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Google Imagen 2

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Re: Google Imagen 2

#61
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, Google employed 30,000 managers before the recent layoffs. The hard truth is Google needs a Twitter style culling. Take all those billions you're burning and give it to people with a builder mentality, not career sheeple. Unfortunately the same executives who would oversee this are the ones who need to be culled first.

From what I understand, Google has a unusually large number of engineers who are happy to coast, and would actively avoid taking on anything important. That seems more of an issue to me compared to middle management bloat.

Middle managers' job is to get the best out of engineers. If your direct manager does not set up an ambitious team with ambitious goals, what are you supposed to do?

Ambition trickles downwards and is killed upwards.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#62

I asked imagen 2 to generate a transparent product icon image, and it generated an actual grey and white square pattern as the background of the image... https://imgur.com/a/KA2yWHp

Like the other commenter said, these models aren't trained against images with an alpha channel. Given the same sized model that'd make typical results worse to benefit a niche case. You should be able to have them generate this style image on a background you can color key out though.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#63
Considering Google was caught faking stuff during the recent Gemini introduction, I'll take this with a big grain of salt, doubly so considering they don't have a way for people to try it out.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#64

I love being Canadian - "Not Available in Canada Due To Regulatory Uncertainty"

Translation is that the government engaged in a shakedown of Google, on behalf of Bell and Rogers: Bill c-18. It was disgusting and corrupt and I’m glad that Google and Facebook pushed back.

This has recently been resolved though, with a compromised deal, so hopefully these services will soon be available here

Re: Google Imagen 2

#65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are two completely different models from different groups, converging on what looks like the exact same person? Number 1 and 3 are eerily similar. I don't understand.

It's because the only thing these models can do is rip off existing images, and the prompt is very specific. "Generative AI" is a learned, lossy compression codec. You should not be surprised that the range of outputs for a given input seems limited.

That makes sense - but in Google's case, I'd expect them to have access to private datasets that would give it something different than public models like SD.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#66

The prompt "A shot of a 32-year-old female, up and coming conservationist in a jungle; athletic with short, curly hair and a warm smile" produced an impressive image. But I ran the same prompt 3 times on my laptop in just a few minutes, and got 3 almost-equally impressive images. (using stable diffusion and a free model called devlishphotorealism_sdxl15) https://imgur.com/a/4otrN17

How are two completely different models from different groups, converging on what looks like the exact same person? Number 1 and 3 are eerily similar. I don't understand.

Because the central limit theorem applies to web-trained image models.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#68
post #43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, Google has a unusually large number of engineers who are happy to coast, and would actively avoid taking on anything important. That seems more of an issue to me compared to middle management bloat.

I've seen this claim thrown around a few times but haven't really seen any evidence that it's true, beyond a few unconvincing anecdotes.

Really? how many engineers do you know who work at Google? Do they say they are working hard or coasting? A big selling point of working at Google is that it's a known place you can coast and get a big paycheck.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#69
post #63

Considering Google was caught faking stuff during the recent Gemini introduction, I'll take this with a big grain of salt, doubly so considering they don't have a way for people to try it out.

Name a corporation that hasn't embellished their corporate tech demos.

Re: Google Imagen 2

#70
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, Google employed 30,000 managers before the recent layoffs. The hard truth is Google needs a Twitter style culling. Take all those billions you're burning and give it to people with a builder mentality, not career sheeple. Unfortunately the same executives who would oversee this are the ones who need to be culled first.

From what I understand, Google has a unusually large number of engineers who are happy to coast, and would actively avoid taking on anything important. That seems more of an issue to me compared to middle management bloat.

I worked at Google from 2012 to 2022 and this didn't match my experience, for what it's worth. There were some people who coasted, but it was not common. There were a lot of people who got much less done than you might expect due to bureaucratic friction, but my coworkers were generally very enthusiastic to take on important things.
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