5 ms·

Agreed. At the end of the article I also described a bit how I would see the evolution of such a tool, and it looks like we're thinking very similarly. --- T

Agreed. At the end of the article I also described a bit how I would see the evolution of such a tool, and it looks like we're thinking very similarly. --- Though I think the real breakthrough will come when Dall-e gets 10-100x cheaper (and faster). I would then envision the following process of working with it (which is really just an optimization on top of what I’ve been doing now): 1. You write a phrase. 2. You are shown a hundred pictures for that phrase, preferably from very different regions of the latent space. 3. You select the ones best matching what you want. 4. Go back to 2, 4-5 times, getting better results every time. 5. Now you can write a phrase for what you would like to change (edit) and the original image would be used as the baseline. Go back to 2 until happy.

jherrmann 4y ago
yomkippur 4y ago
I see this happening in all areas. Everything would be prompt-driven. Do you like this? What about this? You simply nod or reject the solutions that you don't want. Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. One day enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no. I am worried that the middle class is rapidly disappearing. We will own nothing and be happy seems quite ominous. The question is then what field is safe from advancements in AI? The only field I can think of is doctors, lawyers, executives, buy-side money managers. Even their jobs will be partially automated but it will be safe as long as they generate revenue.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. Every art director at an ad agency just shrieked!
  - bigfudge 4y ago
    I doubt it, because the process of thinking of phrases to feed dall-e is really the hard bit. This is ok for a logo like this where it’s fair to say the base level expectation is not super creative. This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error. Q: Are there really logos out there that are "interesting and novel" and that "stand out or make the product [..] distinctive"? Which ones? EDIT: (perhaps more importantly) are there interesting, novel, distinctive logos that actually contribute to profitability?
      - notahacker 4y ago
        tbf I think when it comes to big company branding it's the opposite. A lot of GPT iterations of the design has left the article author with something which is quirkier than your average logo, but also looks like clipart and probably doesn't scale up or down well or work in monochrome. Which is fine for OSS. (He might get more users from blog traffic about using GPT-3 to design his logo than he ever could from any other logo anyway) But when it comes to bigger companies, the design agency are the people that sit in meetings with execs persuading them that a well chosen font and a silhouette of a much simplified octopus will work much better ("but maybe the arms could interact with some of the letters etc etc, now lets discuss colours). The actual technical bit of drawing it is the bit that's already relatively cheaply and easily outsourced, and plenty of corporate logos are wordmarks that don't even need to be drawn...
- irrational 4y ago
  But, if everyone's jobs are automated, nobody is making any money, so nobody has any money to pay doctors, lawyers, executives, money managers, etc. You would think that if these types were thinking rationally, they would be fighting to expand the middle class so more people can pay for their services.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    In the past, eliminating humans from one set of jobs has been balanced by a new set of opportunities for humans in different jobs. Usually, the new jobs are more valuable. That's not utopianism. The new jobs can't always be filled by the people kicked out of jobs. It really sucks to be them. But it does mean that it's not irrational for people to want to automate other people's jobs. The net amount of stuff generated increases, rather than decreases. This pattern may not last forever. There's already some thought that we've generated more than enough stuff to guarantee a decent standard of living to everybody (at least in the developed world) without working, and plenty more for luxuries if people choose to work. Even if we haven't reached it, we appear to be heading in that direction sooner rather than later. That may cause a radical re-think at some point. And it won't be seriously delayed by making sure cartoonists have jobs.
    - visarga 4y ago
      > enough stuff to guarantee a decent standard of living to everybody It's not a zero sum game. There's still growth in us. We'll go to space and expand 1000x more, the space has plenty of resources, and humans will have jobs working together with AI.
      - logifail 4y ago
