Random Thoughts

[vdeane]

In all the years I've been staying in hotels I don't recall ever encountering bed bugs once.

Yep.  Same here.  Although, when I was working in a Minnesota law firm, we did have a case against Best Western for a bat bug (not bed bug) infestation...Nasty tens of bites on the plaintiff (maybe 100?).

I imagine those get mistakenly identified too.  They look practically identical.

[kkt]

Stub Hub took that Cold Play concert incident and came up with the most savage of ads:

https://fb.watch/AW1sPfAhUj/?mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

Go see a Spinal Tap concert, they won't put you on the Jumbotron:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02nFb8koEWbT4LJtS2NqYvo6y6VQjKNRveTrTLJKVukzxSYem7yTtFSmL1zJmXbiiFl&id=61574188131612&mibextid=wwXIfr

Too dumb to be a CEO.  Completely wrong character for being in HR at all.  Too dumb to be a spouse, even too dumb to be an okay lover.

[Max Rockatansky]

Stub Hub took that Cold Play concert incident and came up with the most savage of ads:

https://fb.watch/AW1sPfAhUj/?mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

Go see a Spinal Tap concert, they won't put you on the Jumbotron:

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02nFb8koEWbT4LJtS2NqYvo6y6VQjKNRveTrTLJKVukzxSYem7yTtFSmL1zJmXbiiFl&id=61574188131612&mibextid=wwXIfr

Too dumb to be a CEO.  Completely wrong character for being in HR at all.  Too dumb to be a spouse, even too dumb to be an okay lover.

I would say that he'd be subject to HR disciplinary action but there is a fair chance that was going on behind the scenes already.

[elsmere241]

I would say that he'd be subject to HR disciplinary action but there is a fair chance that was going on behind the scenes already.

Indeed - the company issued a statement this afternoon: https://us.cnn.com/2025/07/18/entertainment/coldplay-concert-kiss-cam-astronomer-investigation

[Max Rockatansky]

I would say that he'd be subject to HR disciplinary action but there is a fair chance that was going on behind the scenes already.

Indeed - the company issued a statement this afternoon: https://us.cnn.com/2025/07/18/entertainment/coldplay-concert-kiss-cam-astronomer-investigation

How dare you take my thinly veiled attempt at HR euphemisms and turn into something actually topical. 

[elsmere241]

I would say that he'd be subject to HR disciplinary action but there is a fair chance that was going on behind the scenes already.

Indeed - the company issued a statement this afternoon: https://us.cnn.com/2025/07/18/entertainment/coldplay-concert-kiss-cam-astronomer-investigation

How dare you take my thinly veiled attempt at HR euphemisms and turn into something actually topical. 

Sorry, I didn't get the joke.

[Max Rockatansky]

Now Yavapai County Emergency Management is getting on the Coldplay concert fun:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1170570075115488&set=a.225190869653418&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr

[Max Rockatansky]

How Joe Namath still a viable spokesman considering his sports playing heyday was when my dad was in high school? 

[Rothman]

How Joe Namath still a viable spokesman considering his sports playing heyday was when my dad was in high school? 

Once Broadway Joe, always Broadway Joe.

[SEWIGuy]

How Joe Namath still a viable spokesman considering his sports playing heyday was when my dad was in high school? 

1. He's never met a product he's not willing to hawk.
2. He's only hawking products meant for people from that generation.

[formulanone]

How Joe Namath still a viable spokesman considering his sports playing heyday was when my dad was in high school? 

1. He's never met a product he's not willing to hawk.
2. He's only hawking products meant for people from that generation.

Shaquille O'Neil will be filling that spot for the next thirty years, I presume. My kids aren't into basketball and TV but they know who he is because he hawks everything just about anywhere.

[kphoger]

All the AI-hating people describing exactly how they can tell every AI-generated image on Facebook is AI-generated just end up feeding the AI machine the exact information it needs to make better AI-generated images.

[Max Rockatansky]

The hyper saturation doesn't help with those AI road photos. 

