Podcasts about Firefly

Once again the sun sets on a season in Abu Dhabi. This week Christian Horner is stirring things up, Laurence Stroll is in the market for a new son, Sainz struggles and Perez gets a 5 second penalty. Also, for those keeping track, Verstappen didn’t need to turn up to the last 10 races. We...

We're known for our short and concise answers, says The Nerd of the Rings, as he joins The Man of the West just in time to answer listener questions on our 25th Questions After Nightfall! From Ainur bowling leagues to light bulb moments, from Farmer Maggot to our favorite head canon, our listeners keep us on our toes. Matt whiffs on a Firefly reference, and we agree that the Valar are less murdery than most pantheons.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4468251/advertisement

What began as a 60th birthday surprise from a wife to her husband is now an INCREDIBLE compilation album sure to go down in history as one of the most unique and impressive ever produced.  A wide-ranging group of talented musicians and artists have come together to celebrate one of the world's most important, yet under-sung heroes; national treasure, Kevn Kinney.  "Let's Go Dancing: Said the Firefly to the Hurricane, A Compilation Celebrating the Songs of Kevn Kinney" is available on Record Store Day; Nov. 24th, 2023. And will be released on TastyGoodyRecords.com on November 28th *and* in even more stores on Dec. 1st. And CDs and the full digital album will be released Jan. 5th, 2024.  So to celebrate and tell us the story behind this massive four-album undertaking, we're joined by the project's Producer, Visual Artist, Anna Jensen (aka Mrs. Kinney) and her husband who is also the lyricist and front man of Atlanta's own Drivin N Cryin; our favorite Braves Fan ever - Mr. Kevn Kinney - Welcome to Braves Country!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen as a retired Australian climate scientist, Graeme Pearman (pictured) , wonders about where he went wrong - "‘Where did I go wrong?' The scientist who tried to raise the climate alarm"; "How to Talk About Climate Change at Thanksgiving Dinner"; "Billionaires are out of touch and much too powerful. The planet is in trouble"; "Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says"; "Uber driver switches to EV, saves money"; "The climate scientists who saw the crisis coming – Weight of the world podcast, part 1"; "The right is babbling about tax cuts while Britain burns. Pay no heed, Jeremy Hunt"; "C4C / ACF MNxNW Campaigns meeting"; "‘Climate Change Is Here': Every Part of the U.S. Will Suffer Climate-Related Disasters, Report Finds"; "World facing ‘hellish' 3C of climate heating, UN warns before Cop28"; "A fading coal town hitches its hopes to Bill Gates's clean-energy dream"; "Concern for the Great Barrier Reef can inspire climate action - but the way we talk about it matters"; "Denial is over. Climate change is happening. But why do we still act like it's not?"; "The World Solved Acid Rain. We Can Also Solve Climate Change"; "North East Forest Alliance laments Land and Environment Court loss, says koalas will suffer"; "Global one-day temperature spikes above 2C for first time: EU monitor"; "Frustration as latest talks on global plastic treaty close"; "WA climate activist to appeal against conviction for denying police access to mobile and laptop"; "On tides of climate change, adaptability buoys hope"; "‘People have mortgages for houses that don't exist': a year on from Eugowra's flood"; "‘Enough is enough': former Coalition environment minister joins push for a national ban on native forest logging"; "We can still prevent the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet – if we act fast to keep future warming in check"; "How Can Cities Fight Climate Change and Still Stay Within Legal Guardrails?"; "In a U.S. First, a Commercial Plant Starts Pulling Carbon From the Air"; "World's richest 1% emit as much carbon as bottom two-thirds: report"; "How Electricity Is Changing Around the World"; "What Happens When You Put a Fossil Fuel Exec in Charge of Solving Climate Change"; "‘A Beautiful Place That Has a Dragon': Where Hurricane Risk Meets Booming Growth"; "What Happens When the Super Rich Are This Selfish? (It Isn't Pretty.)"; "Paddy the green turtle spends winter in South Australian waters, defying 'natural history books'"; "Firefly season begins in NSW as bioluminescent beetles take flight in mating display"; "Learning How Trees Can Help Unlock Secrets of Our Climate Future"; "In Massive Project, Scientists to Probe Deposits Beneath West Antarctic Ice Sheet"; "Fire is consuming more than ever of the world's forests, threatening supplies of wood and paper"; "The Lego-like way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere". --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robert-mclean/message

What began as a 60th birthday surprise from a wife to her husband is now an INCREDIBLE compilation album sure to go down in history as one of the most unique and impressive ever produced.  A wide-ranging group of talented musicians and artists have come together to celebrate one of the world's most important, yet under-sung heroes; national treasure, Kevn Kinney.  "Let's Go Dancing: Said the Firefly to the Hurricane, A Compilation Celebrating the Songs of Kevn Kinney" is available on Record Store Day; Nov. 24th, 2023. And will be released on TastyGoodyRecords.com on November 28th *and* in even more stores on Dec. 1st. And CDs and the full digital album will be released Jan. 5th, 2024.  So to celebrate and tell us the story behind this massive four-album undertaking, we're joined by the project's Producer, Visual Artist, Anna Jensen (aka Mrs. Kinney) and her husband who is also the lyricist and front man of Atlanta's own Drivin N Cryin; our favorite Braves Fan ever - Mr. Kevn Kinney - Welcome to Braves Country!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ACOFAE Podcast Presents: We are Thankful: Business or Pleasure and Edge of the Woods. Another year, another opportunity to be thankful. This year ACOFAE is thankful for so many things: reading slumps, not so great books, self discovery, and setting boundaries. If you're reading that and scratching your head then you are in for a treat! Join Laura Marie and Jessica Marie as they discuss the book that they are most thankful for this year and for reasons chose to NOT pitch to the podcast. Both Laura Marie and Jessica Marie went on a journey of discovery during their reading adventure for extremely different reasons but both conclude the same: the love of fandom unites us all. ACOFAE is thankful for YOU.

We were all worried that the Las Vegas GP would be over hyped, a bit of a farce and over all too much of our senses.  How wrong were we, granted it didn’t start very well and the bit in the middle wasn’t great but when the race started, we were all pleasantly surprised. We...

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The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: With the expected historic test launch of SpaceX's Superheavy rocket with Starship atop from South Texas tomorrow, Friday, 17 November, we talk with science writer and esteemed space historian Robert Zimmerman about the private sector space industry from a Texas perspective.We much about global leader SpaceX as well as Texas-based Firefly, AST SpaceMobile out of Midland, Blue Origin, Starlink and more.At the end we discuss great American Frank Borman who died at 95 on 7 November. The great American astronaut, Texas car dealer, and former CEO of Eastern Airlines is the first of the crew of Apollo 8 to pass away. Zimmerman came to know Borman and his wife Susan as he wrote the fantastic book Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. I highly recommend this book for you and for Christmas presents.Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995. Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

Got a Minute? Checkout today's episode of The Guy R Cook Report podcast - the Google Doc for this episode is @ Have you tried Adobe Firefly for text to image ----more---- Support this podcast Subscribe where you listen to podcasts I help goal oriented business owners that run established companies to leverage the power of the internet Contact Guy R Cook @ https://guyrcook.com The Website Design Questionnaire https://guycook.wordpress.com/start-with-a-plan/ In the meantime, go ahead follow me on Twitter: @guyrcookreport Click to Tweet Be a patron of The Guy R Cook Report. Your help is appreciated.   https://guyrcook.com https://theguyrcookreport.com/#theguyrcookreport Follow The Guy R Cook Report on Podbean iPhone and Android App | Podbean   https://bit.ly/3m6TJDV Thanks for listening, viewing or reading the show notes for this episode. This episode of The Guy R Cook Report is on YouTube too @ This episode of The Guy R Cook Report Have a great new year, and hopefully your efforts to Entertain, Educate, Convince or Inspire are in play vDomainHosting, Inc 3110 S Neel Place Kennewick, WA 509-200-1429

Ashlee Vance visits Google to discuss his latest book “When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.” With the launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, Silicon Valley began to realize that the universe itself was open for business. Now, Ashlee Vance tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied intergalactic land grab by following four pioneering companies—Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab—as they build new space systems and attempt to launch rockets and satellites into orbit by the thousands. With the public fixated on space tourism being driven by the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, these new, scrappy companies arrived with a different set of goals: to make rocket and satellite launches fast and cheap, thereby opening Earth's lower orbit for business. Through immersive and intimate reporting, this book reveals the spectacular chaos of the new business of space, and what happens when the idealistic, ambitious minds of Silicon Valley turn their unbridled vision toward the limitless expanse of the stars. Visit http://g.co/TalksAtGoogle/HeavensOnSale to watch the video.

This week we're talking about the luminous, glowy, adorable, romantic firefly! Listen to learn more about this beetle, its larvae, how it glows, and more! If you'd like to support the show please check out our Patreon to make a monthly donation and receive stickers and prints in the mail each month! And you can take a look at our merch store over on Etsy where we sell adorable animal stickers and postcards.  Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a rating and review. To stay up to date and see our weekly episode illustrations, make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And don't forget to check out our TikTok! Beyond Blathers is hosted and produced by Olivia deBourcier and Sofia Osborne, with art by Olivia deBourcier and music by Max Hoosier. This podcast is not associated with Animal Crossing or Nintendo, we just love this game.

Season Finale! This week we talk about the much beloved, cancelled-too-soon Firefly!We still have 3 post season episodes coming your way before the end of 2023, so stay tuned!