        > There's still growth in us. We'll go to space and expand 1000x more, the space has plenty of resources, and humans will have jobs [..] Q: Am I the only one thinking of Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?
      - nyhc99 4y ago
        We'll have to automate childcare to make that happen. Otherwise, the birthrates of the rest of the world will follow the countries with the highest standards of living on a wild plunge into unsustainability.
- iaml 4y ago
  You don’t need nodding or really any conscious reaction I think. It should be possible to have some camera directed at face hooked up to another AI that catches slight changes in pupil dilation or other changes imperceptible to naked eye and registers when something looks interesting to the user. You can then quickly show a stream of variations and pick the tagged ones and use them to improve the guesses. I imagine something like this might one day become a preferred way of interacting with computers/AI.
- stevage 4y ago
  Doctors are very vulnerable. Most of dermatology is simple pattern recognition. I can easily see AI lawyers beating human lawyers in litigation, too. An AI lawyer will have read every single case and know the outcomes, and can fine tune arguments for specific parameters like which judge etc.
  - closewith 4y ago
    > Most of dermatology is simple pattern recognition. I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
    - hestefisk 4y ago
      What on earth are you referring to? I assume it’s some sort of implicit joke but I don’t get it :) Edit: Ahh, it’s the Dropbox comment of HN fame. Never mind.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > Everything would be prompt-driven. Just like in Star Trek. They really knew what the end goal was didn't they. > enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no Tbf a program averaging the market for a fact gives better returns than most of the financial industry, yet they still exist. Even if we can automate something doesn't mean we will, usually for pointless emotional reasons. But on the other hand it's hard to say if in a 100 years humans will still be employable in any practical capacity for literally anything.
cpeterso 4y ago
This workflow reminds me of a generative art program from the early 1990s, but I just can't remember its name. It was a DOS or Windows program that had a very curvy, fluid GUI with different graphics sliders. It would show you some random tiles and you choose one to guide the algorithm's next generation of tiles.
- VladimirGolovin 4y ago
  Kai's Power Tools.
  - shon 4y ago
    +1 what a great program
  - qwertox 4y ago
    I wonder if Kai Krause lurks here at HN. I'd love to know how he's doing. Apparently he's still living in his castle, which he bought around 1999 [0]. Some-when in the 00's I read an article about him that he was putting advanced networking stuff into the castle and had the intention to start something like a "think-tank" (doesn't really fit it, but I don't know what I'd call it) where he and others would hang around and code stuff. I found the article [1] from July 2002, "Lord of the Castle Kai Krause presents Byteburg II". > So that 's Kai Krause's long-cherished plan: Now the software guru has finally opened a center for founders and developers from the IT and software industry in Hemmersbach Castle near Cologne -- the Byteburg II I really wonder what he's doing to these days. His plug-ins were legendary, as well as the User Interface for Bryce [2] [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krau... [1, google translate] https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)
    - 4y ago
Iv 4y ago
It will get cheaper. On 5 years it will run on your phone
WhitneyLand 4y ago
Given the stochastic way it works I wonder how the randomness is seeded for a certain phrase. In other words, if another person needed a logo and used the same phrase how long on average until they get a duplicate of your image?
- cube2222 4y ago
  Since the image is RGB 1024x1024, and the random seed is noise (as it is for diffusion models), I guess it would be quite long.
- nodja 4y ago
  The model starts from 64x64 8bit RGB image of noise (random pixels) so technically 1 in 3_145_728 (64x64x256x3) but most will probably be very close to each other as the color difference won't be that much. The image is then further upsampled by two other models which will change some details, but shouldn't affect the general composition of an image.
  - spyder 4y ago
    Maybe I'm wrong, but with these diffusion models there is randomness in every sampling step too not just in the initialization and they can have 1000 steps to generate a single image.
    - nodja 4y ago
      Ah good point, this would introduce more variation if the initial noise is close, but if the initial noise is exactly the same it probably means it was initialized with the same seed and the rest of the generation will be the same since the random algorithms are deterministic.

