The advance of AI

droj

droj

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Did that grab your attention? AI's the latest buzzword, isn't it?

More and more photo functions (especially in phones!) depend entirely on sophisticated automation, which isn't anything to do with being aware of focus and the nature of the picture space - such being a realm that's technically illusory (3 dimensions in 2!), but nevertheless has crucial emotional import. A problem is that any automation (including AI) lacks intuition. Could it come to mimic it? I doubt it. But it's possible, whilst hopefully we'll retain the urge & ability to call it out as fake. So much of organic human life is too subtle & vital to be replicated. My main issue with the trend in phone pics is that they lack texture. They've been smoothed & cosmeticised - made attractive for only the very briefest & shallowest of inspections

We are but dwarves & less than ants in the cosmos & its huge complexity that culminated in life on Earth. Our essential gift might turn out to be compassion - & clever though we are as Homo sapiens, it's unlikely to be technical expertise. To think of controlling our future is utter b*****ks in the big scheme of things.

But I still get up every morning, & stir my porridge with blind hope.

Funny lot, aren't we?
 
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droj said:
But I still get up every morning, & stir my porridge with blind hope.
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My advice is to stir a few chopped dates in with the porridge and you'll be right as rain in a few days. :tumbleweed:
 
One of the great stories, from the realm of Monty Python, is Eric Idle explaining how he once found himself writing the lyrics to a song, sitting on a log in a Bavarian Forest with John Cleese, who was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. :wideyed:

I think that, if you can get your head around it, this explains much about always looking on the bright side of death...
 
A school friend, when we were writing essays about Hamlet for A level, penned this wonderful schoolboy
pseud summary: "We are all but pawns in the Cosmic game of Chess".
 
I'm all for more people to take pictures more easily. It's much better to take pictures than not unless of course we're too busy taking pictures to be in the moment and I think with phones some people are missing the moment. I've yet to see a mobile phone picture I'd be happy with from a technical point of view, they all take poor quality pictures IMO and I hate using them as they have no ergonomics at all but at least they're almost always in your pocket or bag. That for me is the only thing they have going for them.

On the other stuff, we all believe it or not do have free will. We may not be able to affect the big things but we can at least try and be true to our selves and out beliefs.
 
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Wasn't there another version: "We are all but prawns in the ocean of existence!?
 
I don't worry about AI replacing amateurs, because that seems impossible, but the pros should be worried. If you're following musicians around shooting for Rolling Stone, you should be okay, but if you take photos of products for Amazon listings, you're finished. Professional videographers are also doomed, to the extent that they do generic work for things like TV commercials. You don't really need three actors and a beautiful farmhouse kitchen to create a convincing cereal commercial.

Actors are notoriously temperamental and unreliable. They fail to show up. They show up drunk and high or looking baggy because they've been doing coke all night. Sets can be rained out or otherwise rendered unavailable, and they cost a lot of money. If you're trying to sell people cheeseburgers or feminine hygiene products, why not have AI create a beautiful ad for $50,000 instead of paying an agency $750,000?

I don't mind reasonable AI editing processes. For example, AI noise reduction does seem to be "cheating," but it generally gives you a shot that looks just about like what you would have gotten in better light, and I would rather have a priceless family memento that is a little bit tickled up by technology than miss it altogether. Every JPG ever shot was edited by the camera anyway.

Is it really cheating when you're not competing with anyone? Nobody else is trying to put their photos on my walls.
 
I take photos for me. The chances are my family will see most of them only once. So to me anything that makes presenting those picture easier (and quicker) is OK with me.
 
Sony Corleone said:
I don't mind reasonable AI editing processes. For example, AI noise reduction does seem to be "cheating," but it generally gives you a shot that looks just about like what you would have gotten in better light, and I would rather have a priceless family memento that is a little bit tickled up by technology than miss it altogether. Every JPG ever shot was edited by the camera anyway.
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Is AI noise reduction really AI re-generating the whole image without noise, or is it just fancy machine learning algorithm that is so good at recognising noise and it just so happens to require GPUs that weren't readily available 10 years ago. This one is really the least of my worries.