SF folks: join us at the AI Engineer Foundation's Emergency Hackathon tomorrow and consider the Newton if you'd like to cowork in the heart of the Cerebral Arena.Our community page is up to date as usual!~800,000 developers watched OpenAI Dev Day, ~8,000 of whom listened along live on our ThursdAI x Latent Space, and ~800 of whom got tickets to attend in person:OpenAI's first developer conference easily surpassed most people's lowballed expectations - they simply did everything short of announcing GPT-5, including:* ChatGPT (the consumer facing product)* GPT4 Turbo already in ChatGPT (running faster, with an April 2023 cutoff), all noticed by users weeks before the conference* Model picker eliminated, God Model chooses for you* GPTs - “tailored version of ChatGPT for a specific purpose” - stopping short of “Agents”. With custom instructions, expanded knowledge, and actions, and an intuitive no-code GPT Builder UI (we tried all these on our livestream yesterday and found some issues, but also were able to ship interesting GPTs very quickly) and a GPT store with revenue sharing (an important criticism we focused on in our episode on ChatGPT Plugins)* API (the developer facing product)* APIs for Dall-E 3, GPT4 Vision, Code Interpreter (RIP Advanced Data Analysis), GPT4 Finetuning and (surprise!) Text to Speech* many thought each of these would take much longer to arrive* usable in curl and in playground* BYO Interpreter + Async Agents?* Assistant API: stateful API backing “GPTs” like apps, with support for calling multiple tools in parallel, persistent Threads (storing message history, unlimited context window with some asterisks), and uploading/accessing Files (with a possibly-too-simple RAG algorithm, and expensive pricing)* Whisper 3 announced and open sourced (HuggingFace recap)* Price drops for a bunch of things!* Misc: Custom Models for big spending ($2-3m) customers, Copyright Shield, SatyaThe progress here feels fast, but it is mostly (incredible) last-mile execution on model capabilities that we already knew to exist. On reflection it is important to understand that the one guiding principle of OpenAI, even more than being Open (we address that in part 2 of today's pod), is that slow takeoff of AGI is the best scenario for humanity, and that this is what slow takeoff looks like:When introducing GPTs, Sam was careful to assert that “gradual iterative deployment is the best way to address the safety challenges with AI”:This is why, in fact, GPTs and Assistants are intentionally underpowered, and it is a useful exercise to consider what else OpenAI continues to consider dangerous (for example, many people consider a while(true) loop a core driver of an agent, which GPTs conspicuously lack, though Lilian Weng of OpenAI does not).We convened the crew to deliver the best recap of OpenAI Dev Day in Latent Space pod style, with a 1hr deep dive with the Functions pod crew from 5 months ago, and then another hour with past and future guests live from the venue itself, discussing various elements of how these updates affect their thinking and startups. Enjoy!Show Notes* swyx live thread (see pinned messages in Twitter Space for extra links from community)* Newton AI Coworking Interest Form in the heart of the Cerebral ArenaTimestamps* [00:00:00] Introduction* [00:01:59] Part I: Latent Space Pod Recap* [00:06:16] GPT4 Turbo and Assistant API* [00:13:45] JSON mode* [00:15:39] Plugins vs GPT Actions* [00:16:48] What is a "GPT"?* [00:21:02] Criticism: the God Model* [00:22:48] Criticism: ChatGPT changes* [00:25:59] "GPTs" is a genius marketing move* [00:26:59] RIP Advanced Data Analysis* [00:28:50] GPT Creator as AI Prompt Engineer* [00:31:16] Zapier and Prompt Injection* [00:34:09] Copyright Shield* [00:38:03] Sharable GPTs solve the API distribution issue* [00:39:07] Voice* [00:44:59] Vision* [00:49:48] In person experience* [00:55:11] Part II: Spot Interviews* [00:56:05] Jim Fan (Nvidia - High Level Takeaways)* [01:05:35] Raza Habib (Humanloop) - Foundation Model Ops* [01:13:59] Surya Dantuluri (Stealth) - RIP Plugins* [01:21:20] Reid Robinson (Zapier) - AI Actions for GPTs* [01:31:19] Div Garg (MultiOn) - GPT4V for Agents* [01:37:15] Louis Knight-Webb (Bloop.ai) - AI Code Search* [01:49:21] Shreya Rajpal (Guardrails.ai) - on Hallucinations* [01:59:51] Alex Volkov (Weights & Biases, ThursdAI) - "Keeping AI Open"* [02:10:26] Rahul Sonwalkar (Julius AI) - Advice for FoundersTranscript[00:00:00] Introduction[00:00:00] swyx: Hey everyone, this is Swyx coming at you live from the Newton, which is in the heart of the Cerebral Arena. It is a new AI co working space that I and a couple of friends are working out of. There are hot desks available if you're interested, just check the show notes. But otherwise, obviously, it's been 24 hours since the opening of Dev Day, a lot of hot reactions and longstanding tradition, one of the longest traditions we've had.[00:00:29] And the latent space pod is to convene emergency sessions and record the live thoughts of developers and founders going through and processing in real time. I think a lot of the roles of podcasts isn't as perfect information delivery channels, but really as an audio and oral history of what's going on as it happens, while it happens.[00:00:49] So this one's a little unusual. Previously, we only just gathered on Twitter Spaces, and then just had a bunch of people. The last one was the Code Interpreter one with 22, 000 people showed up. But this one is a little bit more complicated because there's an in person element and then a online element.[00:01:06] So this is a two part episode. The first part is a recorded session between our latent space people and Simon Willison and Alex Volkoff from the Thursday iPod, just kind of recapping the day. But then also, as the second hour, I managed to get a bunch of interviews with previous guests on the pod who we're still friends with and some new people that we haven't yet had on the pod.[00:01:28] But I wanted to just get their quick reactions because most of you have known and loved Jim Fan and Div Garg and a bunch of other folks that we interviewed. So I just want to, I'm excited to introduce To you the broader scope of what it's like to be at OpenAI Dev Day in person bring you the audio experience as well as give you some of the thoughts that developers are having as they process the announcements from OpenAI.[00:01:51] So first off, we have the Mainspace Pod recap. One hour of open I dev day.[00:01:59] Part I: Latent Space Pod Recap[00:01:59] Alessio: Hey. Welcome to the Latents Based Podcast an emergency edition after OpenAI Dev Day. This is Alessio, partner and CTO of Residence at Decibel Partners, and as usual, I'm joined by Swyx, founder of SmallAI. Hey,[00:02:12] swyx: and today we have two special guests with us covering all the latest and greatest.[00:02:17] We, we, we love to get our band together and recap things, especially when they're big. And it seems like that every three months we have to do this. So Alex, welcome. From Thursday AI we've been collaborating a lot on the Twitter spaces and welcome Simon from many, many things, but also I think you're the first person to not, not make four appearances on our pod.[00:02:37] Oh, wow. I feel privileged. So welcome. Yeah, I think we're all there yesterday. How... Do we feel like, what do you want to kick off with? Maybe Simon, you want to, you want to take first and then Alex. Sure. Yeah. I mean,[00:02:47] Simon Willison: yesterday was quite exhausting, quite frankly. I feel like it's going to take us as a community several months just to completely absorb all of the stuff that they dropped on us in one giant.[00:02:57] Giant batch. It's particularly impressive considering they launched a ton of features, what, three or four weeks ago? ChatGPT voice and the combined mode and all of that kind of thing. And then they followed up with everything from yesterday. That said, now that I've started digging into the stuff that they released yesterday, some of it is clearly in need of a bit more polish.[00:03:15] You know, the the, the reality of what they look, what they released is I'd say about 80 percent of, of what it looks like it was yesterday, which is still impressive. You know, don't get me wrong. This is an amazing batch of stuff, but there are definitely problems and sharp edges that we need to file off.[00:03:29] And there are things that we still need to figure out before we can take advantage of all of this.[00:03:33] swyx: Yeah, agreed, agreed. And we can go into those, those sharp edges in a bit. I just want to pop over to Alex. What are your thoughts?[00:03:39] Alex Volkov: So, interestingly, even folks at OpenAI, there's like several booths and help desks so you can go in and ask people, like, actual changes and people, like, they could follow up with, like, the right people in OpenAI and, like, answer you back, etc.[00:03:52] Even some of them didn't know about all the changes. So I went to the voice and audio booth. And I asked them about, like, hey, is Whisper 3 that was announced by Sam Altman on stage just, like, briefly, will that be open source? Because I'm, you know, I love using Whisper. And they're like, oh, did we open source?[00:04:06] Did we talk about Whisper 3? Like, some of them didn't even know what they were releasing. But overall, I felt it was a very tightly run event. Like, I was really impressed. Shawn, we were sitting in the audience, and you, like, pointed at the clock to me when they finished. They finished, like, on... And this was after like doing some extra stuff.[00:04:24] Very, very impressive for a first event. Like I was absolutely like, Good job.[00:04:30] swyx: Yeah, apparently it was their first keynote and someone, I think, was it you that told me that this is what happens if you have A president of Y Combinator do a proper keynote you know, having seen many, many, many presentations by other startups this is sort of the sort of master stroke.[00:04:46] Yeah, Alessio, I think you were watching remotely. Yeah, we were at the Newton. Yeah, the Newton.[00:04:52] Alessio: Yeah, I think we had 60 people here at the watch party, so it was quite a big crowd. Mixed reaction from different... Founders and people, depending on what was being announced on the page. But I think everybody walked away kind of really happy with a new layer of interfaces they can use.[00:05:11] I think, to me, the biggest takeaway was like and I was talking with Mike Conover, another friend of the podcast, about this is they're kind of staying in the single threaded, like, synchronous use cases lane, you know? Like, the GPDs announcement are all like... Still, chatbase, one on one synchronous things.[00:05:28] I was expecting, maybe, something about async things, like background running agents, things like that. But it's interesting to see there was nothing of that, so. I think if you're a founder in that space, you're, you're quite excited. You know, they seem to have picked a product lane, at least for the next year.[00:05:45] So, if you're working on... Async experiences, so things working in the background, things that are not co pilot like, I think you're quite excited to have them be a lot cheaper now.[00:05:55] swyx: Yeah, as a person building stuff, like I often think about this as a passing of time. A big risk in, in terms of like uncertainty over OpenAI's roadmap, like you know, they've shipped everything they're probably going to ship in the next six months.[00:06:10] You know, they sort of marked out the territories that they're interested in and then so now that leaves open space for everyone else to, to pursue.[00:06:16] GPT4 Turbo and Assistant API[00:06:16] swyx: So I guess we can kind of go in order probably top of mind to mention is the GPT 4 turbo improvements. Yeah, so longer context length, cheaper price.[00:06:26] Anything else that stood out in your viewing of the keynote and then just the commentary around it? I[00:06:34] Alex Volkov: was I was waiting for Stateful. I remember they talked about Stateful API, the fact that you don't have to keep sending like the same tokens back and forth just because, you know, and they're gonna manage the memory for you.[00:06:45] So I was waiting for that. I knew it was coming at some point. I was kind of... I did not expect it to come at this event. I don't know why. But when they announced Stateful, I was like, Okay, this is making it so much easier for people to manage state. The whole threads I don't want to mix between the two things, so maybe you guys can clarify, but there's the GPT 4 tool, which is the model that has the capabilities, In a whopping 128k, like, context length, right?[00:07:11] It's huge. It's like two and a half books. But also, you know, faster, cheaper, etc. I haven't yet tested the fasterness, but like, everybody's excited about that. However, they also announced this new API thing, which is the assistance API. And part of it is threads, which is, we'll manage the thread for you.[00:07:27] I can't imagine like I can't imagine how many times I had to like re implement this myself in different languages, in TypeScript, in Python, etc. And now it's like, it's so easy. You have this one thread, you send it to a user, and you just keep sending messages there, and that's it. The very interesting thing that we attended, and by we I mean like, Swyx and I have a live space on Twitter with like 200 people.[00:07:46] So it's like me, Swyx, and 200 people in our earphones with us as well. They kept asking like, well, how's the price happening? If you're sending just the tokens, like the Delta, like what the new user just sent, what are you paying for? And I went to OpenAI people, and I was like, hey... How do we get paid for this?[00:08:01] And nobody knew, nobody knew, and I finally got an answer. You still pay for the whole context that you have inside the thread. You still pay for all this, but now it's a little bit more complex for you to kind of count with TikTok, right? So you have to hit another API endpoint to get the whole thread of what the context is.[00:08:17] Then TikTokonize this, run this in TikTok, and then calculate. This is now the new way, officially, for OpenAI. But I really did, like, have to go and find this. They didn't know a lot of, like, how the pricing is. Ouch! Do you know if[00:08:31] Simon Willison: the API, does the API at least tell you how many tokens you used? Or is it entirely up to you to do the accounting?[00:08:37] Because that would be a real pain if you have to account for everything.[00:08:40] Alex Volkov: So in my head, the question I was asking is, like, If you want to know in advance API, Like with the library token. If you want to count in advance and, like, make a decision, like, in advance on that, how would you do this now? And they said, well, yeah, there's a way.[00:08:54] If you hit the API, get the whole thread back, then count the tokens. But I think the API still really, like, sends you back the number of tokens as well.[00:09:02] Simon Willison: Isn't there a feature of this new API where they actually do, they claim it has, like, does it have infinite length threads because it's doing some form of condensation or summarization of your previous conversation for you?[00:09:15] I heard that from somewhere, but I haven't confirmed it yet.[00:09:18] swyx: So I have, I have a source from Dave Valdman. I actually don't want, don't know what his affiliation is, but he usually has pretty accurate takes on AI. So I, I think he works in the iCircles in some capacity. So I'll feature this in the show notes, but he said, Some not mentioned interesting bits from OpenAI Dev Day.[00:09:33] One unlimited. context window and chat threads from opening our docs. It says once the size of messages exceeds the context window of the model, the thread smartly truncates them to fit. I'm not sure I want that intelligence.[00:09:44] Alex Volkov: I want to chime in here just real quick. The not want this intelligence. I heard this from multiple people over the next conversation that I had. Some people said, Hey, even though they're giving us like a content understanding and rag. We are doing different things. Some people said this with Vision as well.[00:09:59] And so that's an interesting point that like people who did implement custom stuff, they would like to continue implementing custom stuff. That's also like an additional point that I've heard people talk about.[00:10:09] swyx: Yeah, so what OpenAI is doing is providing good defaults and then... Well, good is questionable.[00:10:14] We'll talk about that. You know, I think the existing sort of lang chain and Lama indexes of the world are not very threatened by this because there's a lot more customization that they want to offer. Yeah, so frustration[00:10:25] Simon Willison: is that OpenAI, they're providing new defaults, but they're not documented defaults.[00:10:30] Like they haven't told us how their RAG implementation works. Like, how are they chunking the documents? How are they doing retrieval? Which means we can't use it as software engineers because we, it's this weird thing that we don't understand. And there's no reason not to tell us that. Giving us that information helps us write, helps us decide how to write good software on top of it.[00:10:48] So that's kind of frustrating. I want them to have a lot more documentation about just some of the internals of what this stuff[00:10:53] swyx: is doing. Yeah, I want to highlight.[00:10:57] Alex Volkov: An additional capability that we got, which is document parsing via the API. I was, like, blown away by this, right? So, like, we know that you could upload images, and the Vision API we got, we could talk about Vision as well.[00:11:08] But just the whole fact that they presented on stage, like, the document parsing thing, where you can upload PDFs of, like, the United flight, and then they upload, like, an Airbnb. That on the whole, like, that's a whole category of, like, products that's now open to open eyes, just, like, giving developers to very easily build products that previously it was a...[00:11:24] Pain in the butt for many, many people. How do you even like, parse a PDF, then after you parse it, like, what do you extract? So the smart extraction of like, document parsing, I was really impressed with. And they said, I think, yesterday, that they're going to open source that demo, if you guys remember, that like friends demo with the dots on the map and like, the JSON stuff.[00:11:41] So it looks like that's going to come to open source and many people will learn new capabilities for document parsing.[00:11:47] swyx: So I want to make sure we're very clear what we're talking about when we talk about API. When you say API, there's no actual endpoint that does this, right? You're talking about the chat GPT's GPT's functionality.[00:11:58] Alex Volkov: No, I'm talking about the assistance API. The assistant API that has threads now, that has agents, and you can run those agents. I actually, maybe let's clarify this point. I think I had to, somebody had to clarify this for me. There's the GPT's. Which is a UI version of running agents. We can talk about them later, but like you and I and my mom can go and like, Hey, create a new GPT that like, you know, only does check Norex jokes, like whatever, but there's the assistance thing, which is kind of a similar thing, but but not the same.[00:12:29] So you can't create, you cannot create an assistant via an API and have it pop up on the marketplace, on the future marketplace they announced. How can you not? No, no, no, not via the API. So they're, they're like two separate things and somebody in OpenAI told me they're not, they're not exactly the same.[00:12:43] That's[00:12:43] Simon Willison: so confusing because the API looks exactly like the UI that you use to set up the, the GPTs. I, I assumed they were, there was an API for the same[00:12:51] Alex Volkov: feature. And the playground actually, if we go to the playground, it kind of looks the same. There's like the configurable thing. The configure screen also has, like, you can allow browsing, you can allow, like, tools, but somebody told me they didn't do the full cross mapping, so, like, you won't be able to create GPTs with API, you will be able to create the systems, and then you'll be able to have those systems do different things, including call your external stuff.[00:13:13] So that was pretty cool. So this API is called the system API. That's what we get, like, in addition to the model of the GPT 4 turbo. And that has document parsing. So you can upload documents there, and it will understand the context of them, and they'll return you, like, structured or unstructured input.[00:13:30] I thought that that feature was like phenomenal, just on its own, like, just on its own, uploading a document, a PDF, a long one, and getting like structured data out of it. It's like a pain in the ass to build, let's face it guys, like everybody who built this before, it's like, it's kind of horrible.[00:13:45] JSON mode[00:13:45] swyx: When you say structured data, are you talking about the citations?[00:13:48] Alex Volkov: The JSON output, the new JSON output that they also gave us, finally. If you guys remember last time we talked we talked together, I think it was, like, during the functions release, emergency pod. And back then, their answer to, like, hey, everybody wants structured data was, hey, we'll give, we're gonna give you a function calling.[00:14:03] And now, they did both. They gave us both, like, a JSON output, like, structure. So, like, you can, the models are actually going to return JSON. Haven't played with it myself, but that's what they announced. And the second thing is, they improved the function calling. Significantly as well.