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Was Gemini a "disaster"? That seems like too strong of a word. For the first time after trying Gemini 1.5 Pro, I feel like they are turning the ship around. Sur

Was Gemini a "disaster"? That seems like too strong of a word. For the first time after trying Gemini 1.5 Pro, I feel like they are turning the ship around. Sure they haven't caught up to GPT-4 but it does not feel like a joke anymore. Does anyone else feel the same after trying 1.5 Pro? Surely they could do the same for their image generation efforts? Frankly are the "anti-woke" people really that fundamental to where the country is going? Do their complaints even matter all that much? On the US political side, they have been dead wrong in every political prediction since the 2016 election 1. 2018: record election year for the opposition 2. 2020: after a mess in handling covid the incumbent party is kicked out when most recent presdents get two terms 3. 2022: a supposed red wave never materializes. 4. 2024: ? (This is not to mention all the underperformances for every "anti-woke/far right" candidate in special elections). It sounds like they are just a loud minority.

mindslight 3y ago
I'd say you're making an awfully large pigeonhole of "anti-woke". I'm right there with your views on which way the political winds are blowing for the reactionaries and the general uselessness of reactionary populism, but the article and it's first link have some pretty damning factual descriptions. Like I don't see why an image generation tool that mangles every query so it conforms to the political desires of different loud minority is of use to nearly anyone. And sure, the site and its cited twits could be cherry picking the worst examples, to make mountains out of molehills as political hacks tend to do. But it's talking about a notable product at a notable company, so unless those examples were outright faked there is still truth in its criticism. Also I'm old enough to realize that 7 years isn't actually that long of a time, and one of the main reasons we get destructive spite votes like Trump is precisely people's resentment of this overbearing paternalism being pushed on them.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  >I'm right there with your views on which way the political winds are blowing for the reactionaries and the general uselessness of reactionary populism, but the article and it's first link have some pretty damning factual descriptions. Like I don't see why an image generation tool that mangles every query so it conforms to the political desires of different loud minority is of use to nearly anyone. Yes you raise a good point, the tool as it stands is not useful but that was part of my point. Let me restate what I was trying to get at: Less than year ago Bard was also totally useless. Sure as a text based tool, it wasn't as offensive to some people as this image generation tool is but the point still stands. The question we should be asking: Is the tool completely useless to users and if so, how fast are they improving it so that it can be useful? Useful in my mind is: Is the tool solving peoples needs? Clearly the image tool may not be doing so. I personally feel that they have really done a good job improving their offering (Gemini 1.5) in such a short amount of time that I don't feel it is prudent to outright dismiss the possibility that if given some more time, we won't see improvement in their image tool. >And sure, the site and its cited twits could be cherry picking the worst examples, to make mountains out of molehills as political hacks tend to do. But it's talking about a notable product at a notable company, so unless those examples were outright faked there is still truth in its criticism. Yes criticism is absolutely fair...in my opinion it just looks too harsh to me given that it is such a new tool and we all know they are clearly behind. Our expectations are that it needs to instantly be at the level of their competitor when they have proven that they are behind. >Also I'm old enough to realize that 7 years isn't actually that long of a time, and one of the main reasons we get destructive spite votes like Trump is precisely people's resentment of this overbearing paternalism being pushed on them. Well I can't sit here and tell you how the future will play out. There are certainly many unknowns and yes a spite vote like Trump (and even Bernie) comes from a place of serious contention with the status quo. Reality is not playing out like that at this moment though. From a massive high of both right wing populism in 2016 to a massive rise in left wing populism ion 2018 we are also seeing a decline in the populous right/left wing. The online media landscape for both sides started shrinking after 2020's election, there is no real long term leader on either side on the horizon(Trump is on his way out and Bernie had two chances, now he too is at the end of his life), increasing amounts of infighting is eating both the left and right wing from the inside out and this year the left wing has been reduced to defending what little gains they did make in 2018/2020 while the far right has lost so much to the middle since 2016.
not_really 3y ago
Nah,
raxxorraxor 3y ago
> Was Gemini a "disaster"? Not for those that demand such politicized images, I suppose. But on all other metrics pretty much yes. At least their leadership said the responses were "completely unacceptable". I don't get your reference to elections at all, it doesn't seem to make sense in context of your first question.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  >Not for those that demand such politicized images, I suppose. But on all other metrics pretty much yes. What other metrics are you justifying on? In previous comments I detailed my testing of Gemini 1.5 Pro and it shows significant improvement over Gemini 1.0 and Bard. My target is matching the ability of GPT-4 in my personal set of benchmark tests. It isn't there yet but going from 0 tests passed with Bard to 6 tests passed with Gemini 1.5 is a significant improvement in my mind. [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565128 >I don't get your reference to elections at all, it doesn't seem to make sense in context of your first question. My claim is that the people complaining the most about what pictures Gemini are generating are part of one side of the US political aisle that is focusing on the content of these images and not any sort of technical improvements or failings. I am led to believe they are a loud minority based on their election performance over the last seven years. Calling gemini a "disaster" as the article does is too strong of a word given what I have seen with Gemini 1.5 Pro.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    > My claim is that the people complaining the most about what pictures Gemini are generating are part of one side of the US political aisle I believe this to be a vast simplification and a lacking perspective, but of course there are countless reasons why a certain political aisle would leverage such stories. > Calling gemini a "disaster" as the article does is too strong of a word given what I have seen with Gemini 1.5 Pro. "completely unacceptable" was a quote from the Google CEO on the topic of image generation. That the performance of Gemini is not the topic is part of that. The story isn't about any performance metrics of LLMs, it is about how it did generate some controversial images. And that is indeed the larger question compared to how well it performs because there are more implications than a good test score.

