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I’ve disabled GenAI training on my Tumblr, FWIW. This should have been “opt-in” to begin with, and I have my doubts about how effective it will be. Automattic should not presume this fig-leaf with protect them from legal liability in future.
AI gains ability to a sense of imagination and feel
The problem is, creating something entirely new requires imagination—and until now that has perplexed AIs.
Artificial intelligence is getting very good at identifying things: show it a million pictures, and it can tell you with uncanny accuracy which ones depict a pedestrian crossing a street. But AI is hopeless at generating images of pedestrians by itself.
If it could do that, it would be able to create gobs of realistic but synthetic pictures depicting pedestrians in various settings, which a self-driving car could use to train itself without ever going out on the road.
Dueling Neural Networks
Breakthrough
Two AI systems can spar with each other to create ultra-realistic original images or sounds, something machines have never been able to do before.
Why It Matters
This gives machines something akin to a sense of imagination, which may help them become less reliant on humans—but also turns them into alarmingly powerful tools for digital fakery.
Key Players
Google Brain, DeepMind, Nvidia
Availability
Now
The problem is, creating something entirely new requires imagination—and until now that has perplexed AIs.
How it began
The solution first occurred to Ian Goodfellow, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal, during an academic argument in a bar in 2014. The approach, known as a generative adversarial network, or GAN, takes two neural networks—the simplified mathematical models of the human brain that underpin most modern machine learning—and pits them against each other in a digital cat-and-mouse game.
Both networks are trained on the same data set. One, known as the generator, is tasked with creating variations on images it’s already seen—perhaps a picture of a pedestrian with an extra arm.
The second, known as the discriminator, is asked to identify whether the example it sees is like the images it has been trained on or a fake produced by the generator—basically, is that three-armed person likely to be real?
Over time, the generator can become so good at producing images that the discriminator can’t spot fakes. Essentially, the generator has been taught to recognize, and then create, realistic-looking images of pedestrians.
The technology has become one of the most promising advances in AI in the past decade, able to help machines produce results that fool even humans.
GAN'S Experiments
A GAN trained on photos of real celebrities came up with its own set of imaginary stars. In most cases, the fakes looked pretty realistic. NVIDIA
GANs have been put to use creating realistic-sounding speech and photorealistic fake imagery. In one example, researchers from chipmaker Nvidia primed a GAN with celebrity photographs to create hundreds of credible faces of people who don’t exist.
Another research group made not-unconvincing fake paintings that look like the works of van Gogh. Pushed further, GANs can reimagine images in different ways—making a sunny road appear snowy, or turning horses into zebras. The results aren’t always perfect: GANs can conjure up bicycles with two sets of handlebars, say, or faces with eyebrows in the wrong place.
But because the images and sounds are often startlingly realistic, some experts believe there’s a sense in which GANs are beginning to understand the underlying structure of the world they see and hear. And that means AI may gain, along with a sense of imagination, a more independent ability to make sense of what it sees in the world. —Jamie Condliffe
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@francisinparis I don’t know if you remember this story, but I found it in my drafts and decided to post it!Â
for @francisinparis 30 Day Challenge Day 15 - (Over the Phone “I wanted to hear your voice”)
Fandom: KarnevalÂ
Pairing: GareNai
Other Dedications: Aside from @francisinparis (who I’ve now tagged three times in the same post!) I also wanted to dedicate this to the two people working on GareNai week, @timidwitch and @shim-ra ^_^ I can’t wait for you guys to get it up and running!Â
Also this is just a little drabble! Nothing major ^_^Â
“I wanted to hear your voice.”
That was it. That was Nai’s sole reason for calling Gareki. It had been a while since they had spoken to one another. Sure, they text and emailed one another, but it had been a while since they had heard each other speak.
But Gareki never expected Nai to call him for just that reason.
“I just… I really wanted to hear your voice.”
Why did he sound like he was crying? Gareki’s breath quickened and he found himself curling under his sheets, pretending his roommate wasn’t in the room with him.
“That’s it? You’re so ridiculous.” As much as Gareki wanted to tell Nai how badly he missed him and how happy he was to hear him and how much he wanted to be back with him, he couldn’t. He simply told the other that he was ridiculous.
“Why can’t I just tell him the truth? It’s like it’s physically impossible for me to just say what I want to,” he thought.
But it seemed Nai found that amusing. He laughed into the receiver.
“Are you still crying?” Gareki asked.
“No. No, I’m not crying. Now that I’m talking to you.”
“Is Yogi taking care of you? If not I’ll beat him up for you.”
“He is! He takes me on walks and lets me play with his Perona toys! It’s fun!”
“Yeah? Tell me about it. Tell me what you did today and what you do with everyone.”
And so Nai did. He talked for hours about his days and how much fun he was having on the ship even though Gareki was away at school. He talked about Karoku, but didn’t linger on that subject, moving onto how he had become good friends with Kiichi and Jiki.
And Gareki listened to every word. After all, he had so terribly missed Nai’s voice.
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It was an innocent statement, but everyone stared at me like I was crazy. Why would I take the stairs when there was a perfectly good elevator right here? Why did I want to put in the extra effort to walk when I could easily ride up to the top floor on that goddamn shaky, metal box? Plus, Nai was incredibly excited to ride an elevator; he never had before.
But I told him to have fun and that I would meet him at the top. I made it a game and he was suddenly less concerned as to why I didn’t want to ride it. Tsukumo and Yogi could see it though. They didn’t press me on the matter as they all piled in the elevator and made their way up.