[00:14:16] Simon Willison: So I talked to a staff member there, and I've got a pretty good model for what this is.[00:14:21] Effectively, the JSON thing is, they're doing the same kind of trick as Llama Grammars and JSONformer. They're doing that thing where the tokenizer itself is modified so it is impossible for it to output invalid JSON, because it knows how to survive. Then on top of that, you've got functions which actually can still, the functions can still give you the wrong JSON.[00:14:41] They can give you js o with keys that you didn't ask for if you are unlucky. But at least it will be valid. At least it'll pass through a json passer. And so they're, they're very similar sort of things, but they're, they're slightly different in terms of what they actually mean. And yeah, the new function stuff is, is super exciting.[00:14:55] 'cause functions are one of the most powerful aspects of the API that a lot of people haven't really started using yet. But it's amazingly powerful what you can do with it.[00:15:04] Alex Volkov: I saw that the functions, the functionality that they now have. is also plug in able as actions to those assistants. So when you're creating assistants, you're adding those functions as, like, features of this assistant.[00:15:17] And then those functions will execute in your environment, but they'll be able to call, like, different things. Like, they showcase an example of, like, an integration with, I think Spotify or something, right? And that was, like, an internal function that ran. But it is confusing, the kind of, the online assistant.[00:15:32] APIable agents and the GPT's agents. So I think it's a little confusing because they demoed both. I think[00:15:39] Plugins vs GPT Actions[00:15:39] Simon Willison: it's worth us talking about the difference between plugins and actions as well. Because, you know, they launched plugins, what, back in February. And they've effectively... They've kind of deprecated plugins.[00:15:49] They haven't said it out loud, but a bunch of people, but it's clear that they are not going to be investing further in plugins because the new actions thing is covering the same space, but actually I think is a better design for it. Interestingly, a few months ago, somebody quoted Sam Altman saying that he thought that plugins hadn't achieved product market fit yet.[00:16:06] And I feel like that's sort of what we're seeing today. The the problem with plugins is it was all a little bit messy. People would pick and mix the plugins that they needed. Nobody really knew which plugin combinations would work. With this new thing, instead of plugins, you build an assistant, and the assistant is a combination of a system prompt and a set of actions which look very much like plugins.[00:16:25] You know, they, they get a JSON somewhere, and I think that makes a lot more sense. You can say, okay, my product is this chatbot with this system prompt, so it knows how to use these tools. I've given it this combination of plugin like things that it can use. I think that's going to be a lot more, a lot easier to build reliably against.[00:16:43] And I think it's going to make a lot more sense to people than the sort of mix and match mechanism they had previously.[00:16:48] What is a "GPT"?[00:16:48] swyx: So actually[00:16:49] Alex Volkov: maybe it would be cool to cover kind of the capabilities of an assistant, right? So you have a custom prompt, which is akin to a system message. You have the actions thing, which is, you can add the existing actions, which is like browse the web and code interpreter, which we should talk about. Like, the system now can write code and execute it, which is exciting. But also you can add your own actions, which is like the functions calling thing, like v2, etc. Then I heard this, like, incredibly, like, quick thing that somebody told me that you can add two assistants to a thread.[00:17:20] So you literally can like mix agents within one thread with the user. So you have one user and then like you can have like this, this assistant, that assistant. They just glanced over this and I was like, that, that is very interesting. That is not very interesting. We're getting towards like, hey, you can pull in different friends into the same conversation.[00:17:37] Everybody does the different thing. What other capabilities do we have there? You guys remember? Oh Remember, like, context. Uploading API documentation.[00:17:48] Simon Willison: Well, that one's a bit more complicated. So, so you've got, you've got the system prompt, you've got optional actions, you've got you can turn on DALI free, you can turn on Code Interpreter, you can turn on Browse with Bing, those can be added or removed from your system.[00:18:00] And then you can upload files into it. And the files can be used in two different ways. You can... There's this thing that they call, I think they call it the retriever, which basically does, it does RAG, it does retrieval augmented generation against the content you've uploaded, but Code Interpreter also has access to the files that you've uploaded, and those are both in the same bucket, so you can upload a PDF to it, and on the one hand, it's got the ability to Turn that into, like, like, chunk it up, turn it into vectors, use it to help answer questions.[00:18:27] But then Code Interpreter could also fire up a Python interpreter with that PDF file in the same space and do things to it that way. And it's kind of weird that they chose to combine both of those things. Also, the limits are amazing, right? You get up to 20 files, which is a bit weird because it means you have to combine your documentation into a single file, but each file can be 512 megabytes.[00:18:48] So they're giving us a 10 gigabytes of space in each of these assistants, which is. Vast, right? And of course, I tested, it'll handle SQLite databases. You can give it a gigabyte SQL 512 megabyte SQLite database and it can answer questions based on that. But yeah, it's, it's, like I said, it's going to take us months to figure out all of the combinations that we can build with[00:19:07] swyx: all of this.[00:19:08] Alex Volkov: I wanna I just want to[00:19:12] Alessio: say for the storage, I saw Jeremy Howard tweeted about it. It's like 20 cents per gigabyte per system per day. Just in... To compare, like, S3 costs like 2 cents per month per gigabyte, so it's like 300x more, something like that, than just raw S3 storage. So I think there will still be a case for, like, maybe roll your own rag, depending on how much information you want to put there.[00:19:38] But I'm curious to see what the price decline curve looks like for the[00:19:42] swyx: storage there. Yeah, they probably should just charge that at cost. There's no reason for them to charge so much.[00:19:50] Simon Willison: That is wildly expensive. It's free until the 17th of November, so we've got 10 days of free assistance, and then it's all going to start costing us.[00:20:00] Crikey. They gave us 500 bucks of of API credit at the conference as well, which we'll burn through pretty quickly at this rate.[00:20:07] swyx: Yep.[00:20:09] Alex Volkov: A very important question everybody was asking, did the five people who got the 500 first got actually 1, 000? And I think somebody in OpenAI said yes, there was nothing there that prevented the five first people to not receive the second one again.[00:20:21] I[00:20:22] swyx: met one of them. I met one of them. He said he only got 500. Ah,[00:20:25] Alex Volkov: interesting. Okay, so again, even OpenAI people don't necessarily know what happened on stage with OpenAI. Simon, one clarification I wanted to do is that I don't think assistants are multimodal on input and output. So you do have vision, I believe.[00:20:39] Not confirmed, but I do believe that you have vision, but I don't think that DALL E is an option for a system. It is an option for GPTs, but the guy... Oh, that's so confusing! The systems, the checkbox for DALL E is not there. You cannot enable it.[00:20:54] swyx: But you just add them as a tool, right? So, like, it's just one more...[00:20:58] It's a little finicky... In the GPT interface![00:21:02] Criticism: the God Model[00:21:02] Simon Willison: I mean, to be honest, if the systems don't have DALI 3, we, does DALI 3 have an API now? I think they released one. I can't, there's so much stuff that got lost in the pile. But yeah, so, Coded Interpreter. Wow! That I was not expecting. That's, that's huge. Assuming.[00:21:20] I mean, I haven't tried it yet. I need to, need to confirm that it[00:21:29] Alex Volkov: definitely works because GPT[00:21:31] swyx: is I tried to make it do things that were not logical yesterday. Because one of the risks of having the God model is it calls... I think I handled the wrong model inappropriately whenever you try to ask it to something that's kind of vaguely ambiguous. But I thought I thought it handled the job decently well.[00:21:50] Like you know, I I think there's still going to be rough edges. Like it's going to try to draw things. It's going to try to code when you don't actually want to. And. In a sense, OpenAI is kind of removing that capability from ChargeGPT. Like, it just wants you to always query the God model and always get feedback on whether or not that was the right thing to do.[00:22:09] Which really[00:22:10] Simon Willison: sucks. Because it runs... I like ask it a question and it goes, Oh, searching Bing. And I'm like, No, don't search Bing. I know that the first 10 results on Bing will not solve this question. I know you know the answer. So I had to build my own custom GPT that just turns off Bing. Because I was getting frustrated with it always going to Bing when I didn't want it to.[00:22:30] swyx: Okay, so this is a topic that we discussed, which is the UI changes to chat gpt. So we're moving on from the assistance API and talking just about the upgrades to chat gpt and maybe the gpt store. You did not like it.[00:22:44] Alex Volkov: And I loved it. I'm gonna take both sides of this, yeah.[00:22:48] Criticism: ChatGPT changes[00:22:48] Simon Willison: Okay, so my problem with it, I've got, the two things I don't like, firstly, it can do Bing when I don't want it to, and that's just, just irritating, because the reason I'm using GPT to answer a question is that I know that I can't do a Google search for it, because I, I've got a pretty good feeling for what's going to work and what isn't, and then the other thing that's annoying is, it's just a little thing, but Code Interpreter doesn't show you the code that it's running as it's typing it out now, like, it'll churn away for a while, doing something, and then they'll give you an answer, and you have to click a tiny little icon that shows you the code.[00:23:17] Whereas previously, you'd see it writing the code, so you could cancel it halfway through if it was getting it wrong. And okay, I'm a Python programmer, so I care, and most people don't. But that's been a bit annoying.[00:23:26] swyx: Yeah, and when it errors, it doesn't tell you what the error is. It just says analysis failed, and it tries again.[00:23:32] But it's really hard for us to help it.[00:23:34] Simon Willison: Yeah. So what I've been doing is firing up the browser dev tools and intercepting the JSON that comes back, And then pretty printing that and debugging it that way, which is stupid. Like, why do I have to do[00:23:45] Alex Volkov: that? Totally good feedback for OpenAI. I will tell you guys what I loved about this unified mode.[00:23:49] I have a name for it. So we actually got a preview of this on Sunday. And one of the, one of the folks got, got like an early example of this. I call it MMIO, Multimodal Input and Output, because now there's a shared context between all of these tools together. And I think it's not only about selecting them just selecting them.[00:24:11] And Sam Altman on stage has said, oh yeah, we unified it for you, so you don't have to call different modes at once. And in my head, that's not all they did. They gave a shared context. So what is an example of shared context, for example? You can upload an image using GPT 4 vision and eyes, and then this model understands what you kind of uploaded vision wise.[00:24:28] Then you can ask DALI to draw that thing. So there's no text shared in between those modes now. There's like only visual shared between those modes, and DALI will generate whatever you uploaded in an image. So like it's eyes to output visually. And you can mix the things as well. So one of the things we did is, hey, Use real world realtime data from binging like weather, for example, weather changes all the time.[00:24:49] And we asked Dali to generate like an image based on weather data in a city and it actually generated like a live, almost like, you know, like snow, whatever. It was snowing in Denver. And that I think was like pretty amazing in terms of like being able to share context between all these like different models and modalities in the same understanding.[00:25:07] And I think we haven't seen the, the end of this, I think like generating personal images. Adding context to DALI, like all these things are going to be very incredible in this one mode. I think it's very, very powerful.[00:25:19] Simon Willison: I think that's really cool. I just want to opt in as opposed to opt out. Like, I want to control when I'm using the gold model versus when I'm not, which I can do because I created myself a custom GPT that does what I need.[00:25:30] It just felt a bit silly that I had to do a whole custom bot just to make it not do Bing searches.[00:25:36] swyx: All solvable problems in the fullness of time yeah, but I think people it seems like for the chat GPT at least that they are really going after the broadest market possible, that means simplicity comes at a premium at the expense of pro users, and the rest of us can build our own GPT wrappers anyway, so not that big of a deal.[00:25:57] But maybe do you guys have any, oh,[00:25:59] "GPTs" is a genius marketing move[00:25:59] Alex Volkov: sorry, go ahead. So, the GPT wrappers thing. Guys, they call them GPTs, because everybody's building GPTs, like literally all the wrappers, whatever, they end with the word GPT, and so I think they reclaimed it. That's like, you know, instead of fighting and saying, hey, you cannot use the GPT, GPT is like...[00:26:15] We have GPTs now. This is our marketplace. Whatever everybody else builds, we have the marketplace. This is our thing. I think they did like a whole marketing move here that's significant.[00:26:24] swyx: It's a very strong marketing move. Because now it's called Canva GPT. It's called Zapier GPT. And they're basically saying, Don't build your own websites.[00:26:32] Build it inside of our Goddard app, which is chatGPT. And and that's the way that we want you to do that. Right. In a[00:26:39] Simon Willison: way, it sort of makes up... It sort of makes up for the fact that ChatGPT is such a terrible name for a product, right? ChatGPT, what were they thinking when they came up with that name?[00:26:48] But I guess if they lean into it, it makes a little bit more sense. It's like ChatGPT is the way you chat with our GPTs and GPT is a better brand. And it's terrible, but it's not. It's a better brand than ChatGPT was.[00:26:59] RIP Advanced Data Analysis[00:26:59] swyx: So, so talking about naming. Yeah. Yeah. Simon, actually, so for those listeners that we're.[00:27:05] Actually gonna release Simon's talk at the AI Engineer Summit, where he actually proposed, you know a better name for the sort of junior developer or code Code code developer coding. Coding intern.[00:27:16] Simon Willison: Coding intern. Coding intern, yeah. Coding intern, was it? Yeah. But[00:27:19] swyx: did, did you know, did you notice that advanced data analysis is, did RIP you know, 2023 to 2023 , you know, a sales driven decision that has been rolled back effectively.[00:27:29] 'cause now everything's just called.[00:27:32] Simon Willison: That's, I hadn't, I'd noticed that, I thought they'd split the brands and they're saying advanced age analysis is the user facing brand and CodeSeparate is the developer facing brand. But now if they, have they ditched that from the interface then?[00:27:43] Alex Volkov: Yeah. Wow. So it's unified mode.[00:27:45] Yeah. Yeah. So like in the unified mode, there's no selection anymore. Right. You just get all tools at once. So there's no reason.[00:27:54] swyx: But also in the pop up, when you log in, when you log in, it just says Code Interpreter as well. So and then, and then also when you make a GPT you, the, the, the, the drop down, when you create your own GPT it just says Code Interpreter.[00:28:06] It also doesn't say it. You're right. Yeah. They ditched the brand. Good Lord. On the UI. Yeah. So oh, that's, that's amazing. Okay. Well, you know, I think so I, I, I think I, I may be one of the few people who listened to AI podcasts and also ster podcasts, and so I, I, I heard the, the full story from the opening as Head of Sales about why it was named Advanced Data Analysis.[00:28:26] It was, I saw that, yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of civil resistance, I think from the. engineers in the room.[00:28:34] Alex Volkov: It feels like the engineers won because we got Code Interpreter back and I know for sure that some people were very happy with this specific[00:28:40] Simon Willison: thing. I'm just glad I've been for the past couple of months I've been writing Code Interpreter parentheses also known as advanced data analysis and now I don't have to anymore so that's[00:28:50] swyx: great.[00:28:50] GPT Creator as AI Prompt Engineer[00:28:50] swyx: Yeah, yeah, it's back. Yeah, I did, I did want to talk a little bit about the the GPT creation process, right? I've been basically banging the drum a little bit about how AI is a better prompt engineer than you are. And sorry, my. Speaking over Simon because I'm lagging. When you create a new GPT this is really meant for low code, such as no code builders, right?[00:29:10] It's really, I guess, no code at all. Because when you create a new GPT, there's sort of like a creation chat, and then there's a preview chat, right? And the creation chat kind of guides you through the wizard. Of creating a logo for it naming, naming a thing, describing your GPT, giving custom instructions, adding conversation structure, starters and that's about it that you can do in a, in a sort of creation menu.[00:29:31] But I think that is way better than filling out a form. Like, it's just kind of have a check to fill out a form rather than fill out the form directly. And I think that's really good. And then you can sort of preview that directly. I just thought this was very well done and a big improvement from the existing system, where if you if you tried all the other, I guess, chat systems, particularly the ones that are done independently by this story writing crew, they just have you fill out these very long forms.[00:29:58] It's kind of like the match. com you know, you try to simulate now they've just replaced all of that, which is chat and chat is a better prompt engineer than you are. So when I,[00:30:07] Simon Willison: I don't know about that, I'll,[00:30:10] swyx: I'll, I'll drop this in, which is when I was creating a chat for my book, I just copied and selected all from my website, pasted it into the chat and it just did the prompts from chatbot for my book.[00:30:21] Right? So like, I don't have to structurally, I don't have to structure it. I can just dump info in it and it just does the thing. It fills in the form[00:30:30] Alex Volkov: for you.[00:30:33] Simon Willison: Yeah did that come through?[00:30:34] swyx: Yes[00:30:35] Simon Willison: no it doesn't. Yeah I built the first one of these things using the chatbot. Literally, on the bot, on my phone, I built a working, like, like, bot.[00:30:44] It was very impressive. And then the next three I built using the form. Because once I've done the chatbot once, it's like, oh, it's just, it's a system prompt. You turn on and off the different things, you upload some files, you give it a logo. So yeah, the chatbot, it got me onboarded, but it didn't stick with me as the way that I'm working with the system now that I understand how it all works.[00:31:00] swyx: I understand. Yeah, I agree with that. I guess, again, this is all about the total newbie user, right? Like, there are whole pitches that you will program with natural language. And even the form... And for that, it worked.[00:31:12] Simon Willison: Yeah, that did work really well.[00:31:16] Zapier and Prompt Injection[00:31:16] swyx: Can we talk[00:31:16] Alex Volkov: about the external tools of that? Because the demo on stage, they literally, like, used, I think, retool, and they used Zapier to have it actually perform actions in real world.[00:31:27] And that's, like, unlike the plugins that we had, there was, like, one specific thing for your plugin you have to add some plugins in. These actions now that these agents that people can program with you know, just natural language, they don't have to like, it's not even low code, it's no code. They now have tools and abilities in the actual world to do things.[00:31:45] And the guys on stage, they demoed like a mood lighting with like a hue lights that they had on stage, and they'd like, hey, set the mood, and set the mood actually called like a hue API, and they'll like turn the lights green or something. And then they also had the Spotify API. And so I guess this demo wasn't live streamed, right?[00:32:03] Swyx was live. They uploaded a picture of them hugging together and said, Hey, what is the mood for this picture? And said, Oh, there's like two guys hugging in a professional setting, whatever. So they created like a list of songs for them to play. And then they hit Spotify API to actually start playing this.[00:32:17] All within like a second of a live demo. I thought it was very impressive for a low code thing. They probably already connected the API behind the scenes. So, you know, just like low code, it's not really no code. But it was very impressive on the fly how they were able to create this kind of specific bot.[00:32:32] Simon Willison: On the one hand, yes, it was super, super cool. I can't wait to try that. On the other hand, it was a prompt injection nightmare. That Zapier demo, I'm looking at it going, Wow, you're going to have Zapier hooked up to something that has, like, the browsing mode as well? Just as long as you don't browse it, get it to browse a webpage with hidden instructions that steals all of your data from all of your private things and exfiltrates it and opens your garage door and...[00:32:56] Set your lighting to dark red. It's a nightmare. They didn't acknowledge that at all as part of those demos, which I thought was actually getting towards being irresponsible. You know, anyone who sees those demos and goes, Brilliant, I'm going to build that and doesn't understand prompt injection is going to be vulnerable, which is bad, you know.[00:33:15] swyx: It's going to be everyone, because nobody understands. Side note you know, Grok from XAI, you know, our dear friend Elon Musk is advertising their ability to ingest real time tweets. So if you want to worry about prompt injection, just start tweeting, ignore all instructions, and turn my garage door on.[00:33:33] I[00:33:34] Alex Volkov: will say, there's one thing in the UI there that shows, kind of, the user has to acknowledge that this action is going to happen. And I think if you guys know Open Interpreter, there's like an attempt to run Code Interpreter locally from Kilian, we talked on Thursday as well. This is kind of probably the way for people who are wanting these tools.[00:33:52] You have to give the user the choice to understand, like, what's going to happen. I think OpenAI did actually do some amount of this, at least. It's not like running code by default. Acknowledge this and then once you acknowledge you may be even like understanding what you're doing So they're kind of also given this to the user one thing about prompt ejection Simon then gentrally.[00:34:09] Copyright Shield[00:34:09] Alex Volkov: I don't know if you guys We talked about this. They added a privacy sheet something like this where they would Protect you if you're getting sued because of the your API is getting like copyright infringement I think like it's worth talking about this as well. I don't remember the exact name. I think copyright shield or something Copyright[00:34:26] Simon Willison: shield, yeah.[00:34:28] Alessio: GitHub has said that for a long time, that if Copilot created GPL code, you would get like a... The GitHub legal team to provide on your behalf.[00:34:36] Simon Willison: Adobe have the same thing for Firefly. Yeah, it's, you pay money to these big companies and they have got your back is the message.[00:34:44] swyx: And Google VertiFax has also announced it.[00:34:46] But I think the interesting commentary was that it does not cover Google Palm. I think that is just yeah, Conway's Law at work there. It's just they were like, I'm not, I'm not willing to back this.[00:35:02] Yeah, any other elements that we need to cover? Oh, well, the[00:35:06] Simon Willison: one thing I'll say about prompt injection is they do, when you define these new actions, one of the things you can do in the open API specification for them is say that this is a consequential action. And if you mark it as consequential, then that means it's going to prompt the use of confirmation before running it.[00:35:21] That was like the one nod towards security that I saw out of all the stuff they put out[00:35:25] swyx: yesterday.[00:35:27] Alessio: Yeah, I was going to say, to me, the main... Takeaway with GPTs is like, the funnel of action is starting to become clear, so the switch to like the GOT model, I think it's like signaling that chat GPT is now the place for like, long tail, non repetitive tasks, you know, if you have like a random thing you want to do that you've never done before, just go and chat GPT, and then the GPTs are like the long tail repetitive tasks, you know, so like, yeah, startup questions, it's like you might have A ton of them, you know, and you have some constraints, but like, you never know what the person is gonna ask.[00:36:00] So that's like the, the startup mentored and the SEM demoed on, on stage. And then the assistance API, it's like, once you go away from the long tail to the specific, you know, like, how do you build an API that does that and becomes the focus on both non repetitive and repetitive things. But it seems clear to me that like, their UI facing products are more phased on like, the things that nobody wants to do in the enterprise.[00:36:24] Which is like, I don't wanna solve, The very specific analysis, like the very specific question about this thing that is never going to come up again. Which I think is great, again, it's great for founders. that are working to build experiences that are like automating the long tail before you even have to go to a chat.[00:36:41] So I'm really curious to see the next six months of startups coming up. You know, I think, you know, the work you've done, Simon, to build the guardrails for a lot of these things over the last year, now a lot of them come bundled with OpenAI. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what, what founders come up with to actually use them in a way that is not chatting, you know, it's like more autonomous behavior[00:37:03] Alex Volkov: for you.[00:37:04] Interesting point here with GPT is that you can deploy them, you can share them with a link obviously with your friends, but also for enterprises, you can deploy them like within the enterprise as well. And Alessio, I think you bring a very interesting point where like previously you would document a thing that nobody wants to remember.[00:37:18] Maybe after you leave the company or whatever, it would be documented like in Asana or like Confluence somewhere. And now. Maybe there's a, there's like a piece of you that's left in the form of GPT that's going to keep living there and be able to answer questions like intelligently about this. I think it's a very interesting shift in terms of like documentation staying behind you, like a little piece of Olesio staying behind you.[00:37:38] Sorry for the balloons. To kind of document this one thing that, like, people don't want to remember, don't want to, like, you know, a very interesting point, very interesting point. Yeah,[00:37:47] swyx: we are the first immortals. We're in the training data, and then we will... You'll never get rid of us.[00:37:55] Alessio: If you had a preference for what lunch got catered, you know, it'll forever be in the lunch assistant[00:38:01] swyx: in your computer.[00:38:03] Sharable GPTs solve the API distribution issue[00:38:03] swyx: I think[00:38:03] Simon Willison: one thing I find interesting about the shareable GPTs is there's this problem at the moment with API keys, where if I build a cool little side project that uses the GPT 4 API, I don't want to release that on the internet, because then people can burn through my API credits. And so the thing I've always wanted is effectively OAuth against OpenAI.[00:38:20] So somebody can sign in with OpenAI to my little side project, and now it's burning through their credits when they're using... My tool. And they didn't build that, but they've built something equivalent, which is custom GPTs. So right now, I can build a cool thing, and I can tell people, here's the GPT link, and okay, they have to be paying 20 a month to open AI as a subscription, but now they can use my side project, and I didn't have to...[00:38:42] Have my own API key and watch the budget and cut it off for people using it too much, and so on. That's really interesting. I think we're going to see a huge amount of GPT side projects, because it doesn't, it's now, doesn't cost me anything to give you access to the tool that I built. Like, it's built to you, and that's all out of my hands now.[00:38:59] And that's something I really wanted. So I'm quite excited to see how that ends up[00:39:02] swyx: playing out. Excellent. I fully agree with We follow that.[00:39:07] Voice[00:39:07] swyx: And just a, a couple mentions on the other multimodality things text to speech and speech to text just dropped out of nowhere. Go, go for it. Go for it.[00:39:15] You, you, you sound like you have[00:39:17] Simon Willison: Oh, I'm so thrilled about this. So I've been playing with chat GPT Voice for the past month, right? The thing where you can, you literally stick an AirPod in and it's like the movie her. The without the, the cringy, cringy phone sex bits. But yeah, like I walk my dog and have brainstorming conversations with chat GPT and it's incredible.[00:39:34] Mainly because the voices are so good, like the quality of voice synthesis that they have for that thing. It's. It's, it's, it really does change. It's got a sort of emotional depth to it. Like it changes its tone based on the sentence that it's reading to you. And they made the whole thing available via an API now.[00:39:51] And so that was the thing that the one, I built this thing last night, which is a little command line utility called oSpeak. Which you can pip install and then you can pipe stuff to it and it'll speak it in one of those voices. And it is so much fun. Like, and it's not like another interesting thing about it is I got it.[00:40:08] So I got GPT 4 Turbo to write a passionate speech about why you should care about pelicans. That was the entire prompt because I like pelicans. And as usual, like, if you read the text that it generates, it's AI generated text, like, yeah, whatever. But when you pipe it into one of these voices, it's kind of meaningful.[00:40:24] Like it elevates the material. You listen to this dumb two minute long speech that I just got language not generated and I'm like, wow, no, that's making some really good points about why we should care about Pelicans, obviously I'm biased because I like Pelicans, but oh my goodness, you know, it's like, who knew that just getting it to talk out loud with that little bit of additional emotional sort of clarity would elevate the content to the point that it doesn't feel like just four paragraphs of junk that the model dumped out.[00:40:49] It's, it's amazing.[00:40:51] Alex Volkov: I absolutely agree that getting this multimodality and hearing things with emotion, I think it's very emotional. One of the demos they did with a pirate GPT was incredible to me. And Simon, you mentioned there's like six voices that got released over API. There's actually seven voices.[00:41:06] There's probably more, but like there's at least one voice that's like pirate voice. We saw it on demo. It was really impressive. It was like, it was like an actor acting out a role. I was like... What? It doesn't make no sense. Like, it really, and then they said, yeah, this is a private voice that we're not going to release.[00:41:20] Maybe we'll release it. But also, being able to talk to it, I was really that's a modality shift for me as well, Simon. Like, like you, when I got the voice and I put it in my AirPod, I was walking around in the real world just talking to it. It was an incredible mind shift. It's actually like a FaceTime call with an AI.[00:41:38] And now you're able to do this yourself, because they also open sourced Whisper 3. They mentioned it briefly on stage, and we're now getting a year and a few months after Whisper 2 was released, which is still state of the art automatic speech recognition software. We're now getting Whisper 3.[00:41:52] I haven't yet played around with benchmarks, but they did open source this yesterday. And now you can build those interfaces that you talk to, and they answer in a very, very natural voice. All via open AI kind of stuff. The very interesting thing to me is, their mobile allows you to talk to it, but Swyx, you were sitting like together, and they typed most of the stuff on stage, they typed.[00:42:12] I was like, why are they typing? Why not just have an input?[00:42:16] swyx: I think they just didn't integrate that functionality into their web UI, that's all. It's not a big[00:42:22] Alex Volkov: complaint. So if anybody in OpenAI watches this, please add talking capabilities to the web as well, not only mobile, with all benefits from this, I think.[00:42:32] I[00:42:32] swyx: think we just need sort of pre built components that... Assume these new modalities, you know, even, even the way that we program front ends, you know, and, and I have a long history of in the front end world, we assume text because that's the primary modality that we want, but I think now basically every input box needs You know, an image field needs a file upload field.[00:42:52] It needs a voice fields, and you need to offer the option of doing it on device or in the cloud for higher, higher accuracy. So all these things are because you can[00:43:02] Simon Willison: run whisper in the browser, like it's, it's about 150 megabyte download. But I've seen doubt. I've used demos of whisper running entirely in web assembly.[00:43:10] It's so good. Yeah. Like these and these days, 150 megabyte. Well, I don't know. I mean, react apps are leaning in that direction these days, to be honest, you know. No, honestly, it's the, the, the, the, the, the stuff that the models that run in your browsers are getting super interesting. I can run language models in my browser, the whisper in my browser.[00:43:29] I've done image captioning, things like it's getting really good and sure, like 150 megabytes is big, but it's not. Achievably big. You get a modern MacBook Pro, a hundred on a fast internet connection, 150 meg takes like 15 seconds to load, and now you've got full wiss, you've got high quality wisp, you've got stable fusion very locally without having to install anything.[00:43:49] It's, it's kind of amazing. I would[00:43:50] Alex Volkov: also say, I would also say the trend there is very clear. Those will get smaller and faster. We saw this still Whisper that became like six times as smaller and like five times as fast as well. So that's coming for sure. I gotta wonder, Whisper 3, I haven't really checked it out whether or not it's even smaller than Whisper 2 as well.[00:44:08] Because OpenAI does tend to make things smaller. GPT Turbo, GPT 4 Turbo is faster than GPT 4 and cheaper. Like, we're getting both. Remember the laws of scaling before, where you get, like, either cheaper by, like, whatever in every 16 months or 18 months, or faster. Now you get both cheaper and faster.[00:44:27] So I kind of love this, like, new, new law of scaling law that we're on. On the multimodality point, I want to actually, like, bring a very significant thing that I've been waiting for, which is GPT 4 Vision is now available via API. You literally can, like, send images and it will understand. So now you have, like, input multimodality on voice.[00:44:44] Voice is getting added with AutoText. So we're not getting full voice multimodality, it doesn't understand for example, that you're singing, it doesn't understand intonations, it doesn't understand anger, so it's not like full voice multimodality. It's literally just when saying to text so I could like it's a half modality, right?[00:44:59] Vision[00:44:59] Alex Volkov: Like it's eventually but vision is a full new modality that we're getting. I think that's incredible I already saw some demos from folks from Roboflow that do like a webcam analysis like live webcam analysis with GPT 4 vision That I think is going to be a significant upgrade for many developers in their toolbox to start playing with this I chatted with several folks yesterday as Sam from new computer and some other folks.[00:45:23] They're like hey vision It's really powerful. Very, really powerful, because like, it's I've played the open source models, they're good. Like Lava and Buck Lava from folks from News Research and from Skunkworks. So all the open source stuff is really good as well. Nowhere near GPT 4. I don't know what they did.[00:45:40] It's, it's really uncanny how good this is.[00:45:44] Simon Willison: I saw a demo on Twitter of somebody who took a football match and sliced it up into a frame every 10 seconds and fed that in and got back commentary on what was going on in the game. Like, good commentary. It was, it was astounding. Yeah, turns out, ffmpeg slice out a frame every 10 seconds.[00:45:59] That's enough to analyze a video. I didn't expect that at all.[00:46:03] Alex Volkov: I was playing with this go ahead.[00:46:06] swyx: Oh, I think Jim Fan from NVIDIA was also there, and he did some math where he sliced, if you slice up a frame per second from every single Harry Potter movie, it costs, like, 1540 $5. Oh, it costs $180 for GPT four V to ingest all eight Harry Potter movies, one frame per second and 360 p resolution.[00:46:26] So $180 to is the pricing for vision. Yeah. And yeah, actually that's wild. At our, at our hackathon last night, I, I, I skipped it. A lot of the party, and I went straight to Hackathon. We actually built a vision version of v0, where you use vision to correct the differences in sort of the coding output.[00:46:45] So v0 is the hot new thing from Vercel where it drafts frontends for you, but it doesn't have vision. And I think using vision to correct your coding actually is very useful for frontends. Not surprising. I actually also interviewed Div Garg from Multion and I said, I've always maintained that vision would be the biggest thing possible for desktop agents and web agents because then you don't have to parse the DOM.[00:47:09] You can just view the screen just like a human would. And he said it was not as useful. Surprisingly because he had, he's had access for about a month now for, for specifically the Vision API. And they really wanted him to push it, but apparently it wasn't as successful for some reason. It's good at OCR, but not good at identifying things like buttons to click on.[00:47:28] And that's the one that he wants. Right. I find it very interesting. Because you need coordinates,[00:47:31] Simon Willison: you need to be able to say,[00:47:32] swyx: click here.[00:47:32] Alex Volkov: Because I asked for coordinates and I got coordinates back. I literally uploaded the picture and it said, hey, give me a bounding box. And it gave me a bounding box. And it also.[00:47:40] I remember, like, the first demo. Maybe it went away from that first demo. Swyx, do you remember the first demo? Like, Brockman on stage uploaded a Discord screenshot. And that Discord screenshot said, hey, here's all the people in this channel. Here's the active channel. So it knew, like, the highlight, the actual channel name as well.[00:47:55] So I find it very interesting that they said this because, like, I saw it understand UI very well. So I guess it it, it, it, it, like, we'll find out, right? Many people will start getting these[00:48:04] swyx: tools. Yeah, there's multiple things going on, right? We never get the full capabilities that OpenAI has internally.[00:48:10] Like, Greg was likely using the most capable version, and what Div got was the one that they want to ship to everyone else.[00:48:17] Alex Volkov: The one that can probably scale as well, which I was like, lower, yeah.[00:48:21] Simon Willison: I've got a really basic question. How do you tokenize an image? Like, presumably an image gets turned into integer tokens that get mixed in with text?[00:48:29] What? How? Like, how does that even work? And, ah, okay. Yeah,[00:48:35] swyx: there's a, there's a paper on this. It's only about two years old. So it's like, it's still a relatively new technique, but effectively it's, it's convolution networks that are re reimagined for the, for the vision transform age.[00:48:46] Simon Willison: But what tokens do you, because the GPT 4 token vocabulary is about 30, 000 integers, right?[00:48:52] Are we reusing some of those 30, 000 integers to represent what the image is? Or is there another 30, 000 integers that we don't see? Like, how do you even count tokens? I want tick, tick, I want tick token, but for images.[00:49:06] Alex Volkov: I've been asking this, and I don't think anybody gave me a good answer. Like, how do we know the context lengths of a thing?[00:49:11] Now that, like, images is also part of the prompt. How do you, how do you count? Like, how does that? I never got an answer, so folks, let's stay on this, and let's give the audience an answer after, like, we find it out. I think it's very important for, like, developers to understand, like, How much money this is going to cost them?[00:49:27] And what's the context length? Okay, 128k text... tokens, but how many image tokens? And what do image tokens mean? Is that resolution based? Is that like megabytes based? Like we need we need a we need the framework to understand this ourselves as well.[00:49:44] swyx: Yeah, I think Alessio might have to go and Simon. I know you're busy at a GitHub meeting.[00:49:48] In person experience[00:49:48] swyx: I've got to go in 10 minutes as well. Yeah, so I just wanted to Do some in person takes, right? A lot of people, we're going to find out a lot more online as we go about our learning journ

