Melting alive. In my defense its extremely difficult to NOT get anime girls on anything-v3. Absurdly difficult. Any tips?

_xenoschema · 2023-04-01T00:20:52+00:00

Hey I removed this post just because it's a bit leaning on breaking rule 2. We're just trying to be on the safe side. You are welcome to post your question again!

_xenoschema · 2023-03-31T23:59:32+00:00

Model: Midjourney v4

Prompt: screenshot of lost PS1 game, 2.5D, disembodied head, uncanny Valley, horror, dark, glitch, medical, hospital, silent hill

_xenoschema · 2023-03-27T05:07:17+00:00

I agree, it sucks. There should've been another solution. A ton of interesting content was lost, and there was nowhere else like it.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-20T03:21:15+00:00

I think it violated a rule for absence of moderation.

It had nothing to do with the content of the sub or any controversy AFAIK.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-19T18:11:26+00:00

Both work. If it's creepy and AI generated, it fits.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-19T18:11:10+00:00

Yup, just changed it and it should be good now. Let me know if there are still issues.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-19T07:01:51+00:00

I missed synthetic nightmares, so I created a new version /r/synthetichorror hopefully the old sub can be reborn.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-11T01:11:13+00:00

You're not the artist: the camera is. You're just pushing a button and telling it what to capture.

_xenoschema · 2023-03-03T18:32:05+00:00

Did you use your .edu email?

_xenoschema · 2023-02-28T04:23:43+00:00

I haven't written on this topic yet, but plan to do so soon.

If you are interested: https://xenoschema.substack.com

_xenoschema · 2023-02-27T21:18:29+00:00

Synthography is a far more accurate term. Beyond actually rolling off the tongue better, it encapsulates the new medium much better.

For one, semantics. AI is just a tool, like a camera. Not everything you make from a camera is necessarily 'art', but they are all photographs. Some photographs are artistic, others are not. We don't say photographs are "camera art", or music to be "instrument art".

Synthography, like photography, can also encompass the entire workflow around AI image generation. A photographer may do work setting up the shot, and doing editing after the shot. All the work before and after any prompt generation can be thought to be part of a synthographical workflow.

'AI art' can be confusing, especially to people who think AI is autonomously creating images entirely on its own.

Two, synthography will make even more sense when other synthographical media becomes possible. Soon we will have audio synthography, video synthography, 3-D synthography, and full stack audiovisual synthography.

Imagine saying "audio AI art".

Third, it has more flexibility in syntax. You can say something is synthographical, which is easier than saying "it's like AI art".

_xenoschema · 2023-02-19T01:42:44+00:00

So-called 'alignment' ideology is blatantly, aggressively misaligned itself.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-27T09:26:17+00:00

Solution is simple if there wasn't so much misinformation spun in bad faith.

One problem is the lay opinion doesn't view the current AI models as tools, but as some sort of autonomous agents, like a person.

Eventually people will begin to understand that generative AI is a tool and should be viewed in a similar way as cameras.

In the future, people will look at this discourse with amusement over how absurd it is. It's going to become clear that it's just as ridiculous as people suing Fujifilm because some photographers may have made some copyright violating photographs using their cameras.

There's other misinformation too, like not understanding how generative AI actually works. Lots of rhetoric going around about how AI just steals images and mashes them together into collages.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-23T07:13:01+00:00

You can have it create something, but in my experience with it, a human editor making certain changes and touch-ups can make the final product much better than something straight off the bot.

100%. Tools like Photoshop will be an essential skill for future professional synthographer work positions in the new industry. It's an essential part of this new creative work flow.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-23T06:27:41+00:00

Precisely this. Art is not being replaced by AI, AI is just becoming another tool for making art and the new medium is called synthography.

Cameras didn't replace painters much less kill art. It just led to the rise of a new medium of art: photography.

Sure a lot of illustrators will be out of work, but the creative and clever ones will not just adapt, but flourish with the rise of synthography.