mindslight 3y ago

I'd say you're making an awfully large pigeonhole of "anti-woke". I'm right there with your views on which way the political winds are blowing for the reactionaries and the general uselessness of reactionary populism, but the article and it's first link have some pretty damning factual descriptions. Like I don't see why an image generation tool that mangles every query so it conforms to the political desires of different loud minority is of use to nearly anyone. And sure, the site and its cited twits could be cherry picking the worst examples, to make mountains out of molehills as political hacks tend to do. But it's talking about a notable product at a notable company, so unless those examples were outright faked there is still truth in its criticism. Also I'm old enough to realize that 7 years isn't actually that long of a time, and one of the main reasons we get destructive spite votes like Trump is precisely people's resentment of this overbearing paternalism being pushed on them.

nebula8804 3y ago
>I'm right there with your views on which way the political winds are blowing for the reactionaries and the general uselessness of reactionary populism, but the article and it's first link have some pretty damning factual descriptions. Like I don't see why an image generation tool that mangles every query so it conforms to the political desires of different loud minority is of use to nearly anyone. Yes you raise a good point, the tool as it stands is not useful but that was part of my point. Let me restate what I was trying to get at: Less than year ago Bard was also totally useless. Sure as a text based tool, it wasn't as offensive to some people as this image generation tool is but the point still stands. The question we should be asking: Is the tool completely useless to users and if so, how fast are they improving it so that it can be useful? Useful in my mind is: Is the tool solving peoples needs? Clearly the image tool may not be doing so. I personally feel that they have really done a good job improving their offering (Gemini 1.5) in such a short amount of time that I don't feel it is prudent to outright dismiss the possibility that if given some more time, we won't see improvement in their image tool. >And sure, the site and its cited twits could be cherry picking the worst examples, to make mountains out of molehills as political hacks tend to do. But it's talking about a notable product at a notable company, so unless those examples were outright faked there is still truth in its criticism. Yes criticism is absolutely fair...in my opinion it just looks too harsh to me given that it is such a new tool and we all know they are clearly behind. Our expectations are that it needs to instantly be at the level of their competitor when they have proven that they are behind. >Also I'm old enough to realize that 7 years isn't actually that long of a time, and one of the main reasons we get destructive spite votes like Trump is precisely people's resentment of this overbearing paternalism being pushed on them. Well I can't sit here and tell you how the future will play out. There are certainly many unknowns and yes a spite vote like Trump (and even Bernie) comes from a place of serious contention with the status quo. Reality is not playing out like that at this moment though. From a massive high of both right wing populism in 2016 to a massive rise in left wing populism ion 2018 we are also seeing a decline in the populous right/left wing. The online media landscape for both sides started shrinking after 2020's election, there is no real long term leader on either side on the horizon(Trump is on his way out and Bernie had two chances, now he too is at the end of his life), increasing amounts of infighting is eating both the left and right wing from the inside out and this year the left wing has been reduced to defending what little gains they did make in 2018/2020 while the far right has lost so much to the middle since 2016.

not_really 3y ago

Nah,

raxxorraxor 3y ago

> Was Gemini a "disaster"? Not for those that demand such politicized images, I suppose. But on all other metrics pretty much yes. At least their leadership said the responses were "completely unacceptable". I don't get your reference to elections at all, it doesn't seem to make sense in context of your first question.

nebula8804 3y ago
>Not for those that demand such politicized images, I suppose. But on all other metrics pretty much yes. What other metrics are you justifying on? In previous comments I detailed my testing of Gemini 1.5 Pro and it shows significant improvement over Gemini 1.0 and Bard. My target is matching the ability of GPT-4 in my personal set of benchmark tests. It isn't there yet but going from 0 tests passed with Bard to 6 tests passed with Gemini 1.5 is a significant improvement in my mind. [0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565128 >I don't get your reference to elections at all, it doesn't seem to make sense in context of your first question. My claim is that the people complaining the most about what pictures Gemini are generating are part of one side of the US political aisle that is focusing on the content of these images and not any sort of technical improvements or failings. I am led to believe they are a loud minority based on their election performance over the last seven years. Calling gemini a "disaster" as the article does is too strong of a word given what I have seen with Gemini 1.5 Pro.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  > My claim is that the people complaining the most about what pictures Gemini are generating are part of one side of the US political aisle I believe this to be a vast simplification and a lacking perspective, but of course there are countless reasons why a certain political aisle would leverage such stories. > Calling gemini a "disaster" as the article does is too strong of a word given what I have seen with Gemini 1.5 Pro. "completely unacceptable" was a quote from the Google CEO on the topic of image generation. That the performance of Gemini is not the topic is part of that. The story isn't about any performance metrics of LLMs, it is about how it did generate some controversial images. And that is indeed the larger question compared to how well it performs because there are more implications than a good test score.