_girl @simon In the case of an electric bike, I’d say that’s probably true that it is probably gatekeeping - you can mostly DO everything with an e-bike that a regular bike can do.In the case of the generative AI tools though, I guess I’m struggling to see it as true gatekeeping. Not saying you are wrong - just that I can’t see it.How do you learn how to draw from having an AI draw for you? Would you necessarily recognize problems with fingers or hands if you’d never drawn? Maybe…
(DIR) Post #ASeOKKGlpzPUbWLF4K by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T21:54:34Z
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@Verxion @simon to me, it’s just like photography. Anyone can take a photo with a Polaroid or a smartphone or whatever, but people who have studied composition and lighting are going to be able to take amazing photos, whether they use a toy camera or a $50,000 lens and body kit.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKLHs3NstlDrdQG by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T21:57:34Z
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@film_girl @simon That’s… precisely what I was trying to convey in this:“I’d say too that if you only ever ride an electric bicycle, you’d not have the same skill set as people that learned on the ‘original’. You’d always be lacking that perspective and ability…”Maybe I’m missing something but it sounds like we are actually on the same page with respect to generative AI, yes? …that was ostensibly what the original toot was about anyway.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKLRRTnXaEuLHLE by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T21:57:50Z
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@Verxion @simon I tend to take pretty good photos. Not as good as @sdw, but my skills are above average. And that’s b/c I studied photography/cinematography and practiced a lot. Seb has put even more time into it and has even more inate skill. The best AI artwork I’ve seen has been from people who are already artists. It just changes the baseline a bit, imho.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKLvDh5MNjGH3ku by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T22:01:20Z
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@Verxion @simon right — I just don’t think you have to learn to ride a regular bike to be able to ride an e-bike well. There are generations of digital photographers who will never touch film cameras but still took the time to learn the craft and to expand on the tool. That’s my point. I don’t think you have to start with the bike. The baseline changes, but that isn’t where it stops. And I’m confident plenty of people will use this as a jumping off point to learn more and hone their skills.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKMZHI9P1jV13C4 by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T22:06:09Z
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@film_girl @simon I see your point and I think I generally agree with you.The part where maybe I differ a bit is what -I- imagine as the general baseline of what we could expect from people using generative AI. Maybe I’m just too overly pessimistic, but I don’t think a large percentage of “generative AI users” are going to put in the time to “learn the craft”.That said, I have zero data to point at to back up my assumption, so… I give it to ya! :)
(DIR) Post #ASeOKN4TQAM9IFbxom by film_girl@mastodon.social
2023-02-13T22:07:56Z
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@Verxion @simon and you might be right! But we could say that about a ton of tools that have made our lives easier. I just have faith that the real auteurs are always going to exist, regardless of what tools or tech is available.
(DIR) Post #ASeOKNgl7oytCzWXUe by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T22:13:24Z
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@film_girl @simon I prefer your way of thinking - it is a more enthusiastic and optimistic vantage point to have. Seriously - thank you very much for explaining your point of view, I sincerely appreciate it!! :)
(DIR) Post #ASeOKOKSkCjxC86FNY by simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
2023-02-13T22:20:42Z
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@Verxion @film_girl something I'm finding interesting about some of the generative art tools is that they're actually really difficult to use effectively - easy to get something pretty out of, very hard to get the thing you were hoping to get from themWatching people who really know what they're doing with tools like midjourney is fascinating
(DIR) Post #ASeOctct7Y0RTQXeqG by Verxion@mas.town
2023-02-13T22:23:20Z
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@simon @film_girl I agree wholeheartedly. I watched with keen interest early on as @stroughtonsmith (on the other site) generated some art and actually shared some of his methodology.
(DIR) Post #ASeOzLq8u3i7LdRtlA by clairegiordano@hachyderm.io
2023-02-13T22:27:40Z
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@simon Your toot about #generativeAI made me curious, Simon, so I looked up the "bicycles for the mind" #quote by #SteveJobs.Am sharing in case anyone else is curious too!The text wouldn't fit so here's a screenshot, for those of you looking for inspiration today. :)Screenshot courtesy of Maria Popova aka @brainpicker and the Marginalian website: