It’s a chatbot that can see and draw, but rich idiots keep pushing it as an oracle. As if “a chatbot that can see and draw” isn’t impressive enough.

Three years ago, ‘label a tandem bicycle’ would’ve produced a tricycle covered in squiggles. Four years ago it was impossible. I don’t mean ‘really really hard.’ I mean we had no fucking idea how to make that program. People have been trying since code came on punchcards.

LLMs can almost-sorta-kinda do it, despite being completely the wrong approach. It’s shocking that ‘guess the next word’ works this well. I’m confused by the lack of experimentation in, just… asking a different question. Diffusion’s doing miracles with ‘estimate the noise.’ Video generators can do photorealism faster and cheaper than an actual camera.

The problem is, rich idiots claim this makes it an actual camera. In that context, it’s fair to point out when a video shows the Eiffel Tower with in Berlin. It’s deeply impressive that computers can do that, now. But it might ruin people’s vacation plans.