[Scott5114]

All the AI-hating people describing exactly how they can tell every AI-generated image on Facebook is AI-generated just end up feeding the AI machine the exact information it needs to make better AI-generated images.

Eh, not exactly.

The people responsible for the functioning of the AI machine know very well by this point what is deficient with the images. The problem is that the underlying structure of AI is very similar to that of the "Plinko" board from The Price Is Right. So pointing out what's wrong with the image would be like Drew Carey telling someone "Hey, you're not supposed to drop the chip in the zero slot." The contestant knows that, but  where are they supposed to put the chip to keep that from happening?

Of course, the reason why Plinko works as a game is because there is no starting point that is guaranteed to land any particular place. And that's why I think AI ultimately can't be improved much more than where it is now—the element of randomness that is essential to the function of the software also guarantees it can never be perfect.

[PNWRoadgeek]

Politik by Coldplay is a good song

[kphoger]

Eh, not exactly.

The people responsible for the functioning of the AI machine know very well by this point what is deficient with the images. The problem is that the underlying structure of AI is very similar to that of the "Plinko" board from The Price Is Right. So pointing out what's wrong with the image would be like Drew Carey telling someone "Hey, you're not supposed to drop the chip in the zero slot." The contestant knows that, but  where are they supposed to put the chip to keep that from happening?

Of course, the reason why Plinko works as a game is because there is no starting point that is guaranteed to land any particular place. And that's why I think AI ultimately can't be improved much more than where it is now—the element of randomness that is essential to the function of the software also guarantees it can never be perfect.

I was assuming that the AI machine was learning on its own from everything we've been saying.

[JayhawkCO]

All the AI-hating people describing exactly how they can tell every AI-generated image on Facebook is AI-generated just end up feeding the AI machine the exact information it needs to make better AI-generated images.

And yet 90% of the humans it draws have six fingers.

[Scott5114]

I was assuming that the AI machine was learning on its own from everything we've been saying.

There are two AI machines, one for images and one for text. The only text it can read is alt-text attached to it describing what the image is.

[kphoger]

And yet 90% of the humans it draws have six fingers.

I actually haven't seen one like that in a while.  The ones I've seen recently look a lot better than even just a couple of months ago.

There are two AI machines, one for images and one for text.

Ah, thank you for that explanation!

[vdeane]

All the AI-hating people describing exactly how they can tell every AI-generated image on Facebook is AI-generated just end up feeding the AI machine the exact information it needs to make better AI-generated images.

And yet 90% of the humans it draws have six fingers.

It just really, really hates Inigo Montoya.

[formulanone]

All the AI-hating people describing exactly how they can tell every AI-generated image on Facebook is AI-generated just end up feeding the AI machine the exact information it needs to make better AI-generated images.

Eh, not exactly.

The people responsible for the functioning of the AI machine know very well by this point what is deficient with the images. The problem is that the underlying structure of AI is very similar to that of the "Plinko" board from The Price Is Right. So pointing out what's wrong with the image would be like Drew Carey telling someone "Hey, you're not supposed to drop the chip in the zero slot." The contestant knows that, but  where are they supposed to put the chip to keep that from happening?

Of course, the reason why Plinko works as a game is because there is no starting point that is guaranteed to land any particular place. And that's why I think AI ultimately can't be improved much more than where it is now—the element of randomness that is essential to the function of the software also guarantees it can never be perfect.

I don't think it will ever be perfect, it just needs to be enough where people are consistently fooled and don't care.

AI art exists to please just enough people but if ten people ask for the same exact prompt, and receive the same conceptualized drawing, is that art? What if it drew it 10 different ways because it was always learning and refining...would that be art?

It's wise enough to damn its own work but only if an external mechanism repeatedly denies it, but the language model is always becoming refined and modified or overwritten. No amount of telling AI "no" takes away its crayons and sends it to bed early, anyhow. Enough people are telling it "no comment" because there's no benefit for most users to care, and that sustains it.