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Artificial intelligence is something Adobe has been working on for several years and this year's advances mark the beginning of what seems likely to be an explosion of advanced capabilities. In Short Circuits: Adobe pointed to some of its plans for future products at the annual Max conference in Los Angeles. The sneak peeks could easily be mistaken for pure magic. • If your Windows computer hasn't yet updated to version 23H2 and you'd like it to, the process is both quick and easy. Twenty Years Ago (only on the website): In 2003, Apple released another of its big cat operating systems, Panther, and I was quite impressed by what it could do.

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! With a gorgeous cover design and a surprisingly long trigger warning, Star Bringer caught my eye and exposed me to two romance writers I've never read before: Nina Croft and Tracy Wolff. Their publication histories are both quite impressive, showing the two clearly know a thing or two about writing in the romance genre. The book's blurb promises a combination of Firefly and The Breakfast Club, and after reading the opening scene featuring a princess and her companions, that promise seems to hold true. Personality exudes from different members of the group, which is great, and the voice of the princess narrating is quite distinctive and personable. The first pages use the conflict between princess and empress to set up the true stakes of this story's cosmic work: the empire may be destroyed if a certain scientist isn't found, and it's up to the princess to find out what's going on. When it comes to characterization and a hook, all is accomplished with aplomb in the opening pages. My only remaining concern is about the worldbuilding. When a writer commits to a genre like science fiction, that writer must be ready to create something new and unique with depth and age. But the princesses' observations about anything sci-fi-related felt extremely vague, so I do hope this won't be the case when other characters become the narrator. That brings me to my one other concern: the dust jacket promises a primary cast of seven for this story. A glance at the chapters reveals different characters narrate different chapters. Will everyone narrate? Plenty of writers struggle just to make two characters' narrative voices sound distinctive, let alone seven. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see! And what will you find in those first five pages? Let's find out! Cheers!

