This week…
Welcoming pride month with the homophobia of monkeypox disinformation.
Anyway, selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
OpenAI: Look at our awesome image generator! Google: Hold my Shiba Inu
Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch:
The AI world is still figuring out how to deal with the amazing show of prowess that is DALL-E 2’s ability to draw/paint/imagine just about anything… but OpenAI isn’t the only one working on something like that. Google Research has rushed to publicize a similar model it’s been working on — which it claims is even better.
Imagen (get it?) is a text-to-image diffusion-based generator built on large transformer language models that… okay, let’s slow down and unpack that real quick.
Text-to-image models take text inputs like “a dog on a bike” and produce a corresponding image, something that has been done for years but recently has seen huge jumps in quality and accessibility.
But is it art, Ma’am? Robot’s platinum jubilee Queen portrait unveiled
Harriet Sherwood for The Guardian:
At first glance, the Queen could be wearing a tin hat with camouflage netting set against a thunderous sky. A commentary on the inevitable conflicts and turbulence that took place during her 70-year reign, perhaps. Or a thoughtful juxtaposition of stability and instability.
But no, it seems that Ai-Da, the robot artist who painted the Queen’s portrait to mark her platinum jubilee, was simply paying tribute to “an amazing human being”. The monarch’s trademark pearls and bold colours, along with a stoic facial expression, are the standout features of Algorithm Queen, which was unveiled on Friday.
Watching this AI-assisted art video is like tripping on acid in the Matrix
Tristan Greene for The Next Web:
Jason Silva, futurist and host of National Geographic’s Brain Games, recently published a mind-bending YouTube video combining the technological prowess of AI with the artistic creativity of someone who believes in the power of psychoactive experiences.
It’s called “Dreaming while awake: a journey into ourselves.” The description on Silva’s YouTube channel describes the video as: “The first art piece of the singularity: born from a human-AI collaboration by Jason Silva, Hueman Instrument and digital intelligence.”
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading Three interviews, two press conferences, and an editorial on Uvalde by Jon Allsop for CJR. If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to expose yourself to too much news coverage on this event, I suggest this piece, which is a compilation of journalism that came out Uvalde that “illustrates broader truths about the coverage as a whole.”
I’m watching The thousand faces of Michelle Yeoh, a video essay on Accented Cinema.
I’m listening to how we decide who is ‘worthy of welcome’ on NPR’s Code Switch hosted by Gene Demby.
More stray links:
Monkeypox disinfo is just like Covid disinfo—plus homophobia by Kiera Butler for Mother Jones.
The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial shows the dangers of fan culture by Maddie Brockbank for The Conversation.
Sex, gender and sexuality: What the science says by Hogan Sherrow for OpenMind
HSBC suspends head of responsible investing who called climate warnings ‘shrill’ by Kalyeena Makortoff for The Guardian.
Chart of the week
As of May 28th, 405 cases of monkeypox have been recorded, including 26 in Canada, as illustrated by Our World in Data.