[PNWRoadgeek]

Why isn't there a fourth or eighth Grand Alan?

Like, why! There are other Grand Alan's, but why no fourth or eighth ones?

[Scott5114]

The War Alan was the fourth Grand Alan.

[kphoger]

AI art exists to please just enough people but if ten people ask for the same exact prompt, and receive the same conceptualized drawing, is that art? What if it drew it 10 different ways because it was always learning and refining...would that be art?

If ten tourists ask the same painter on the sidewalk in Paris for a painting of the Eiffel Tower, and receive the same depiction, is that art?  What if he drew it 10 different ways because it's always learning and refining...would that be art?

[Scott5114]

If you are questioning whether AI art is art, I find it generally means you either have a misunderstanding of either AI or art.

An AI image generator is trained by having it ingest a large corpus of images with tags that describe what is in them. So a few thousand images of dogs will be fed to it and now it "knows" what a dog is. (This is where some people have an ethical problem with AI, since the copyright holders did not consent to those images being used for that purpose. But I have viewed a few thousand images of elves and use those as my understanding of what an elf is whenever I draw one, and that's considered okay, and I don't exactly know what the difference is supposed to be. So I don't have a problem with AI for that purpose.)

Now say someone asks the AI image generator for a dog. The AI image generator will use a seed number as a starting point to create two basically random images, which more or less look like TV static. The software will then look at both images and decide which of them is closer to its understanding of a dog. Then it will take that image and apply some random variation to it, and again decide which is closer to a dog. Repeat the process a few hundred times and eventually it will create an image that a human would agree looks like a dog.

Is that art? Well, it depends on what you consider art to be, but I generally consider art to be the output of creativity, and a means of communicating a message to an audience. So is an AI image art? A few hundred iterations of randomly generated static chosen by a mathematical process as being the most similar to a dog, where 'dog' means the average of a few thousand images of dogs, doesn't exactly scream "creative process" to me.

Now, don't get me wrong. Introducing randomness into the creative process is a fantastic thing. It's basically what Dungeons & Dragons is all about. But in D&D, the random number generator is a catalyst for the creative process. You rolled a 20 out of 20, which means you did really well doing a thing, so tell me what that looks like. A friend of mine and I have spent many hours engaging in the fun of coming up with entire characters where we'll roll dice to determine their appearance, their backstory, their personality quirks, and all of that. But that's just the catalyst—so how did this guy that the dice say is 1) really nervous 2) clumsy 3) works in a butcher shop come to get that job, anyway? Maybe he inherited the family business or something? But at that point you are deciding that you like something enough to continue on developing it, or you dislike it enough to discard it. You are making a choice, which is really the essence of the creative process.

A computer can't make a choice. It can evaluate something mathematically and if X do Y. But all of that is dictated by a programmer, before the computer runs the program. It is predetermined (even though there is randomness involved—Plinko involves randomness too, but the size of the board and the peg spacing are both predetermined). Now we're getting into free will, and that's its own side philosophical discussion I'm just going to turn away from because it's been done to death by people smarter than me.

So let's look at the other part of my definition of art, communicating a message. Can an AI image generator do that? Well, yes and no. You can generate a picture of a dog with it, and then use that to illustrate what a dog is. So strictly speaking, yes. But remember, the image we are getting from it is the most average dog, because that is what an AI image generator must generate, by its very nature. So if I, as a creator, want to create an image to convey a very particular message—think something specific like a political cartoon of the Oklahoma government being represented by a Will Rogers caricature with an I-40 shield on his lapel and a gas pump nozzle in his suit jacket pocket (to represent oil interests)—an AI image generator can't really do that all that well. I can try and warp its understanding of an average dog to something that better suits my idea by nudging it one way or the other by tweaking the prompt, or I can use in-painting to force it to regenerate sections of the images that I don't like. But at every step of the process, it will be trying to hew back to the average, because the average is all it knows. If I am trying to create a non-average image, it will be fighting me all the way.

So is that art? I don't think so.