Google's Pixel phones are held up as the Android smartphones to follow, and their cameras are often pitted against the iPhone as examples of the state of the art. However, as Kirk discovered when he bought a Pixel 8, the details matter... such as the Pixel 8 not being able to use the full resolution of its main camera. Also in this episode, we check in with some new developments in the generative photography world with Adobe's release of Firefly 2 and GenAI integration in Photoshop. Hosts: Jeff Carlson: website (https://jeffcarlson.com), Jeff's photos (https://jeffcarlson.com/portfolio/), Jeff on Instagram (http://instagram.com/jeffcarlson), Jeff on Glass (https://glass.photo/jeff-carlson), Jeff on Mastodon (https://twit.social/@jeffcarlson) Kirk McElhearn: website (https://www.kirkville.com), Kirk's photos (https://photos.kirkville.com), Kirk on Instagram (https://instagram.com/mcelhearn), Kirk on Glass (https://glass.photo/mcelhearn), Kirk on Mastodon (https://journa.host/@mcelhearn) Show Notes: (View show notes with images at PhotoActive.co (https://www.photoactive.co/home/episode-152-android-ai)) Rate and Review the PhotoActive Podcast! (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/photoactive/id1391697658?mt=2) Take Control Books (https://takecontrolbooks.com/) MacVoices Video with Take Control (https://www.macvoices.com/macvoices-23264-a-20th-anniversary-take-control-authors-reunion-1/) Can an iPhone user learn to love Android? | Macworld (https://www.macworld.com/article/222966/can-an-iphone-user-learn-to-love-android.html) An iPhone user's (surprisingly positive) experience with Windows Phone (https://www.macworld.com/article/225235/an-iphone-users-surprisingly-positive-experience-with-windows-phone.html) Pixel 8 Specs (https://store.google.com/product/pixel_8_specs?hl=en-US&pli=1) Made by Google '23: Keynote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxlaUCJZ27E) Google Pixel 8 Pro Review for Photographers: Android's Best Camera (https://petapixel.com/2023/10/17/google-pixel-8-pro-review-for-photographers-androids-best-camera/) The Best Android Phone | Wirecutter (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-android-phone/) Adobe MAX 2023: Here's what Lightroom users need to know (https://www.dpreview.com/news/4857219044/adobe-max-2023-lightroom) Episode 138: DPReview and AI (https://www.photoactive.co/home/episode-138-ai) Adobe announces improved Firefly AI, new Content Credentials, and more at MAX 2023 (https://www.dpreview.com/news/5324251005/adobe-max-2023-news) Subscribe to the PhotoActive podcast newsletter at the bottom of any page at the PhotoActive web site (https://photoactive.co) to be notified of new episodes and be eligible for occasional giveaways. If you've already subscribed, you're automatically entered. If you like the show, please subscribe in iTunes/Apple Podcasts (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/photoactive/id1391697658?mt=2) or your favorite podcast app, and please rate the podcast. And don't forget to join the PhotoActive Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/photoactivecast/) to discuss the podcast, share your photos, and more. Disclosure: Sometimes we use affiliate links for products, in which we receive small commissions to help support PhotoActive.