And in fact it doesn't matter if you are a beginner lawyer, medical technician, uber driver, a bureaucrat - the claws are tightening in.
Anything with genuine human connection has a chance. Aspects of photography can fit in here. If you are an already reckognisable brand - even better. Do you think a wealthy couple would like AI wedding images - or a premium package delivered by premium [photographer] brand with price tag to match? It would be shameful to admit you were using AI.

And obviously all the business things as long as you have vision. The barrier of entry is getting low, as long as you pick the right pathway.
 
If you're not really worried about AI watch BBC's Hannah Fry's AI Confidential, you'll f*****g crap yourself.
 
Delphin said:
If you're not really worried about AI watch BBC's Hannah Fry's AI Confidential, you'll f*****g crap yourself.
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All new technology is disruptive but some new technology is more disruptive than others.

The problem with such disruption is that it always harms the poorest members of society first and hardest, even if it harms the less poor as well. Anyone paying attention in their history class, when the teacher got to the industrial revolution, should remember the appalling damage it did to the artisans, who had made their living from weaving and similar manual skills. This new threat, and threat it is, will hammer those who currently make their living from personal interaction and administration.

I'm well out of the fray, so I have no axe to grind but I would prefer, on general principles, to see AI technology subject to strict licencing and social controls.
 
Delphin said:
If you're not really worried about AI watch BBC's Hannah Fry's AI Confidential, you'll f*****g crap yourself.
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I watched the first of the series last night. It looks very interesting.

Dave
 
I read that Elon Musks' daily income is nearly $700m. That's a day. That's money coming out of the general world economy. That affects all of us.
 
Delphin said:
If you're not really worried about AI watch BBC's Hannah Fry's AI Confidential, you'll f*****g crap yourself.
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I am very bothered by AI in the way it is used to manipulate images so they suite peoples agenda. But for me all I am trying to do is present the best picture I can.
 
A software engineer named Scott Shambaugh says an AI bot got mad at him for rejecting its work and wrote and published a hit piece on him. It was on Github, but it has been taken down. It used personal information. So now we have to be concerned about AI blackmail and doxxing.
 
My problem with AI is that it is just another step in reducing quality/expectations, and separating ourselves from the world. Why bother attempting to make a better image if AI can make your crappy image better. Why bother going out at all to make an image if you can just type a prompt? Who cares if a commercial is fully AI generated? It's very similar to how things used to be made with craftsmanship, today most everything is bland and disposable.

And eventually, nothing will be believable, because everything will be believable.
 
sk66 said:
My problem with AI is that it is just another step in reducing quality/expectations, and separating ourselves from the world. Why bother attempting to make a better image if AI can make your crappy image better. Why bother going out at all to make an image if you can just type a prompt? Who cares if a commercial is fully AI generated? It's very similar to how things used to be made with craftsmanship, today most everything is bland and disposable.

And eventually, nothing will be believable, because everything will be believable.
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To be honest I think we have almost reached that point now.
 
Anyone who thinks truth hasn't been destroyed need only look back at what we were told about covid. For that matter, you can look at what we are still being told.
 
Sony Corleone said:
Anyone who thinks truth hasn't been destroyed need only look back at what we were told about covid. For that matter, you can look at what we are still being told.
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Yes, all that ridiculous vaccine denial. Look at what it has done to USA healthcare.
 
Combined with the immigration delusions that allowed people with measles to flood our borders.
 
The fact is that Measles is rare in the UK. Look here for some more facts...

Measles | UKHSA data dashboard

Overall summary of Measles in circulation within the UK
ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk
 
Pound Coin said:
I read that Elon Musks' daily income is nearly $700m. That's a day. That's money coming out of the general world economy. That affects all of us.
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An estimate of Elon Musk's wealth varies. One estimate by Forbes is $676billion.

If you saved $50,000 per day since the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, you would have about 30% of Elon Musk's wealth.

I have no problem with people making money but does anyone need that amount?

Dave
 
Sony Corleone said:
Combined with the immigration delusions that allowed people with measles to flood our borders.
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While this is off topic for this thread (and as such, this will be my only post on the subject) here is part of the conclusion from some scientific research on the measles outbreaks in the US for (early) 2025.

