h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fascinating what Copilot is like to work with - to a human mind, 'clean shaven' or 'no beard' don't seem like complicated asks, but maybe the algorithm is concerned that a man without a beard might not be 'man enough'... Hilarious that one of its attempts at 'no beard' was to make a glorious beard, though

"Then he discovers that his front door refuses to open without a cash payment." - prophetic indeed... There has definitely been a shift in recent years, as things that were able to be offered on the internet for free are now struggling to meet demand with existing sources of funding. Frightening how much of the internet is now infrastructure-like - we pay taxes for national infrastructure, but there is a risk that people can be exploited in relation to private infrastructure... (Reminds me of my local council, actually - they decided to sell the city hall and rent another building instead, as it was cheaper at the time - a couple of years later the owners of the other building put the rent up so high, the city council had to move out of the city...)

That's a wild development!

You're right: these appealing little greedy moves can really backfire.

Sounds like a common practice that has wrecked several companies around here:

Take over company, sell all assets to be rented back, pull out all the money and let it go bankrupt. Use the obtained money to buy the next company and repeat the process.

Humans can be bad, even without the help of AI.

But I know what you mean, trying to get AI to make exactly what you want. I generally work around this by looking at what I get to see if I can use it. (sometimes deviations from the AI side bring me new ideas).

I usually try to break the image down into component parts and then montage the elements together.

But I'm also just taking the mickey to see if I can learn anything about how the programs work. And this beard business had me stumped.

Oh, Sasha, something you said about the AI's assumptions about men and beards...I tried 'YOUNG Roman man' and got no beard, so I think you're onto something!

The AI probably hasn't been introduced to the merits of shaving equipment, leading to old = beard.

Good thought!

Look, these programs are like preschoolers. Just as your kid misunderstands and gets crazy notions about reality, so do the AIs.

The problem is that they're using computer geeks to teach them rather than kindergarten teachers.

"I tried 'YOUNG Roman man' and got no beard" - aha Yes, AI definitely thrives on stereotypes...

Would I be right in guessing that 'professor' as a prompt would generate a man with a beard in a labcoat? I remember an article (that I can't find just now) that found an online image search for 'professor' yielded pages of results that were 95% that.

Not the exact article I remember, but similar http://imdiversity.com/diversity-news/truth-in-pictures-what-google-image-searches-tell-us-about-inequality-at-work/

I'll have to try that - I'll bet you're right. I remember somebody did something similar with 'folklorists' and got only men - when far more of the important names were/are women! (Thinking of Marija Gimbutas and others.)

Maybe folklorista? Or is that fashionista?