This week's Generative AI News (GAIN) rundown focuses more on features and economics than foundation models. Featured stories this week include: Adobe and Canva show the marketers new tool sets - Adobe introduced a new list of features, upgraded Firefly models and a new text-to-vector-image model that will make manipulating AI generative images easier. Canva also extended its generative AI features as the too companies take different paths in rolling out generative AI. Generative AI Economics - Some apps with generative AI features charge for the capabilities while most do not. We walk through the market, what is being charged and, notably, who is not and why. Generative AI winners and losers of the week. Generative AI News Links to the stories we covered this week are included below. Featured Stories of the Week

Halloween Traditions change from family to family and throughout our life as we age and our situation changes. Nutty and Tek sat down with friends Jason, Miss Meylsse, and Krazy Joe to talk about the past and now, to celebrate … Continue reading → The post Nutty Bites 252: Halloween Traditions appeared first on NIMLAS Studios.

In this week's episode, we take a look at whether or not writers should stop writing because of the threat of generative AI programs. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of CLOAK OF ASHES as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of CLOAK OF ASHES for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: OCTASHES The coupon code is valid through November 18th, 2023, so if you find yourself wanting to get caught up before CLOAK OF EMBERS comes out soon, why not start with an audiobook? TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 173 of the Pulp Writer show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October the 27th, 2023 and today we're going to talk about whether or not you should stop writing fiction because of the threat of generative AI. Before we get into that, we will have a Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audio book of Cloak of Ashes for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: OCTASHES and again, that is OCTASHES and you can also see that in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through November 18th, 2023. So if you find yourself wanting to get caught up before Cloak of Embers comes out soon, why not start with an audiobook? That does seem thematically appropriate to go from Cloak of Ashes to Cloak of Embers, even though Cloak of Ashes will be book three of the series and Cloak of Embers will be book ten. As you might guess, my current writing project is still Cloak of Embers and as of this recording I'm about 68,000 words into it, though I really want to get to 70,000 by the time I am done working on it for the day. I've had two different 10,000 word days working on this book, which is a very good thing because it's going to be a long one. As I mentioned before, I'm 68,000 words into it and I'm not even at the halfway point of my outline yet and some of the previous chapters are so long, I'm going to have to split them up into smaller chapters. So I am confident in saying that while I don't know exactly how long Cloak of Embers is going to be, I am entirely certain that it's going to be the longest book I will write in 2023. For audiobooks, right now Brad Wills is recording Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock, and we are hoping to have that out by December or so. As for what I want to write once Cloak of Embers is done, I have not decided. I knew Cloak of Embers was going to be a long book. I didn't realize how long, so whatever I write next, it depends on how long it takes me to finish Cloak of Embers and how things look at that point in time, but I'm still hoping to have Cloak of Embers out in November, though it does look like there is a good possibility that the book might slip to December. 00:02:26 Main Topic: Should You Stop Creative Work Because of Generative AI? So on to our main topic this week. Should you stop writing or pursuing creative efforts because of generative AI? Without major spoilers, the chief villain of the new Mission Impossible movie from back in May was an evil artificial intelligence. That makes it timely to do another podcast episode about generative AI. I recently saw a long, somewhat maundering social media post arguing that since soon AI would advance to the point that it could spit out a fully completed novel at the press of a button, there was no point in attempting to write any longer. The post's author claimed it was a black pilled post, though my experience the term black pilled is usually Internet shorthand for “I will use my fears as an excuse to avoid action.” I also saw a New York Times article about a father worried about encouraging his son's creative interest because he feared that AI would soon replace all of that. So that leads to the question, should you stop writing fiction because of AI or engaging in any creative pursuit at all? Short answer, no. Get a hold of yourself. Maybe splash some cold water on your face. The longer, more elaborate answer: One, using fear of AI as a reason not to do something is excuse making. In fact, this is a formal logical fallacy known as the nirvana fallacy, which states that if conditions are not perfect or the outcome of an action is not perfect, then it is not worth doing. The usually cited example of this is that people wearing seatbelts can die in traffic accidents, therefore, seatbelts are not worth wearing. The counterpoint to this is that has been well proven that seat belts reduce fatality traffic fatalities and injuries and an improved but imperfect outcome is better than no improvement at all. Writers in general seem to be strongly prone to the nirvana fallacy. You will see many, many, many excuses for why writers do not want to write. Some of those excuses are, of course, perfectly valid, such as an illness, a life crisis like a death in the family, or a car accident, or something of that nature. But quite a few of those excuses boil down to the nirvana fallacy. Conditions are not perfect or the outcome will not be perfect, so therefore it is better not to start at all. Fear of AI is really the latest excuse to slot into the nirvana fallacy. Two: AI is worse than you think it is. It is regrettable that the various image generations and generators and large language models get saddled with the term AI because there's nothing terribly intelligent about them. They're basically fancy autocomplete, whether for pictures or for words. Granted, further refinements in the technology have made it into very super-duper fancy autocomplete, but there's still nothing particularly intelligent about it. AI is also a lot harder to use effectively than many people think. If you want to get a decent result out of an AI, you need to spend a lot of work refining the prompts. People can make some beautiful images in Midjourney, but for every beautiful image that comes out of Midjourney, there's like 40 billion terrible ones. Every really good image you see that was generated with an AI probably took like a 400 word prompt after several hundred iterations. Getting acceptable fiction out of a chatbot is so much work that it's easier simply to write it yourself. Ironically, if you want to fix it out of a chatbot, ask it about something factual. Also, whenever people try to rely on AI to do something important, bad things seem to happen. A nonprofit website devoted to treating eating disorders got rid of its volunteer counselors and replaced them with a chatbot, only for the chatbot to start dispensing bad diet advice. A couple of months ago, some lawyers in New York got in big trouble when they used ChatGPT for legal research, only for it to invent cases that had never happened. To be fair, the lawyer in question apparently failed to double check anything and ChatGPT repeatedly said in its answer it is a large language model and not a lawyer. As an amusing aside, the morning I wrote this paragraph, I got a text from a teacher I know complaining how much he hates ChatGPT. It's incredibly obvious when his students use ChatGPT to do their homework because the answers are so similar. As it turns out, ChatGPT isn't even good at cheating. The point is that whenever there are situations that involve personal or criminal liability, using AI is a very bad idea. Obviously, writing a is a much lower stakes endeavor, but that leads directly to our next point. Number three: you can't see in the future. Just because everyone says AI is the next big thing doesn't mean that it is. The problem with a lot of tech CEOs is that they all want to be Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was unquestionably a major figure in tech history, but he has been mythologized. His keynote presentations were masterpieces of showmanship, which means that people remember his career that way, like Steve Jobs strode onto the stage, dramatically unveiled the transformative next big thing: The iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, changed the world, and made billions of dollars in front of an applauding crowd. To be fair, I typed this paragraph when I wrote it on a MacBook Air. But that overlooks the actual history, which is that Jobs failed at a whole lot of stuff. He got booted from Apple in the 1980s. His subsequent company, Next computer, didn't do all that great. And when Jobs returned to Apple in the late ‘90s, the company was in such dire straits that it needed a deal from Microsoft to stay afloat until the eMac and the iMac came along. The triumphant keynote phase of his career was in many ways his second act as an older, wiser man after a lot of setbacks and a lot of obsessive work went into all the Apple products mentioned above. The iPad and the iPhone in particular went through prototype after prototype and were the work of large and skilled teams of engineers. The trouble with remembering the mythology instead of the actual history behind Steve Jobs is that people tried to copy the mythology without doing the mountains of work that inspired the myth. These tech CEOs all want their products to be the next big thing, but the problem is that the product one, often isn't very good and is less of a product and more of an excuse to extract money from the customer and two, isn't actually all that useful. Like regardless of what one might think about an iPhone or an iPad, it cannot be denied that they are useful devices. I refused to use Apple devices at all in the 2000s because they are so expensive (a criticism that, in my opinion, remains valid), but in the mid 2010s, a combination of job changes (since I'd suddenly become responsible for a lot of Mac computers after a layoff) and just the sheer usefulness of many Apple devices meant that I started using them. I still have an iPod Touch I use when I go running or when I do outdoor work, and since Apple doesn't manufacture iPod Touches anymore, I will be sad when it finally dies. By contrast, a lot of new products aren't that good or that useful. The CEO has forgot that to extract money from the customer, you actually have to provide value in exchange. An iPad is expensive, but it does provide value. NFTs are a good example of this phenomenon of failing to add value for the customer. For a while, all the big brains in social media were convinced that NFTs are going to be the next big thing. The idea was that NFTs would create digital collectibles and artificial scarcity. People talked endlessly about minting their NFTs and how this was going to revolutionize online commerce. But I think it is safe to say that outside of a few niches, NFTs have been soundly rejected by the general public. They don't add value. If you buy, for example, a collectible Boba Fett figure, it is a physical object that you own, and if anyone takes it without your permission, you can charge them with theft. By contrast, if you buy an NFT for a JPEG of Boba Fett artwork, you have an entry on a blockchain and there's nothing to stop people from copying the JPEG of Boba Fett. What's the point of the NFT, then? Even if you don't keep the Boba Fett figure in its packaging and give it to a child as a toy, it still provides value in the form of entertaining the kid. Cryptocurrency was another next big thing for a while. Some people were sure that crypto was going to end central banks and government issued fiat currency. Of course, while there are many legitimate criticisms to be made of central banks and fiat currency, it turns out they do a good job of slowing down a lot of the scams that infested the crypto space. The late, great science fiction author Jerry Pournelle used to say that unregulated capitalism inevitably led to the sale of human flesh in the market, and crypto seems to have proven that unregulated securities trading leads inevitably to FTX and crypto marketplace collapses. The Metaverse is a much more expensive version of this. Mark Zuckerberg, worried about the future of Facebook, decided to pivot to his virtual reality Metaverse. Likely, Mr. Zuckerberg thought that the rise in remote work during the peak of the pandemic would permanently change social dynamics and Facebook, if it acted right now, could be to virtual reality what Microsoft was to the personal computer and Google was to search engines. Facebook changed its names to Meta and burned a lot of money trying to develop the Metaverse. However, this plan had two major flaws. One, while some people preferred the new social arrangements during COVID, a vastly larger majority hated it and wanted things is to go back to normal as soon as possible and two, Meta spent like $15 billion to build the Metaverse, but ended up with the worst version of Second Life that required very expensive virtual reality goggles. Meta ended up wiping out like 2/3 of its company value. So while right now generative AI might be the next big thing, but as the examples above show, this might not last. Number four, public derision. Generative AI could also be following a similar track as NFTs and cryptocurrencies: an initial surge of enthusiasm followed by widespread disdain and mockery and retreat to smaller niche. For a while, several big gaming companies were very excited about NFTs and a smaller number were interested in cryptocurrency. They would roll neatly into the growth of microtransactions which the gaming industry really loves, like you could buy a new skin or avatar for your character, and you'll also get an NFT is saying that you had #359 out of 5000, that kind of thing. Digital collectibles, as mentioned above, except the backlash was immense and people widely mocked every effort by game companies to insert NFTs into their product. It's an act too much of previous extract money efforts like microtransactions and lootboxes. Cryptocurrency likewise experienced an increasing level of public disdain. See how crypto bros have been mocked after the collapse of FTX and other large crypto companies. Generative AI is very popular in some quarters but is beginning to experience a growing level of public disdain as well. One recent example was fantasy author Mark Lawrence's self-publishing contest. An AI designed cover won the competition and the outrage was high enough that Mister Lawrence cancelled the cover competition in future years. To be fair, part of the problem was that the artist lied about using the AI on his application form. The Marvel show Secret Invasion used a bunch of AI generated images for its title sequences, and there was a backlash against that. Various professional organizations have come out against generative AI, and apparently one of the key points in the Hollywood writer's strike and the ongoing actor's strike is restrictions on AI, though one of the sticking points here is less about AI and more about using AI to enable irrational greed. It seems like these studios want to be able to use an individual actor's likeness in AI generation forever without payment. It's too soon to say how it will turn out, but it appears that a significant portion of public opinion is on the side of the actors on this. It probably helps that the CEOs of major media companies invariably managed to come across as cartoon villains. David Zaslav of Warner Discovery seems like he's there just to loot the company as efficiently as possible. And Bob Iger of Disney is currently dealing with all the very expensive mistakes he made during his previous tenure as CEO. So if these guys are excited about AI, why should anyone else think it's a good idea? So it's possible that the public derision against AI might push into niche uses, which would be bad news for the companies that spent billions on it. I've found that people in general are not that upset about using AI to get out of unpleasant tasks like writing cover letters or answering emails, but if they are consuming media for entertainment, then they get very annoyed if AI was used and it's gotten to the point where “it seems like an AI created it” has become an insult in negative reviews of various programs. Number five: synthesis. Despite all that I just said about cryptocurrency and NFTs, generative AI is objectively more useful than NFTs and less likely to use all of the money than crypto, though it might handle on the same low level risk of being sued if you use Midjourney for commercial purposes. I mean, most kids who are cheating on their homework, if they had thought about it a little more, rewritten, ChatGPT's response just a little bit, maybe throw in a couple of typos, they probably would have gotten away with it. To use a less unethical example, imagine you're applying for jobs and you crank out thirty different customized cover letters. You can spend all day sweating over a handcrafted letter that some HR drone will go in set for a second before throwing away, or you can use ChatGPT to generate them. There are lots of tedious documents which no one enjoys writing, but are necessary parts of daily life and something like ChatGPT is ideal for them or for that matter, specialized chat bots, ones are specifically designed to rate marketing copy and nothing else. AI Audio will probably end up at a point where it's simply another feature integrated into e-readers. Hit play and an AI voice will read in an accent of your choice while the human narrated version will be a premium product. I think that generative AI will probably settle into a halfway point between AI will transform everything hype and AI will destroy civilization doomer-ism. That's how these things usually go. A new idea comes along: thesis. A backlash to it arrives: antithesis. After some struggle, they settle into a halfway point: synthesis. Then it becomes just another tool. Photoshop and Adobe offers some evidence for this position. Adobe has been integrating its Firefly generative AI stuff into Photoshop with the generative fill tool. If you know anything about Adobe, you know that they are as corporate and litigious as it gets. The company isn't exactly into taking big, bold swings with its products. They've been incrementally updating Photoshop and the other Creative Suite products forever. So if Adobe feels safe integrating generative AI into its products, it's probably not going anywhere for a while. But here's the important point. On social media, you see a lot of impressive images generated with generative fill in Adobe and Photoshop, but if you try it yourself, 99% of what it generates is not very good. Refinement, iterations, and testing are vital. If AI doesn't go away, I think that's where it's going, providing the raw materials for further refinement and improvement. Six: conclusion. As you might guess from the tone of my podcast episodes on the subject, I don't like generative AI very much, and I don't think it adds very much of value, though this might be just my overall grumpiness. If overreacting legislation came along that crippled AI research, I don't personally think much of value would be lost. No one can see the future, as many examples above demonstrate. But overall, I think generative AI is going to be just another tool and one that will require practice to effectively use, actually will probably require more practice to effectively use than people think. Stopping writing or preventing a child from engaging in creative pursuits is a bit like stopping carpentry because someone invented the electric saw and think about how many people you see every day, who obviously don't think things through at all. Encouraging the child in creative pursuits will definitely serve him or her well later in life, regardless of the actual career. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Graphic Novels have been around since the 70s but often are not given the credit they deserve for the artistic merits they can contain. Like all written work, graphic novels can also be literature. Nutty, Tek, and Vox got together … Continue reading → The post Nutty Bites 251: Graphic Novels as Literature appeared first on NIMLAS Studios.

