AI Inspiration for the last week of May
So many articles to read....
Thanks for opening my first newsletter! I’ll be bringing you new content every week and experimenting with the format. If you make it to the bottom of this newsletter, please take a brief poll to help me fine tune it.
Person of the Week: Cassie Kozyrkov
I was really impressed with this video by Cassie Kozyrkov, where she poses the question, “Whose job does AI automate?” Spoiler alert, software engineers are at risk and she sees more need for UX designers. Cassie is the Chief Decision Scientist at Google and I’ve started watching her lecture series on Youtube, Making Friends with Machine Learning. I’ve you’d like something a little more accessible, I’d recommend starting with one of her medium articles, below.
Why generative AI is a raw material, not a finished product
What's different about today's AI?
Tool of the Week: Leonardo.ai
Don’t want to pay $30/month for Midjourney? Find Stable Diffusion too confusing? Leonardo.ai is a great web-based interface that’s easy to get started with and produces pretty impressive results. It’s almost free. You have a limited number of credits, but they refresh every day. Not quite as slick as Midjourney, but you can use their existing models and train your own models. The only annoying part is their sign-up process. You need to submit an email address, then join a Discord server, and then once approved (usually 24 hours), return to the website and start generating images.
Check out the work produced by one of my current students
Inspirational use of Midjourney
A new trend on TikTok showcases artists who are Rewriting History by crafting new narratives in Midjourney that show what might have happened if Western imperial nations never came to power. “What if India ruled Great Britain?” and “What if Mexico had conquered the United States” are a few of the more provocative titles.
“None of this would be possible without AI image generation tools. That’s what’s so special about the emergence of AI. You can now conceive any thought and see it visualized in seconds.”
Ethical Considerations
If you’re concerned with the ethical implications of the coming AI revolution, you might appreciate this article by Christopher Reardon, Intelligent interfaces of the future. He states that if corporations are going to use these incredibly powerful tools, then they have a responsibility to safeguard society and create positive outcomes for the planet. He concludes with a 9 point manifesto for all AI product owners that I will be incorporating into my curriculum.
“When an AI is trained on the entire internet’s worth of human experience, those holding companies should be obliged to give back in ways that create real-world value for all.”
Don’t Forget About Adobe
Adobe opened up the public Beta for Firefly this week. I just started using it last night, but I had already watched a lot of demo videos and played around with other generative tools so it was easy to get the hang of it. They also released a new Beta version of Photoshop which uses the same “generative fill” technology. You’ll need to use your Creative Cloud installer to download this separate version of Photoshop. I’m going to do a deep dive on both tools the memorial day weekend and will have a full report next week. If you’d like a great tour of Photoshop’s new features, start here.