Except.. people do know exactly how these things work. They know because they are creating them. They know because they are improving them. What nonsense to say we do not know how these things work. Engineers building Qwen for example not only know how things work but they put all the work out there for people to reproduce (if they had the means) that work.
We know in the same sense we understand the rules in Conway's game of life - at low level - but don't understand what those rules will produce at high level (gliders, guns) except by executing and seeing. Analogous to knowing what the code looks like and not knowing if it will halt.
Knowing the low level rules, or the recursive transition rule of a system does not tell you its evolution in time.
Yep this is a huge enabler - previously having someone "do art" could easily cost you thousands for a small game, a month even, and this heavily constrained what you could make and locked you into what you had planned and how much you had planned. With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art, audio etc it's an incremental cost if any, you can explore ideas, you can throw art out, pivot in new directions.
The only thing better than a substandard, derivative, inexpertly produced product is 10x more of it by 10x more people at the same time.
It all started going wrong with the printing press.
Yep this is a huge enabler - previously having someone "do art" could easily cost you thousands for a small game, a month even, and this heavily constrained what you could make and locked you into what you had planned and how much you had planned. With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art, audio etc it's an incremental cost if any, you can explore ideas, you can throw art out, pivot in new directions.
> With AI if you want 2x or 5x or 10x as much art Imagery AI does not produce art. Not that it matters to anyone but artists and art enjoyers.
Is that an argument against the quality, saying that AI cannot (or some weaker claim like that it does not usually) produce "art"? Else, is it an argument of provenance, akin to how copyright currently works, where the same visual representation is "art" if a human makes it and is not "art" if an AI makes it?
> Yet some technological innovations, though societally transformative, generate little in the way of new wealth; instead, they reinforce the status quo. Fifteen years before the microprocessor, another revolutionary idea, shipping containerization, arrived at a less propitious time, when technological advancement was a Red Queen’s race, and inventors and investors were left no better off for non-stop running. This c…
The article's point is exactly that you should invest downstream of AI.
I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…
I've noticed this as well. It's a huge boon for startups, because it means that a lot of functions that you would previously need to hire specialists for (logo design! graphic design! programming! copywriting!) can now be brought in-house, where the founder just does a "good enough" job using AI. And for those that can't (legal, for example, or various SaaS vendors) the AI usually has a good idea of what services you…
> ironic if AI actually ended up destroying economic activity
that's not destroying economic activity - it's removing a less efficient activity and replace it with a more efficient version. This produces economic surplus.
Imagine saying this for someone digging a hole, that if they use a mechanical digger instead of a hand shovel, they'd destroy economic activity since it now cost less to dig that hole!
I've noticed this as well. It's a huge boon for startups, because it means that a lot of functions that you would previously need to hire specialists for (logo design! graphic design! programming! copywriting!) can now be brought in-house, where the founder just does a "good enough" job using AI. And for those that can't (legal, for example, or various SaaS vendors) the AI usually has a good idea of what services you…
> ironic if AI actually ended up destroying economic activity that's not destroying economic activity - it's removing a less efficient activity and replace it with a more efficient version. This produces economic surplus. Imagine saying this for someone digging a hole, that if they use a mechanical digger instead of a hand shovel, they'd destroy economic activity since it now cost less to dig that hole!
> Yet some technological innovations, though societally transformative, generate little in the way of new wealth; instead, they reinforce the status quo. Fifteen years before the microprocessor, another revolutionary idea, shipping containerization, arrived at a less propitious time, when technological advancement was a Red Queen’s race, and inventors and investors were left no better off for non-stop running. This c…
The article's point is exactly that you should invest downstream of AI.
The problem is different though, the containers were able to be made by others and offered dependable success, and anything downstream of model creators is at the whim of the model creator... And so far it seems not much that one model can do that another can't, so this all doesn't bode well for a reliable footing to determine what value, if at all, can be added by anyone for very long.
The article's point is exactly that you should invest downstream of AI.
The problem is different though, the containers were able to be made by others and offered dependable success, and anything downstream of model creators is at the whim of the model creator... And so far it seems not much that one model can do that another can't, so this all doesn't bode well for a reliable footing to determine what value, if at all, can be added by anyone for very long.
So if models, like containers, are able to be made by others (because they can all do the same thing), then they'll be commoditized and as the article suggests you should look for industries to which AI is a complement.
I think the interesting idea with “AI” is that it seems to significantly reduce barriers to entry in many domains. I haven’t seen a company convincingly demonstrate that this affects them at all. Lots of fluff but nothing compelling. But I have seen many examples by individuals, including myself. For years I’ve loved poking at video game dev for fun. The main problem has always been art assets. I’m terrible at art an…
I'm wondering a good way to create 2D sprite sheets with transparency via AI. That would be a game changer, but my research has led me to believe that there isn't a good tool for this yet. One sprite is kind of doable, but a sprite animation with continuity between frames seems like it would be very difficult. Have you figured out a way to do this?
I dont use AI for image generation so I dont know how possible this is, but why not generate a 3D model for blender to ingest, then grab 2D frames from the model for the animation?