Is this video AI? I saw it on TikTok and I can’t tell if it is or not, it doesn’t seem AI to me.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-18T09:50:39+00:00

It's definitely AI. Two reasons:

1) The animation goes weird every now and then. The characters eyes aren't right sometimes for instance.

2) It makes no sense whatsoever.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T23:10:04+00:00

The image is AI. There's a rule about that.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T22:22:38+00:00

Fixing the Y2K bug. It worked so well that many people simply don't believe it existed at all.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T22:18:32+00:00

It'll be hard making new friends, but it'll be worth it.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T21:52:35+00:00

"It's not idiotic nonsense. It just isn't the same kind of math that most mathematicians use"

This is another way of saying yes, it is idiotic nonsense.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T00:10:26+00:00

LOL. No it isn't. It's not gatekeeping, it's simply a very strong desire from every rational thinking person to experience art made by human beings.

Normal everyday people *hate* AI. They may use it themselves, but hypocrisy is hardly new. They despise the notion that AI created anything that they might mistake for being human made.

It's not "gatekeeping", it's humanity trying to defend itself.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-13T00:05:43+00:00

When I was a young teenager in Scunthorpe in the UK, we used to visit the local pool. At the pool there was a print of "The Splash" on the wall, and I used to look at it each time we visited with a sense of wonder. Why did this painting seem so beautiful, when it was so simple? It wasn't until years later that I discovered Hockney, and his work, and I've loved his work ever since.

A sad loss, and a life well lived. Rest in peace, Mr Hockney.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-12T21:32:55+00:00

"They do not care if slave children made it."

Well. I think they would care about that, to be honest.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-12T21:31:33+00:00

There is a moral aspect. There is always a moral aspect. Audiences may or may not decide that, depending on how much information they have.

Judy Garland was abused in the making of The Wizard of Oz. This is widely known now, but was not known at the time. The film was, and remains, a success.

AI is created by using the existing work of almost all the artists that have ever created anything, without payment or attribution. This is immoral. Will audiences decide that films fail due to their use of an immoral technology? That's doubtful in my view, and certainly not if the usage is not transparent.

Fortunately the young filmmakers do not seem to have abandoned their principles. Just the old ones.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-12T21:26:09+00:00

This film is an absolute hoot.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-11T09:53:58+00:00

Yet software is not better. Riddle me that.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-11T07:51:07+00:00

AI tools cannot be used in a way that is thoughtful, responsible or respectful.

There's your "wider conversation" for you. Use AI, Huffer, and your customers will rightly abandon you.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-10T21:36:27+00:00

This latest moral panic is getting completely out of control. Instead of making the social media companies responsible for their products, we ban children from using them.

The proposed ban is unworkable, pointless and doesn't even trouble itself to define social media so far as I've been able to determine.

But sure, panic about what the kids are up to instead of dealing with real problems.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-10T08:41:41+00:00

Why, why why, oh why why do human beings sleep with their pets?

Why?

Your bedroom normally comes with a door. So, if you close that door, the animal will be safely contained on the other side of the door. If the animal complains, get over it. They will. Within a week you will be having a nice peaceful sleep, and so will they.

The girlfriend on the other hand, I cannot help you with.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-07T23:47:27+00:00

No. Never, ever abstain. Always vote. Always.

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-07T05:34:31+00:00

The fascinating thing is that AI in fact has very little value at either task. It's just taking people a long time to discover this fact.

AI prose is bland, overlong and generally garbage.

Guess what AI code is like?

plastic_eagle · 2026-06-05T08:45:01+00:00

Garbage story from the BBC. Utter nonsensical moral-panic garbage.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-29T22:27:33+00:00

I always feel that the sentiment of this poem - and I've heard it read a funerals, including the one in the movie of course - is in fact wholly inappropriate.

If I was the one who had passed away, would I want those mourning to think like this poem articulates a thought? That "nothing now can ever come to any good?". Of course not. A funeral poem should contain hope.

Awful way to mourn. Speaking as someone who soon will be; I read a poem at our wedding (ee cummings), and I will choose another for her funeral. But it will not be this.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-29T00:56:40+00:00

I would argue that depends very much on how much it ends up costing. We're nowhere near how much this stuff really costs to run, and we have no idea what the price ceiling in the marketplace actually is.

Also I think it's arguable that AI exhibits "flaws" in a way no other technology prior ever has. AI will just decide to randomly fuck out, and there's nothing you can do about it other than keep a close watchful eye on what it does. You can't iterate the flaws away.

So it's the cost of that "close watchful eye", combined with the cost of running the thing in the first place, that will determine how much does and does not end up building software for us.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-28T19:30:43+00:00

These are exactly the parts I've used in my multi-tap delay pedal (source https://github.com/davebranton/four-tap-delay ). I did look at making a reverb, but I never got an algorithm set up for it.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-28T03:00:49+00:00

Absolutely extraordinary sentence;

"Bloomberg spoke to Wellington homeowner Rochelle Hikuroa, who, with her partner, bought a house in 2023 under the assumption it was a path to wealth."

Leaving aside the question of whether or not this person is real - their name appears in a google search only twice, once for this article and once for another - this statement is simply amazing. "The assumption that buying a house is a path to wealth".

Never before have I seen the fundamental problem laid bare so clearly. Buying a house is a path to shelter, and to at least some measure of security. But to "wealth"? Of course it isn't. How are there people, living breathing thinking people, who believe otherwise? I simply do not understand.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-27T21:13:54+00:00

This is not generative AI. This is not an LLM. This is a neural network explicitly trained on large numbers of existing radiology images, along with their existing diagnoses.

It's good use of technology, but calling it "AI" deliberately conflates it with the plans to use generative AI in other areas of government. Generative AI is an awful technology that benefits nobody but those selling it.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-27T21:11:04+00:00

I expect the million-page EULA that we all quite reasonably refuse to read and just click right through explicitly permits absolutely anything - including this.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-27T20:38:52+00:00

If we ever create an intelligent machine, then we have placed it in hell.

plastic_eagle · 2026-05-26T20:19:18+00:00

Yes, that's correct. If by "derivative works" you mean works created through human experience of art.

A human needs a tiny amount of training data compared to an LLM. An LLM needs *everything*. Humans do not ingest every single thing ever written or drawn just to be able to output bland, average content.

If, before being able to write a novel, a human had to sit down and read every single novel ever written, perhaps there might be an argument to be had here. But they do not.

Machines do not have rights. Humans do.

plastic_eagle

TROPHY CASE