My walk up to the top floor was a long one, but I purposely walked slowly. I wanted Nai to win our little game. It would make him happy.
I suppose I shouldn’t let something like an elevator intimidate me, not on this particular mission. “A varuga who feeds on the fears of others,” Hirato had said. And here I was… Showing my fear right to the varuga’s face. It wasn’t in front of me, but it was in this building and it could certainly sense the fear I had of all these damn elevators.
How pathetic of me.
I tried to shake these fears aside as I climbed the long staircase. I eventually made it to the top where the other three were waiting for me. I couldn’t congratulate Nai on his victory though. Not with the varuga staring us down.
She was gorgeous considering she was a devourer of fears. It was even worse because she was staring right at me.
"Don’t you have a fun fear?" She said.
"It’s not like you’ll get me in one these elevators, so don’t bother."
I thought I was tough. Sure, there were elevators around, but I would never get in one.
But she just laughed.
"Elevators? Yeah, you’re afraid of them, but it’s not your deepest fear. It’s a silly fear you developed when you saw one for the first time. You’ve never even been in one. No, I’m talking about your deepest fear, your real fear."
She pointed behind her and then I realized what she meant. My fear… It couldn’t have been anything else. Seeing it before me now… No, it couldn’t have been anything else at all.
"Nai…"
****
It seemed like Gareki felt no fear. He was admirable and I wanted to be like him. I wanted to show no fear, to be strong and tough, to be someone Nai could look up to.
Even though I had caught onto why he didn’t want to go in the elevator, Nai didn’t. He hid it so well. I can only wish to be that strong.
In the elevator, Tsukumo and Nai chatted while I thought about the mission. It worried me. If Gareki really feared elevators, then he would be the easiest target. There were so many elevators around here.
But when we met the varuga, we all realized he was hiding a darker fear. Of course he was. Considering where he was from he probably hadn’t encountered many elevators. Even on Circus’ ship we didn’t have any elevators. It was a superficial fear, one the varuga couldn’t feed off of.
But this one…
Gareki started shaking and he ignored me as I called his name. Eventually he began to scream Nai’s name, completely ignoring everyone, even Nai, to run to… Nothing.
He fell to his knees and gathered an invisible something in his arms. A person?
"Is it Nai?" I asked to no one.
"Yogi…" Nai clung to my arm as he watched Gareki hysterically call out his name, holding onto an invisible person. What was Gareki seeing? Anyone could guess, but… That’s all it was. A guess.
“Gareki, it’s not real!” I called to him. “Gareki! It’s a fake! I don’t know what you’re seeing, but it’s a fake! Nai is right here! He’s next to me!”
He looked at me, but he didn’t seem to believe me. He looked back and forth between me and the invisible thing in his arms. I had never seen Gareki look so frightened, so terrified. He was pale, his eyes wide, his body shaking…
“N-Nai….” He whimpered so quietly it was a surprise I could hear him. While I sat there, contemplating his greatest fear, Tsukumo chased after the varuga and eventually disposed of it. I knew she had killed it when Gareki shook his head, realizing what he had seen was just an illusion. He sat there for a moment, taking in everything that had happened before finally acknowledging me and Nai.
“You’re alright,” he said to Nai, lightly touching his face when we made our way over to him.
“Of course I’m okay!”
He hugged Nai and I smiled as he started to get back to his old self, eventually pushing Nai away and standing up. I can only assume that invisible thing he was holding was Nai… A dead Nai. Elevators weren’t his true fear, not by comparison. He would jump into a hundred elevators if it meant Nai would be safe. I can’t imagine how mangled and torn Nai’s body was in his vision… Or perhaps Nai was simply asleep, gone from this world without so much as a last breath. Either would be terrifying to see and considering how close Gareki and Nai were….
Well, as long as we’re all around, Gareki won’t have to worry about his greatest fear coming true.
***
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Gareki moaned as Nai pulled him closer and closer to the elevator. He wasn’t putting up much of a fight; he had already decided he would get inside the elevator for Nai. For whatever reason, Nai had a fascination with Gareki’s fear of elevators and was determined to help him overcome it.
“I don’t see why people willingly go inside a little small box that could break down at any moment and you’ll be trapped inside with no one to help you and what if the cables break and the whole thing falls?? You think you’ll survive that?”
“It’s fun, Gareki! Come on! It’s opening!”
The wide elevators doors hummed softly as they opened, welcoming Gareki into his own personal hell. It was so small inside. Gareki wanted to turn around and run as far as he could, but Nai wouldn’t let him. Together, hand in hand, they stepped inside and Gareki felt his breath catch in his throat as the doors closed.
“We’ll go to the top floor.”
Gareki didn’t watch Nai press buttons. He didn’t look at the other when the elevator started. He simply held a hand to his chest to remind himself to breath and to keep his heart from bursting from his chest while staring straight ahead. It was an odd sensation. It was like they were floating, but not like how they did on the airship. The walls didn’t close on him like he expected them to. It didn’t sound like the cables would break.
And before he knew it, they reached their destination.
“Did you like that, Gareki? It was fun!” Nai said, stepping onto the top floor of the bookstore they had found.
“No. I didn’t. And no. It wasn’t.”
“But you would do it again?”
Gareki took one last look back at the elevator before walking deeper in the bookstore, in search of books specifically on the mechanics of elevators.
