Ethan Mollick Profile picture
Nov 26 14 tweets 8 min read
If you last checked in on AI image makers a month ago & thought “that is a fun toy, but is far from useful…” Well, in just the last week or so two of the major AI systems updated.

You can now generate a solid image in one try. For example, “otter on a plane using wifi” 1st try:
This is what you got a month ago with the same prompt. (MidJourney v3 vs. v4)
This is a classic case of disruptive technology, in the original Clay Christensen sense 👇

A less capable technology is developing faster than a stable dominant technology (human illustration), and starting to be able to handle more use cases. Except it is happening very quickly
Seriously, everyone whose job touches on writing, images, video, or music should realize that the pace of improvement here is very fast & also, unlike other areas of AI, like robotics, there are not any obvious barriers to improvement.

We should be thinking about what that means
Also worth looking at the details in the admittedly goofy otter pictures: the lighting looks correct (even streaming through the windows), everything is placed correctly, including the drink, the composition is varied, etc.

And this is without any attempts to refine the prompts.
Some more, again all first attempts with no effort to revise:
🦦 Otters fighting a medieval duel
🦦Otter physicist lamenting the invention of the atomic bomb
🦦Otter inventing the airplane in 1905
🦦Otters playing chess in the fall
(These AIs just came out just a few months ago)
AI image generation can now beat the Lovelace Test, a Turing Test, but for creativity. It challenges AI to equal humans under constrained creativity.

Illustrating “an otter making pizza in Ancient Rome” in a novel, interesting way & as well as an average human is a clear pass!
And I picked otters randomly for fun

But since some comments are pointing out that nonhuman scenes may be easier; here are some of the prompt “doctor on a plane using wifi” - we are good at picking out flaws with illustrations of people, but they are impressive & improving fast.
People keep asking what system I was using: it is MidJourney (I mentioned this in the thread)

If you want to try it, you get 25 uses for free & a guide is below. Be sure to use —v4 at the end of your prompt to use the latest version, which is the one I use throughout the thread.
Here👇 is a thread with more comparisons between MidJourney a month or so ago, compared to MidJourney now. The pace is fast!

If you are trying MidJourney, the way to use the new version is to add --v 4 to the end of your prompt (I have no association with it or any AI company)
And I generated every one of these images from my phone in seconds & most were done over plane wifi (appropriately).

As to what this all means? There are many different ways human work will be impacted by AI, including boosting our capabilities 👇

But change is coming quick!
If you want more connections between what is happening in research and how it effects the real world, I have a free Substack you can read.

For example, here is a post on boosting creativity… oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/how-to-be-mo…
Otter reacting to a viral Twitter post.
Reminder: if you want to use the new MidJourney version 4, rather than the old (from a month ago!) version add “ --v 4” to the end of the prompt. The spaces are vital

Interestingly, version 4 “just works” making it easier for everyone but power users who learned to craft prompts

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Ethan Mollick

Ethan Mollick Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @emollick

Nov 28
My students are going through job interviews & folks are still being asked dumb brainteaser questions. Stop!
🚩Google found brainteasers were in no way predictive of job performance
🚩Worse: "Narcissism & sadism explained the likelihood of using brainteasers in an interview.” 1/ ImageImage
Oddball questions ("Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?") are also useless.

Job candidates at least find those a bit fun & not cruel, but you should also not ask them either, as the "limitations outweigh the benefits." 2/ researchgate.net/publication/35… ImageImage
It is frustrating to see so many bad hiring approaches because there is a solid set of research on what works. 🧵👇

Interviews work if structured (focused on past behavior or reasonable hypothetical situations, conducted with score cards, & done the same with all candidates) 3/
Read 5 tweets
Nov 22
🤯Because of Excel, a THIRD of all genetics papers published in top journals have errors, as many genes have names like SEPT2 (the official name of Septin 2), which Excel automatically makes dates.

The issue was found in 2016, but still hasn’t improved! journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…
High prestige journals were worse:
44% of genetics articles in Nature with Excel supplemental files have errors
53% of articles in Cell
47% of articles in PNAS
And here's a live dashboard of the genetics Excel errors detected in top journals every month: ziemann-lab.net/public/gene_na…
And before anyone else posts it.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 22
New space dystopia unlocked!

This paper finds human blood protein, combined with Martian or Lunar rock, makes a substance as hard as concrete.

To make it stronger by 300%, add urea "which could be extracted from the urine, sweat or tears of astronauts." sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
And yes, they tested it. And yes, it works.
This table compares the ease of harvesting astronauts for their blood, sweat and tears to the alternative of farming spiders.
Read 4 tweets
Nov 22
People talk about people playing “4D chess” when they outsmart everyone else, but does that mean people who play 1D chess are dumb? What about 5D?

A 🧵 of chess games by dimension.

Start with 1-D chess, which is surprisingly good. You can play it here: silvarc.itch.io/1d-chess
Next, 2D chess, which is just... chess.

So, instead play chess as a roguelike! Chess with fog of war! Chess as a sliding puzzle! Chess that will make you look smart! And more. All by @pippinbarr pippinbarr.com/ideas/chess/
3D chess was famously featured in the original Star Trek. Unsurprisingly, fans have developed rules, boards, and tournaments. The article has a number of ways to play it at the bottom. memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Three-dim…
Read 6 tweets
Nov 20
GDP around the world massively undervalues the actual quality of life gains we get from Internet services, most at no cost.

Large-scale experiments show that average Americans would need to be paid $15k a year to give up search engines and $6k for email. pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.107…
Just look at all the free stuff that Apple and Android just 𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙚 you... As @raykwong estimated a couple years ago, millions of dollars of capabilities, all more-or-less free, all in your pocket. And we don't count any of this massive change to welfare in our GDP estimates.
The rich also had entirely better consumer goods than everyone else - high end television brands, more accurate watches, car phones. It is fascinating that is all gone. Now you can’t really buy better phones or TVs than the masses (not that the rich can’t buy many other things)
Read 5 tweets
Nov 20
🚨This is the trap that social media, and by extension all of us, are in:
📈Toxicity drives use. Lowering toxicity drops ad sales (if you are ad supported) & engagement (even if you are not)
📉Toxicity spreads like a disease. It turns regular users toxic & makes networks awful
Papers:
New experiment on toxicity, use and ad sales: drive.google.com/file/d/1HYiBOG…

Outrage drives use: science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Toxicity spreads: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWS…

Toxic people ruin networks: arxiv.org/pdf/1803.03697…
There are clear ways to reduce toxicity - moderation, content removal with detailed policies, community norms, temporary bans when needed and permanent bans for trolls.

There are clear ways to increase engagement - more outrage & toxicity.

No clear way to do both at scale. 😬
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(