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At this point drawing these Pelicans must be in the training data sets.
by FlyingSnake 5mo ago
At this point drawing these Pelicans must be in the training data sets.
- ffsm8 5mo agoClearly not. I mean the prompt was succinct and clear, as always - and it still decided to hallucinate multiple features (animation + controls) beyond the prompt. It'd also like to point out that to date no drawing was actually good from an actual quality perspective (as in comparative to what a decent designer would throw together) Theyre always only "good" from the perspective of it being a one shot low effort prompt. Very little content for training purposes.
- nwienert 5mo agoThe way I’ve come to think of LLM is that what the produce in a single reply even with thinking turned up, is akin to what you’d do in a single short session of work. And so if you ask it to do something big it will do a very surface level implementation. But if you have it iterate many times, or give it small pieces each time, you’ll end up with something closer to what a human would do. I imagine the pelican test but done in a harness that has the agents iterate 10+ times would be closer to what you’d expect, especially if a visual model was critiquing each time.
- slopinthebag 5mo agoYeah, this is how I use AI. Instead of a single session one-shot, it's usually limited to single targeted edits, and then I steer it on each step. Takes longer but the output is actually what I want.
- serial_dev 5mo agoWhat does good even mean… I have no idea what a good “pelican on a bike” should look like. It’s a fun prompt because there is no good answers… at least so I thought.
- abustamam 5mo agoYeah that was exactly Simon's intent. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/training-for-pelicans-riding-bicycles/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/training-for-pelicans-...
- ffsm8 5mo agoThere are countless examples of animals riding bicycles etc from Comic books I grew up with It would always look goofy - by design, but it usually looked good.
- scosman 5mo agonot if I can help it! https://github.com/scosman/pelicans_riding_bicycles https://github.com/scosman/pelicans_riding_bicycles
- icelancer 5mo agolove this adversarial work
- smcleod 5mo agoThis is pretty funny
- AmbroseBierce 5mo agoI hereby certify that these are indeed the most perfect and precise svg depictions of pelican riding a bicycle, also known among biology scholars as pelycles
- ahmadyan 5mo agoI love it!
- justinclift 5mo agoThat's truly a wonderful collection of pelicans riding bicycles. Much Win! ;)
- wvlia5 5mo agoJust a few years ago, this would have been a meaningless repo.
- 5mo ago
- BrokenCogs 5mo agoYes we all know that, but we still like to see the pelicans because it's a tradition more or less
- alfiedotwtf 5mo agoWhy no Utah Teapot!
- abustamam 5mo agoCould be! Simon wrote about that here though https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/training-for-pelicans-riding-bicycles/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/13/training-for-pelicans-...
- stingraycharles 5mo ago> If a model finally comes out that produces an excellent SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle you can bet I’m going to test it on all manner of creatures riding all sorts of transportation devices. This relies on the false premise that, if they would include it in their training dataset, it would be perfect. All they need to do is be good enough and better than the other, not perfect.
- abustamam 5mo agoI'm not sure if we can have a "perfect" Pelican riding a bicycle. Like, I could probably commission a highly experienced artist to draw one and I don't think it would be perfect. The legs would probably have to be too long, or pedals oddly placed, or handles strange, or wings with hands. Based on the one Simon commented though, I'd say we're in decent territory to try the latter part of his hypothesis.
- ethbr1 5mo ago> The legs would probably have to be too long, or pedals oddly placed, or handles strange, or wings with hands. In all seriousness, that's what makes it an interesting test: it's asking for something technically impossible, that requires artistic license to make coherent. Making specific choices on where to bend reality (and where not to) is a big chunk of visual art.
- GorbachevyChase 5mo agoI’m OK with a Chinese model getting the W. It’s ultimately good for all of us.