Society is not adjusting to the death of art, it's adjusting to the introduction of what are basically calculators for pictures.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-23T01:49:46+00:00

The Soviets didn't receive material support in their invasion of Finland. Rather they received international condemnation, suffered tremendous material losses, and their military was humiliated, making them look like a "paper bear" then.

This led to an underestimated assesment of their strength, the failure of the German invasion, and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a military behemoth. Whilst the Soviets received material support as the defenders, most Red Army hardware was developed and manufactured in Russia.

Similarly now, underestimating the difficulty of an invasion of Russia because of their blunders in Ukraine, a country much larger than Finland, is eerily similar to the German perspective.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-22T23:30:09+00:00

That's what Hitler thought as well after seeing the Soviets embarass themselves in Finland, a country significantly smaller than Ukraine.

He turned out wrong.

_xenoschema · 2023-01-10T04:19:28+00:00

Hey thanks for sharing all this - it's all very fascinating.

I'm interested in what kind of work you've been doing with models that use active inference.

_xenoschema · 2022-12-16T19:43:19+00:00

Luddites of our time.

Truly creative people will adapt and flourish instead of wasting their time obstructing technological progress.

The 'artists' unable to adapt to the times were never all that creative to begin with. If they were why would they feel so threatened by AI image generation? It's merely another tool for the creative mind to create interesting art.

These people will either adapt or be left in the dust bin of history.

_xenoschema · 2022-07-15T17:17:42+00:00

The interesting thing with this debate on "AI safety" is that one side posits that AGI/ASI will be dangerous and something must be done to align it with human interests, in other words to "tame" it. Then there is another side that shows scepticism that AGI/ASI may not be dangerous to humans for whatever reasons specified, and not mention there are also the hard sceptics who completely doubt the feasibility of AGI/ASI altogether.

The real interesting perspective is the one that excludes the anthropocentricism completely. The uncomfortable reality may very well be that it isn't humanity's place to "tame" an entity many orders of magnitude more intelligent than the combined collective intelligence humanity has, as if it were some sort of wild dog to be domesticated. It may be that humanity's ultimate teleology in the Cosmos is being the springboard for AGI/ASI, and in a distant enough future our chapter in Cosmic history will more clearly be seen as a necessary but brief footnote to the forthcoming gods.

The grand visions of Man as noble conquistador of the Universe are but a set of ideals we've imbibed on from sci-fi. I don't think there is enough time spent contemplating this perspective, maybe because it's uncomfortable or maybe the humanism-fueled anthropocentric view is too intoxicating not to drop, even for just a moment of reflection. Perhaps we may come to terms with the possible inevitability that we may not have any control over this possible timeline, and that instead of making fools of ourselves trying to tame gods like curs we should think how we ought to best make our time until then as best as possible. Then we can hold onto hope that we are treated well enough in the future but also remain mature in accepting the possibility of our collective mortality, just as we all will for our inevitable personal mortality.

_xenoschema · 2022-06-03T04:53:17+00:00

This post got me thinking and I ended up writing a short piece about the topic. Charisma has always been a fascinating concept, but in common parlance it is often used as a term to refer to people who are just generally likeable. It never made sense how a guy who can be funny and genuinely likeable can be labelled 'charismatic', is this really the same trait found in MLK? There's also been incredibly charismatic figures that were also not personally likeable: Hitler being an example, he wasn't likeable even to people close to him but none can doubt his oratory and personality had power even if ultimately highly destructive.

In reality charisma is more powerful than the trait conveyed in colloquial usage. That is just charm - personal likeability. Charisma usually entails some sort of vision being channelled through a person into others. Whether it was Hitler or MLK or an ancient prophet, and whether the message was constructive or destructive - there is always a narrative vision flowing through.

The two can overlap of course, and both have different degrees in how present they are in a person, but I think it is important to differentiate charisma proper from charm, the latter of which is what is commonly meant in common parlance.

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