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Agentic pelican on a bicycle

robert-glaser.de

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Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#51

Post by awaikour »

kfarr wrote: post #47
huevosabio wrote: post #43

I love this experiment and am surprised that the Claude models performed that much better than the competition. Opus was particularly impressive both in the quality itself and the ability to iterate meaningfully. Now... Was this article LLM written? This part triggered all my LLM flags: ``` Adding a bicycle chain isn’t just decoration—it shows understanding of mechanical relationships. The wheel spokes, the adjusted…

I mean at some point you have to evaluate the content on its merit and they have a point — a chain is functional not just decorative in its precise placement.

Evaluating the content on its merit I'd question whether the author has seen a bicycle before. Yes, in the final iteration with Opus it added a chain, but it's missing a triangle which clearly shows a lack of understanding of mechanical relationships.

Ignoring the wording, em-dashes, etc. I'd assume an LLM not only wrote the article but also judged the pictures. That or the author has a much more relaxed opinion on what a pelican on a bicycle should actually look like. I don't think I would call Sonnet's arms and handlebars improved, nor would I call Haiku's legs and feet "proper." And if you overlay GPT-5 Medium's two photos the shapes proportions are nearly identical.

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#52

Post by beefnugs »

measurablefunc wrote: post #16

Iterating a Markov chain does not make it any more or less "agentic". This is yet another instance of corporate marketing departments redefining words b/c they are confused about what exactly they're trying to build & sell.

No this is obviously not corporate marketing, this individual is doing many things wrong by their own choice:

"creating an svg is surprisingly revealing" No it is not. They all do the same thing, they add suns and movement lines, and some more details. Like they were all trained on the same thing.

he makes up his own definition of "agent" there are at least 6 different definitions of this word now in this space. And his is again new for no reason.

The core idea here is "being vague and letting the models make weird random choice" This is the exact opposite of ALL direct instructions from the major model and coding agent programs at this time.

Actual interesting methodology would have been to create all combinations of the variables: let them use different svg to image tools and compare them, try many many different prompts with more specific instructions like "try to be more mechanically accurate"

Analysis is baseless assumptions: It is not "adding realism" all the models just had more pictures of roads trees suns and clouds... so it kept going back to the training data to add more like you keep telling it to do. It certainly wasn't understanding "more mechanically coherent" If it started focusing on the bike, it had more detailed bike pictures in the training data with chains.

This is why all the ai stuff is infuriating, people are mistaking so much for "good" or "useful" . At best this is a laugh once joke about how bad it is.

I admit the first time I saw that big george carlin generated video/stand up comedy, there was a special new feeling about "what on earth did they prompt to get this combination of visual and audio?" But that was such a fleeting thing I never need again

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#54

Post by measurablefunc »

beefnugs wrote: post #52
measurablefunc wrote: post #16

Iterating a Markov chain does not make it any more or less "agentic". This is yet another instance of corporate marketing departments redefining words b/c they are confused about what exactly they're trying to build & sell.

No this is obviously not corporate marketing, this individual is doing many things wrong by their own choice: "creating an svg is surprisingly revealing" No it is not. They all do the same thing, they add suns and movement lines, and some more details. Like they were all trained on the same thing. he makes up his own definition of "agent" there are at least 6 different definitions of this word now in this space. And…

I wasn't referring to just the blog post but the general trend in corporate marketing of redefining words in existing use because it is easier than educating their customers about their products & their limitations.

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#56

Post by sally_glance »

rossant wrote: post #55

What prevents LLM designers from cheating and including a human handcrafted SVG into the model for this specific request (allowing for variations between calls)?

Nothing, but looking at the current results either no one tried yet or it didn't work very well. And the pelican benchmark has been around for a while so the opportunity was there.

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#57

Post by boxed »

kfarr wrote: post #47
huevosabio wrote: post #43

I love this experiment and am surprised that the Claude models performed that much better than the competition. Opus was particularly impressive both in the quality itself and the ability to iterate meaningfully. Now... Was this article LLM written? This part triggered all my LLM flags: ``` Adding a bicycle chain isn’t just decoration—it shows understanding of mechanical relationships. The wheel spokes, the adjusted…

I mean at some point you have to evaluate the content on its merit and they have a point — a chain is functional not just decorative in its precise placement.

If you give it credit for the chain, you need to also notice that that bike has a fixed front wheel. It literally can not be turned.

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#58

Post by rsanheim »

huevosabio wrote: post #43

I love this experiment and am surprised that the Claude models performed that much better than the competition. Opus was particularly impressive both in the quality itself and the ability to iterate meaningfully. Now... Was this article LLM written? This part triggered all my LLM flags: ``` Adding a bicycle chain isn’t just decoration—it shows understanding of mechanical relationships. The wheel spokes, the adjusted…

Did not feel LLM written to me - at least not overtly so. LLM editing/assisted perhaps?

It was a fun little post that felt accurate (ie confirmed my own biases ;)) about the current state of LLM models in a silly, but real, use-case.

The continual drive to out "llm written" articles feels a bit silly to me at this point. They are now part of the tools and tech we use, for better or worse. And to be clear, I think in a lot of cases it leans towards 'worse'.

But do you question if a video or photo was made with digital editing or filters or 'ai' tools (many of which we've had for years, just under different names) ? Do you worry about what tech was used in making your favorite album or song?

I get it, LLMs make it easy to produce trash content, but this is not a new problem. If you see trash, call it out as trash on its flaws, not on a presumption of how it was made.

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#59

Post by weedhopper »

rsanheim wrote: post #58
huevosabio wrote: post #43

I love this experiment and am surprised that the Claude models performed that much better than the competition. Opus was particularly impressive both in the quality itself and the ability to iterate meaningfully. Now... Was this article LLM written? This part triggered all my LLM flags: ``` Adding a bicycle chain isn’t just decoration—it shows understanding of mechanical relationships. The wheel spokes, the adjusted…

Did not feel LLM written to me - at least not overtly so. LLM editing/assisted perhaps? It was a fun little post that felt accurate (ie confirmed my own biases ;)) about the current state of LLM models in a silly, but real, use-case. The continual drive to out "llm written" articles feels a bit silly to me at this point. They are now part of the tools and tech we use, for better or worse. And to be clear, I think in…

What an insightful comment! (sorry, couldn’t help it)

I agree about the silliness. God forbid i am a non-native English speaker and I have a bit of an of odd writing style in a real Brits eye. Or that I use ‘—‘ instead of ‘-‘ because usually typing two dashes converts to the long one on Mac (try even four, technology is crazy these days), and it just feels a bit nicer. OR that I adopt occasional use of ‘;’ because I feel like it (Yes. English is supposed to have short sentences. Unlike other languages. Beautiful. Sue me.)

I don’t care if they helped themselves with AI to improve writing or turn a bullet point into a sentence. It’s when the volume of text doesn’t justify the lack of content or value that I call bs and go to the next one. At this point it might as well be human generated content, but I don’t care, outcome’s the same.

Regarding the post — it’s a cute little article and the pelicans do seem be making a point with their funky shapes

Re: Agentic pelican on a bicycle

#60

Post by junga »

boxed wrote: post #57
kfarr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean at some point you have to evaluate the content on its merit and they have a point — a chain is functional not just decorative in its precise placement.

If you give it credit for the chain, you need to also notice that that bike has a fixed front wheel. It literally can not be turned.

Humans are super bad at drawing bikes: https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/

Does being bad at drawing bikes make a machine more intelligent/human?

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