5 ms·

I have not been with MIT in years. I had a successful exit not too long after graduation, and I've been spending most of my earnings on this project. As an und

by 15ai 4y ago

I have not been with MIT in years. I had a successful exit not too long after graduation, and I've been spending most of my earnings on this project. As an undergrad, I was completely broke. I figured that keeping the project free to use was the best thing I could possibly do with my research as I continued to work on it.

zerr 4y ago
Why do you keep it up and burning the money? Can't you continue/do your research without a public website?
- 15ai 4y ago
  >Why do you keep it up and burning the money? I can afford it. >Can't you continue/do your research without a public website? Yes, but the website has multiple purposes. It serves as a proof of concept of a platform that allows anyone to create content, even if they can't hire someone to voice their projects. It also demonstrates the progress of my research in a far more engaging manner - by being able to use the actual model, you can discover things about it that even I wasn't aware of (such as getting characters to make gasping noises or moans by placing commas in between certain phonemes). It also doesn't let me get away with picking and choosing the best results and showing off only the ones that work (which I believe is a big problem endemic in ML today - it's disingenuous and misleading). Being able to interact with the model with no filter allows the user to judge exactly how good the current work is at face value.
  - junon 4y ago
    Despite others here, I personally certainly think this is admirable. I've played with your models a long time ago with some colleagues of mine and we were all shocked how good it was, and that it was free. I'm no stranger to passion projects, I have a lot of respect for people like you. This is great stuff.
    - 15ai 4y ago
      Thank you for the kind words. I know that HN is a tough crowd to please (I myself as well), so I hope that my next update will be well worth working for.
      - vsnf 4y ago
        The Rise model in particular is amazingly good quality. I pranked a friend with some text from her a few minutes ago and he chastised me for wasting my money on hiring voice actors just to troll him. So, excellent job.
mixermachine 4y ago
Have you thought about other hosters? Maybe try contabo.com or hetzner.com Should be a lot cheaper if you mainly need CPU power.
- 15ai 4y ago
  Unfortunately, this is mostly run on the GPU. Believe it or not, AWS was by far the cheapest.
  - ellieh 4y ago
    Hetzner sometimes have GPU instances available on their auction site, and if you get in touch with them they can sometimes sort something out! They used to sell them openly, but coin mining ruined that :(
  - funkycolemedina 4y ago
    Lambda Labs offers both on-demand and reserved instances that are much cheaper than other providers - https://lambdalabs.com/service/gpu-cloud/pricing https://lambdalabs.com/service/gpu-cloud/pricing

by 15ai 4y ago

zerr 4y ago

Why do you keep it up and burning the money? Can't you continue/do your research without a public website?

15ai 4y ago
>Why do you keep it up and burning the money? I can afford it. >Can't you continue/do your research without a public website? Yes, but the website has multiple purposes. It serves as a proof of concept of a platform that allows anyone to create content, even if they can't hire someone to voice their projects. It also demonstrates the progress of my research in a far more engaging manner - by being able to use the actual model, you can discover things about it that even I wasn't aware of (such as getting characters to make gasping noises or moans by placing commas in between certain phonemes). It also doesn't let me get away with picking and choosing the best results and showing off only the ones that work (which I believe is a big problem endemic in ML today - it's disingenuous and misleading). Being able to interact with the model with no filter allows the user to judge exactly how good the current work is at face value.
- junon 4y ago
  Despite others here, I personally certainly think this is admirable. I've played with your models a long time ago with some colleagues of mine and we were all shocked how good it was, and that it was free. I'm no stranger to passion projects, I have a lot of respect for people like you. This is great stuff.
  - 15ai 4y ago
    Thank you for the kind words. I know that HN is a tough crowd to please (I myself as well), so I hope that my next update will be well worth working for.
    - vsnf 4y ago
      The Rise model in particular is amazingly good quality. I pranked a friend with some text from her a few minutes ago and he chastised me for wasting my money on hiring voice actors just to troll him. So, excellent job.

mixermachine 4y ago

Have you thought about other hosters? Maybe try contabo.com or hetzner.com Should be a lot cheaper if you mainly need CPU power.

15ai 4y ago
Unfortunately, this is mostly run on the GPU. Believe it or not, AWS was by far the cheapest.
- ellieh 4y ago
  Hetzner sometimes have GPU instances available on their auction site, and if you get in touch with them they can sometimes sort something out! They used to sell them openly, but coin mining ruined that :(
- funkycolemedina 4y ago
  Lambda Labs offers both on-demand and reserved instances that are much cheaper than other providers - https://lambdalabs.com/service/gpu-cloud/pricing https://lambdalabs.com/service/gpu-cloud/pricing