jherrmann 4y ago

yomkippur 4y ago

I see this happening in all areas. Everything would be prompt-driven. Do you like this? What about this? You simply nod or reject the solutions that you don't want. Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. One day enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no. I am worried that the middle class is rapidly disappearing. We will own nothing and be happy seems quite ominous. The question is then what field is safe from advancements in AI? The only field I can think of is doctors, lawyers, executives, buy-side money managers. Even their jobs will be partially automated but it will be safe as long as they generate revenue.

dylan604 4y ago
>Pretty soon somebody's expertise and experience is not going to be enough to continue paying them what they used to get before this magic blackbox appeared. Every art director at an ad agency just shrieked!
- bigfudge 4y ago
  I doubt it, because the process of thinking of phrases to feed dall-e is really the hard bit. This is ok for a logo like this where it’s fair to say the base level expectation is not super creative. This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > This logo is cool, but it doesn’t really stand out or make the product ver distinctive. If I am running a hobby or OS project that’s fine, but if I was investing a lot in sales/marketing then paying a real artist to make something interesting and novel is a rounding error. Q: Are there really logos out there that are "interesting and novel" and that "stand out or make the product [..] distinctive"? Which ones? EDIT: (perhaps more importantly) are there interesting, novel, distinctive logos that actually contribute to profitability?
    - notahacker 4y ago
      tbf I think when it comes to big company branding it's the opposite. A lot of GPT iterations of the design has left the article author with something which is quirkier than your average logo, but also looks like clipart and probably doesn't scale up or down well or work in monochrome. Which is fine for OSS. (He might get more users from blog traffic about using GPT-3 to design his logo than he ever could from any other logo anyway) But when it comes to bigger companies, the design agency are the people that sit in meetings with execs persuading them that a well chosen font and a silhouette of a much simplified octopus will work much better ("but maybe the arms could interact with some of the letters etc etc, now lets discuss colours). The actual technical bit of drawing it is the bit that's already relatively cheaply and easily outsourced, and plenty of corporate logos are wordmarks that don't even need to be drawn...
irrational 4y ago
But, if everyone's jobs are automated, nobody is making any money, so nobody has any money to pay doctors, lawyers, executives, money managers, etc. You would think that if these types were thinking rationally, they would be fighting to expand the middle class so more people can pay for their services.
- jfengel 4y ago
  In the past, eliminating humans from one set of jobs has been balanced by a new set of opportunities for humans in different jobs. Usually, the new jobs are more valuable. That's not utopianism. The new jobs can't always be filled by the people kicked out of jobs. It really sucks to be them. But it does mean that it's not irrational for people to want to automate other people's jobs. The net amount of stuff generated increases, rather than decreases. This pattern may not last forever. There's already some thought that we've generated more than enough stuff to guarantee a decent standard of living to everybody (at least in the developed world) without working, and plenty more for luxuries if people choose to work. Even if we haven't reached it, we appear to be heading in that direction sooner rather than later. That may cause a radical re-think at some point. And it won't be seriously delayed by making sure cartoonists have jobs.
  - visarga 4y ago
    > enough stuff to guarantee a decent standard of living to everybody It's not a zero sum game. There's still growth in us. We'll go to space and expand 1000x more, the space has plenty of resources, and humans will have jobs working together with AI.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > There's still growth in us. We'll go to space and expand 1000x more, the space has plenty of resources, and humans will have jobs [..] Q: Am I the only one thinking of Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?
    - nyhc99 4y ago
      We'll have to automate childcare to make that happen. Otherwise, the birthrates of the rest of the world will follow the countries with the highest standards of living on a wild plunge into unsustainability.
iaml 4y ago
You don’t need nodding or really any conscious reaction I think. It should be possible to have some camera directed at face hooked up to another AI that catches slight changes in pupil dilation or other changes imperceptible to naked eye and registers when something looks interesting to the user. You can then quickly show a stream of variations and pick the tagged ones and use them to improve the guesses. I imagine something like this might one day become a preferred way of interacting with computers/AI.
stevage 4y ago
Doctors are very vulnerable. Most of dermatology is simple pattern recognition. I can easily see AI lawyers beating human lawyers in litigation, too. An AI lawyer will have read every single case and know the outcomes, and can fine tune arguments for specific parameters like which judge etc.
- closewith 4y ago
  > Most of dermatology is simple pattern recognition. I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
  - hestefisk 4y ago
    What on earth are you referring to? I assume it’s some sort of implicit joke but I don’t get it :) Edit: Ahh, it’s the Dropbox comment of HN fame. Never mind.
moffkalast 4y ago
> Everything would be prompt-driven. Just like in Star Trek. They really knew what the end goal was didn't they. > enterprises will realize they can just outsource that expert who's been reduced to simply typing prompts and nodding yes or no Tbf a program averaging the market for a fact gives better returns than most of the financial industry, yet they still exist. Even if we can automate something doesn't mean we will, usually for pointless emotional reasons. But on the other hand it's hard to say if in a 100 years humans will still be employable in any practical capacity for literally anything.

cpeterso 4y ago

This workflow reminds me of a generative art program from the early 1990s, but I just can't remember its name. It was a DOS or Windows program that had a very curvy, fluid GUI with different graphics sliders. It would show you some random tiles and you choose one to guide the algorithm's next generation of tiles.

VladimirGolovin 4y ago
Kai's Power Tools.
- shon 4y ago
  +1 what a great program
- qwertox 4y ago
  I wonder if Kai Krause lurks here at HN. I'd love to know how he's doing. Apparently he's still living in his castle, which he bought around 1999 [0]. Some-when in the 00's I read an article about him that he was putting advanced networking stuff into the castle and had the intention to start something like a "think-tank" (doesn't really fit it, but I don't know what I'd call it) where he and others would hang around and code stuff. I found the article [1] from July 2002, "Lord of the Castle Kai Krause presents Byteburg II". > So that 's Kai Krause's long-cherished plan: Now the software guru has finally opened a center for founders and developers from the IT and software industry in Hemmersbach Castle near Cologne -- the Byteburg II I really wonder what he's doing to these days. His plug-ins were legendary, as well as the User Interface for Bryce [2] [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burg_Rheineck [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krau... [1, google translate] https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlossherr-Kai-Krause-praesentiert-Byteburg-II-63592.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/newsticker/meldung/Schlo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryce_(software)
  - 4y ago

Iv 4y ago

It will get cheaper. On 5 years it will run on your phone

WhitneyLand 4y ago

Given the stochastic way it works I wonder how the randomness is seeded for a certain phrase. In other words, if another person needed a logo and used the same phrase how long on average until they get a duplicate of your image?

cube2222 4y ago
Since the image is RGB 1024x1024, and the random seed is noise (as it is for diffusion models), I guess it would be quite long.
nodja 4y ago
The model starts from 64x64 8bit RGB image of noise (random pixels) so technically 1 in 3_145_728 (64x64x256x3) but most will probably be very close to each other as the color difference won't be that much. The image is then further upsampled by two other models which will change some details, but shouldn't affect the general composition of an image.
- spyder 4y ago
  Maybe I'm wrong, but with these diffusion models there is randomness in every sampling step too not just in the initialization and they can have 1000 steps to generate a single image.
  - nodja 4y ago
    Ah good point, this would introduce more variation if the initial noise is close, but if the initial noise is exactly the same it probably means it was initialized with the same seed and the rest of the generation will be the same since the random algorithms are deterministic.