I've only glanced through it, but it looks a useful read for anyone interested in the topic and deserves more careful reading than I've given it. I may well have missed some important nuances of what is being said.

They say:

"Whilst this rise in measles cases in the US has been portrayed in the media as an issue of immigration of non-US citizens into the country, it has been shown that there is no correlation between the share of a state's population that is foreign born and its rate of measles [16].

The incidence of measles has become increasingly due to US-acquired cases - with most being epidemiologically or virologically linked to imported cases by US residents who have travelled to areas with high prevalence of measles [17].

The paper also discusses in some detail the strong links between the decline in vaccine uptake and the increasing numbers of measles outbreaks: over 97% of the measles outbreaks are in areas of low vaccine uptake, and all the deaths have been of people who haven't been vaccinated.

Measles outbreaks in the United States in 2025: Practice, policy, and the canary in the coalmine​

Measles outbreaks in the United States in 2025: Practice, policy, and the canary in the coalmine - PMC

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

It's worth reading, and even if you don't have a scientific background as it's a relatively easy read.

Of course it's only a single study, and even if it's an easy read, any non-expert conclusion made after reading it should be adopted with caution. As with all scientific studies.

None the less, it's more obvious "take-home" message is still "likely" to be closer to the truth than the stories presented in non-scientific and pseudo-scientific literature.
 
Tringa said:
I have no problem with people making money but does anyone need that amount?
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I think not.

Moreover: huge disparities of wealth can only harm the majority, who are always struggling just to stay alive and healthy.
 
Tringa said:
An estimate of Elon Musk's wealth varies. One estimate by Forbes is $676billion.

If you saved $50,000 per day since the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, you would have about 30% of Elon Musk's wealth.

I have no problem with people making money but does anyone need that amount?

Dave
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Not in a personal capacity obviously, but that gives him an option to create something extraordinary that most of us can benefit from, or do something extremely evil. I am very glad he bought twitter from absolute loonies and a future moon mission sounds very promising. On the other hand we gates and that is pure :bat::mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
LongLensPhotography said:
I am very glad he bought twitter from absolute loonies and a future moon mission sounds very promising
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He used almost none of his own money to buy Twitter or develop SpaceX. The privatization of space travel meant government grants/contracts/etc... US citizens paid/pay for SpaceX to the tune of $1B every year since 2016. E.g. NASA has granted SpaceX $4B for “work required for the design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration, and engineering support of the Human Landing System (HLS) Integrated Lander;" work that has not been done/completed.

The extremely wealthy do not really make or spend money... they make and leverage net worth.
 
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myotis said:
While this is off topic for this thread (and as such, this will be my only post on the subject) here is part of the conclusion from some scientific research on the measles outbreaks in the US for (early) 2025.

I've only glanced through it, but it looks a useful read for anyone interested in the topic and deserves more careful reading than I've given it. I may well have missed some important nuances of what is being said.

They say:

"Whilst this rise in measles cases in the US has been portrayed in the media as an issue of immigration of non-US citizens into the country, it has been shown that there is no correlation between the share of a state's population that is foreign born and its rate of measles [16].

The incidence of measles has become increasingly due to US-acquired cases - with most being epidemiologically or virologically linked to imported cases by US residents who have travelled to areas with high prevalence of measles [17].

The paper also discusses in some detail the strong links between the decline in vaccine uptake and the increasing numbers of measles outbreaks: over 97% of the measles outbreaks are in areas of low vaccine uptake, and all the deaths have been of people who haven't been vaccinated.
Click to expand...

Two things appear to be true: many cases were brought here by immigrants who were not vetted, and once here it spreads to anyone who has not been vaccinated regardless of their immigration status. You would naturally expect measles to spread among people who are not vaccinated, but if there is no one bringing it into the country, many of those people will never be exposed. Some non-vaccinated Americans catch it abroad and bring it home, but then there are the millions of people who just wandered across the border, carrying not just measles but things like drug-resistant TB.

I do have a scientific background, but not a medical background. I also take every safe vaccine I can get. Sadly, I also took one that was later banned because it caused blood clots.
 
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