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What really amazes me is that, with all the money thrown at AI scams, the small group of "hero" generative AI tool maintainers on GitHub barely gets any funding

What really amazes me is that, with all the money thrown at AI scams, the small group of "hero" generative AI tool maintainers on GitHub barely gets any funding. There are a few exceptions (like TheBloke getting funded for their quants, and GGML getting some seed money)... But stuff like InvokeAI, VoltaMl, koboldcpp/artbot and the AI Horde, Petals, the ControlNet dev and such should all be swimming in cash, but instead they are burnt out with basically nothing. And I'm sure there many more I don't know about.

mrweasel 3y ago
Wasn't that the same outcome of the blockchain hype? Crypto-bros ran of with the money and a few developers getting little or no funding plucked away on GitHub. The main difference is that I see way fewer people defending the A.I. hype and people are generally much more critical and realistic about the application of LLMs.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  These tools are actually great and useful though, right now. I wasn't as into crypto, but I mostly remember the tools being "neat right now, and very useful in the future." Stable Diffusion in particular has a huge community using it clustered around CivitAI, its just flying under the radar.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Stable Diffusion in particular has a huge community using it clustered around CivitAI While CivitAI has some monetization and may itself be doing well between that and whatever capital it has available to burn befor eit needs to be self-supporting, I get the sense that most of the creators tuning models and sharing there are scrambling for support, so I'm not sure that's really a refutation.
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      No, its not a sustainable business at all. But the population is huge. And most of the finetuners/mergerers are indeed not making much money, but (IMO) they are closer to "power users" than open source code maintainers, and shouldn't necessarily be raking money in like they are a lynchpin.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
Don't tell the normies this! They're all shockingly easy to talk to or work with right now. Another reason why they are skirting under the radar is that many of those kind of folks are, shall we say, somewhat unsavory. Consider Automatic1111 is also famous for racist rimworld mods, actively credits 4chan in the developers, and uses ho-chi-min as a github profile picture, meaning he's either Vietnamese or a deranged communist (or maybe even both!) The reality is that a ton of AI innovation is happening on discord by people with anime profile pictures whose entire reason for their obsession with this stuff comes down to chasing dopamine rushes - and hardly anyone outside of the space knows about it!
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  First of all, sd-web-ui is not an example I was thinking of because it has a troublesome licensing history, the codebase is a hot mess, and it is insanely popular, among other things. It has no bushiness getting VC funding for many reasons, lol. But: > also famous for racist rimworld mods Not at all. Buzzy social media reported this, but... uh, the Rimworld modding community is hard to explain, but Automatic's "white only" mod isn't really white only, and isn't even a blip on the seedy modding radar. His modding style kinda resembles the GitHub SD project though. > actively credits 4chan in the developers So what? > ho-chi-min as a github profile picture It was his Steam profile before sd-web-ui, and so what if he is Vietnamese? > The reality is that a ton of AI innovation is happening on discord by people with anime profile pictures whose entire reason for their obsession with this stuff comes down to chasing dopamine rushes - and hardly anyone outside of the space knows about it! Yeah this is true, lol. Its not all fappers and anime waifu makers though, the "discord" push behind the UIs and augmentations is pretty diverse.

mrweasel 3y ago

Wasn't that the same outcome of the blockchain hype? Crypto-bros ran of with the money and a few developers getting little or no funding plucked away on GitHub. The main difference is that I see way fewer people defending the A.I. hype and people are generally much more critical and realistic about the application of LLMs.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
These tools are actually great and useful though, right now. I wasn't as into crypto, but I mostly remember the tools being "neat right now, and very useful in the future." Stable Diffusion in particular has a huge community using it clustered around CivitAI, its just flying under the radar.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Stable Diffusion in particular has a huge community using it clustered around CivitAI While CivitAI has some monetization and may itself be doing well between that and whatever capital it has available to burn befor eit needs to be self-supporting, I get the sense that most of the creators tuning models and sharing there are scrambling for support, so I'm not sure that's really a refutation.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    No, its not a sustainable business at all. But the population is huge. And most of the finetuners/mergerers are indeed not making much money, but (IMO) they are closer to "power users" than open source code maintainers, and shouldn't necessarily be raking money in like they are a lynchpin.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

Don't tell the normies this! They're all shockingly easy to talk to or work with right now. Another reason why they are skirting under the radar is that many of those kind of folks are, shall we say, somewhat unsavory. Consider Automatic1111 is also famous for racist rimworld mods, actively credits 4chan in the developers, and uses ho-chi-min as a github profile picture, meaning he's either Vietnamese or a deranged communist (or maybe even both!) The reality is that a ton of AI innovation is happening on discord by people with anime profile pictures whose entire reason for their obsession with this stuff comes down to chasing dopamine rushes - and hardly anyone outside of the space knows about it!

brucethemoose2 3y ago
First of all, sd-web-ui is not an example I was thinking of because it has a troublesome licensing history, the codebase is a hot mess, and it is insanely popular, among other things. It has no bushiness getting VC funding for many reasons, lol. But: > also famous for racist rimworld mods Not at all. Buzzy social media reported this, but... uh, the Rimworld modding community is hard to explain, but Automatic's "white only" mod isn't really white only, and isn't even a blip on the seedy modding radar. His modding style kinda resembles the GitHub SD project though. > actively credits 4chan in the developers So what? > ho-chi-min as a github profile picture It was his Steam profile before sd-web-ui, and so what if he is Vietnamese? > The reality is that a ton of AI innovation is happening on discord by people with anime profile pictures whose entire reason for their obsession with this stuff comes down to chasing dopamine rushes - and hardly anyone outside of the space knows about it! Yeah this is true, lol. Its not all fappers and anime waifu makers though, the "discord" push behind the UIs and augmentations is pretty diverse.