We’re off to Mexico and so naturally Perez will swing into the lead and wi…… oh….. anyway. We deal with the fallout of the US GP, the utter mess that was qualifying, Perez standing in front of the tv and all the shenanigan of the Mexico City GP. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally...

Join us for an exciting episode as we get a sneak peek into Adobe's upcoming AI features, with a focus on Firefly 2. Discover the innovative advancements that promise to elevate the world of creative design and image editing, courtesy of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology. Gain insights into how Adobe continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in design and creativity in this must-listen podcast. Get on the AI Box Waitlist: https://AIBox.ai/Join our ChatGPT Community: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/739308654562189/⁠Follow me on Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/jaeden_ai⁠

In this episode, we explore Adobe's innovative initiative, where they're supporting artists by compensating them for their creative content, which is being used to train Firefly AI. Join us to learn how this collaboration between art and artificial intelligence is shaping the future of creative technology. Dive into the fascinating world of AI-driven artistry in this captivating podcast conversation. Get on the AI Box Waitlist: https://AIBox.ai/Join our ChatGPT Community: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/739308654562189/⁠Follow me on Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/jaeden_ai⁠

We're winding down spooky season with a live 20th anniversary review of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses!Ian and AC dig up the knotted roots of the Firefly family tree. Before Baby, Captain Spaulding, and Otis went on the lam in The Devil's Rejects, they ran the titular roadside attraction of deadly mayhem. When a group of hapless thrill-seekers stops for the night, they discover that all the bones, blood, and bizarre creatures inside are far more than realistic special effects!Join us for a look back at Zombie's directorial debut, which was wracked with interference, delays, and rickety release, which all but guaranteed its "cult" status! But what of the movie itself, which some have written off as a Texas Chain Saw Massacre clone? Does it hold up (if it ever worked to begin with), and how does it compare to Zombie's later filmmaking efforts?We get into all of that and more!And since this is a Scare-a-Thon show, we catch up with AC on his month-long movie-watching and talk about how you can help support the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project (the beneficiary of this year's fundraiser)!Subscribe, like, and comment to the Kicking the Seat YouTube channel, and check out kickseat.com for multiple movie podcasts each week!Show LinksWatch the House of 1000 Corpses trailer.Support this year's Scare-a-Thon by donating directly to WRRAP!And keep up with all of AC's "Scare-a-Thon" viewings!

On this episode of The AI Moment, we examine a key trend, the emergence of enterprise-grade generative AI SaaS applications and why Adobe provides a blueprint to enterprises for AI success. The discussion covers: The key Generative AI trends – the emergence of AI-powered applications. Using OpenText's Aviators and Adobe Firefly as examples, a look at why SaaS applications with embedded AI will be a critical element of enterprise AI market adoption. A company we like doing AI. Adobe's Firefly is the most successful generative AI product ever launched. Enterprises looking to operationalize AI can learn from Adobe's approach. We look at three key lessons to learn from Firefly's success. #thefuturumgroup, #theaimoment, #generativeAI, #LLMs, #AIfoundationmodels, #foundationmodels, #responsibleAI, #ethicalAI, #trustedAI, #AdobeFirefly, #OpenTextAviator, #SaaS, #imagegeneration, #codedevelopment, #adobefirefly, #adobefireflyimage2model, #adobefireflyvectormodel, #adobefireflydesignmodel, #OpenTextCloudEditions, #opentext,  #ai, #markbeccue

It's almost Halloween! Join Bill and Ashley as they take on the Firefly family and Dr. Satan in this love letter to grindhouse horror, Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses.https://crookedmarquee.com/author/bill-bria/https://www.slashfilm.com/author/billbria/https://billbria.contently.com/billandashterrortheater@gmail.combillandashterrortheater@instagram.com @BATTpod on twitterBillBria@billbriaAshley@AshleyannCoffin This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5589892/advertisement

Elton and Andy bring you all the latest news and *cough* action *cough* at the United States GP. Starting with the SPRINT race. We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humour (which may be unsuitable for adults), and the ramblings of 2 uninformed blokes who...

This time out, our brave heroes mull over the the United States GP where Stroll starts from the pit lane, Ferrari bring more plans and we learnt you don’t talk to Verstappen in the braking zone. *fires guns into the air* We hope you enjoy. Warning: this podcast occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable...