Changing my tune on AI

[dad911]

6 months ago, I thought it was joke. A toy. AI searches returned wrong results, images came back with 6 fingers.

Recently I started scanning and 'fixing' my parent's old photographs to share with my brother and sis. Amazed at the results. Scratches gone, tastefully colorized if asked. Took a pic of friends wedding on a boat. Sunrise in the background, they were washed out. Gemini fixed this too, and didn't change them.

I started programming in the early 80's, almost made a career out of it. Basic, machine language debugging, assembler, Fortran, Pascal and and some data base languages. Useless today. Did some minor stuff since, I can read C well enough to follow and fix, mentoring a HS Robotics team and firmware for some plastic printers. It was a struggle, and I've unfortunately forgotten more than I can remember.

Lately I've wanted to do some custom controllers. Home automation, pool monitoring and control.

During Covid I spend days trying to get an arduino to talk to a display that never worked.

Last night I started with a esp32 that has a built in screen. Did a few simple things to confirm it works.

Then I made it harder. After about 10 iterations (maybe 2 hours total) I was able to get this $12 board to log into my wifi network, query NOAA for tide information, query OpenWeather for forcast, and display a tides chart with ticker tape of the winds, temp, and precipitation. All from this prompt:

Using ESP32-2432S028R provide distribution ready software to display tide and weather information.SSID=xxxxx, password=xxxx. get weather prediction data including precipitation high wind and high temperature forecast from OpenWeatherMap for location ip- code here>. API key is <obtained from OpenWeather-free>. Update data every 30 minutes, display along bottom of. the display ticker-tape fashion . include precipitation high wind and high temperature forecast. get future high and low tide data from noaa station xxxx for a duration of 24 hours. display tide data points connected with an interpreted sign wave, label high and low points.

Some of the prompts were actual suggestions from Gemini, like "interpreted sign wave" when the first display was straight lines connecting the points. Gemini also provided the answers for obtaining the data when asked, and suggested improvements & changes.

[GH85Carrera]

Ther photo editing is the most amazing to me. So many old photographs have very faded color, and often the cyan layer (top layer of the print) fades away leaving the prints very red looking. AI can fix that is no time and make it look better than original.

Many years ago we had Kerr McGee as a client. They had a nice photo of one of the refineries emitting steam from several areas. They wanted a large 40x60 print with no steam. I spend days clipping out the zillions of pipes and parts to isolate just the sky. Drop out that sky, and build a new sky of a blue. Now it is a cinch to tell the AI to replace the sky with whatever you want.

[Por_sha911]

Just for fun, cue the doomsday predictions:

[onewhippedpuppy]

AI is very good with things that generally have strong guardrails and/or rules are are very repeatable. Commands to touch up photos are generally the same, and AI can use literally the entire internet of photos to determine what things “should” look like. Programming is another one, the rules are very well defined and common across a given flavor of code. Reviewing legal documents against the applicable laws, summarizing a document, reading a CT scan, all of these are very well defined tasks with an abundance of data to train the AI/ML model.

It struggles when you inject ambiguity. Fact vs fiction vs propaganda, good sources vs bad, applying basic human rules of right/wrong when determining outcomes, etc. It’s basically a master plagiarizer but struggles to pick the right sources sometimes. It’s also not actually intelligent, just an aggregator. Useful, but not blindly so.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Attachment hacking

[berettafan]

Well that's surely worth devolving into a post apocalyptic Blade Runner existence with UBI and total lack of any type of privacy and self determination.

[john70t]

(who is going to pay for it?)
https://x.com/DeFiMidas/status/2059177136175599847?s=20
BLACKROCK CEO LARRY FINK SAYS TRILLIONS FOR AI DATA CENTERS AND POWER GRIDS WILL HAVE TO COME FROM AMERICANS’ SAVINGS AND PENSION FUNDS


(Is it safe?)
https://www.moneycontrol.com/artificial-intelligence/gone-in-9-seconds-claude-powered-ai-agent-deletes-startup-s-entire-database-article-13902019.html
A US-based startup, PocketOS, suffered a devastating outage after an AI agent deleted its production database and backups in just nine seconds. Founder Jer Crane detailed the incident on X, calling it a worst-case scenario for companies relying on autonomous systems.


https://files.catbox.moe/124dlq.mp4
MS OneDrive is erasing peoples' computers and uploading to the cloud
(This seems to be happening to me. One BSOD required re-installation and complete loss. So many research bookmarks seem to be missing on a rolling basis.)

[Por_sha911]

There is a video on here with how to disable or delete ondrive
..
https://www.techspot.com/news/110848-onedrive-backup-feature-making-users-local-files-seemingly.html

That said, you are foolish if you don't have a full data backup on a hard drive that is NOT connected to your PC. USB drives are dirt cheap and very reliable.

[Baz]

Could someone please tell me what website to go to for photograph enhancement? TIA!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Baz

Could someone please tell me what website to go to for photograph enhancement? TIA!

new match.com profile?

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Baz

Could someone please tell me what website to go to for photograph enhancement? TIA!

Adobe has some free features.

[dad911]

Originally Posted by Baz

Could someone please tell me what website to go to for photograph enhancement? TIA!

https://gemini.google.com/app

I usually cut & paste pic where it says "Ask Gemini" then type what you want to do to the image. Or if it's on your PC, click on the + sign and upload.

It can also parse text documents, memes for fact-checking, etc.

[Baz]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Adobe has some free features.

Originally Posted by dad911

https://gemini.google.com/app

I usually cut & paste pic where it says "Ask Gemini" then type what you want to do to the image. Or if it's on your PC, click on the + sign and upload.

It can also parse text documents, memes for fact-checking, etc.

OK thanks, guys.

I have vintage photos - many from my surfing endeavours - that were taken with slide film and then I later converted them to a digital file. For some reason many don't have the right color.

Like these. There's also some blurry issues - not sure if that is "adjustable".

Will give a try.....thanks again!

[Alan A]

https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6a17803b1b088191bf0093ca85eb0b41

ChatGPT with fix image colors gets you here. You get the idea…

[dad911]

Originally Posted by Baz

OK thanks, guys.

I have vintage photos - many from my surfing endeavours - that were taken with slide film and then I later converted them to a digital file. For some reason many don't have the right color.

Like these. There's also some blurry issues - not sure if that is "adjustable".

Will give a try.....thanks again!

......

Edit:sharpened surfer.

[berettafan]

wow! Amazing transformation on that.


also love that Volvo.

[A930Rocket]

I used ChatGPT to create an image of a black 1987 Porsche 911 turbo on the track at Virginia International Raceway.

Is the picture produced a picture from the interweb or did it create a new picture? I did a Google lens search and did not see it.

[Racerbvd]

[Baz]

Originally Posted by dad911

Edit:sharpened surfer.

Wow wow wow!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you SO much, Dad. That's me on the surfboard and the first Volvo wagon I ever bought back in the late 70's. First car I owned after graduating from college.

SO much better!

I feel empowered now - will try to do this myself now - we'll see.......so stoked!!!

Originally Posted by berettafan

wow! Amazing transformation on that.


also love that Volvo.

Thanks, BF - that was a great Volvo - a '70 145S stick. NEVER ever broke down in all the years I owned it. Finally just rusted away....

[Alan A]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

I used ChatGPT to create an image of a black 1987 Porsche 911 turbo on the track at Virginia International Raceway.

https://creator.nightcafe.studio

This will truly blow your mind.