What would it look like if, in the distant future, a group of machine intelligences tried to make tea? Not just to brew tea, but to recreate the entire concept from long-forgotten synapses buried deep within the hidden layers of their virtual brains?
To see what that might be like, I turned to a neural network I’ve used before, a huge model called GPT-2 that can draw on words and correlations that it’s learned from scanning huge chunks of the internet. I prompted it with a list of green teas - teas with evocative names like “Yellow Furry Peak”, named for its fuzzy leaves whose pointed tips resemble the peaks of the Yellow Mountains.
My first attempt, via talktotransformer.com, produced names that seemed more like what you’d get if you randomly started mixing words from the original list - you could tell what they were supposed to be, but they had less character, as if the features had all been smoothed away. That’s one way neural net-generated stuff can go - realism, but a sort of cardboard realism.
So for my second attempt, I used another way of sampling GPT-2, gpt-2-small, that gave me more control over the output. With temperature set to 1 and truncation turned off (both ways of letting the neural net produce less-probable output), I got results that wouldn’t pass as human teas, but were exactly what I was looking for. That’s my favorite style of neural net-generated text - the type that flagrantly fails the Turing test.
Six Vermilion Unicorn Playing The Amber Eagle Glowing Sky Rabbit North Circular Eye Afternoon Supper of Peace Cold Sheep & Thunder! Giving Away Stardust Green Great Gourd of Sunrise Slippery Violet Sands Ember Lathe Wet Leaves
Green Slime Essence Fresh Green Skunk Strawberry Lime Dissolution B Ice Chlorophyll Glaze Bleeding Apples with Sea Salt Dangerous Rock TREET REFILLED POWER Fraps 0-3 ½.5Gridges 26 Grief Hills 4 Cup Emulsion Drcrated skin finishes! Size Yes 37 (21,28,38) x 54 (9 or 15)mm Shiny Living Veins Blue Foam Duet Fish Drumstick A unique combination of leaf of fire and custard Sodium ascending Fujiyama
can someone explain this to me in words bc i don’t understand any of them
It’s something like charting relationship closeness over time. So e.g. you are super close with your childhood best friend early in life, but then you drift apart, but then late in life you might re-enter each other’s orbit. Whereas a one-night stand is two completely separate life lines that intersect at one discrete (discreet?) moment. Or a relationship with a dog is super tight, but also temporary, since dogs only live for so long.
“Kaibutsu Ehon 怪物 絵本” - le livre illustré de monstres présente des gravures sur bois de yōkai 妖怪 , ou créatures du folklore japonais. Illustré par
Nabeta Gyokuei 鍋田玉英 actif vers 1880.
Note : Le Kaibutsu Ehon est un livre de 1881 qui s'inspire des œuvres influentes de Toriyama Sekien 鳥山石燕 (1712-1788), érudit du XVIIIe siècle et artiste ukiyo-e 浮世絵, connu pour sa tentative de cataloguer les nombreuses espèces de yōkai 妖怪 au Japon.
Dear Students,
For extra credit, copy any of these pictures.
Draw your frame, do a 10 minute non photo blue pencil rough, then do simple line work for 20 minutes, then water color for 30 minutes. Try to keep it to exactly one hour. You can do it in your compbook or on your Strathmore paper but remember to cut it down to 8.5. 11. Draw the frame any size you like but be sure to leave at least a 1/2″ all around.
Copying is such a good way to learn about your materials and about lines you might have otherwise never thought to make.
“Kaibutsu Ehon 怪物 絵本” - le livre illustré de monstres présente des gravures sur bois de yōkai 妖怪 , ou créatures du folklore japonais. Illustré par
Nabeta Gyokuei 鍋田玉英 actif vers 1880.
Note : Le Kaibutsu Ehon est un livre de 1881 qui s'inspire des œuvres influentes de Toriyama Sekien 鳥山石燕 (1712-1788), érudit du XVIIIe siècle et artiste ukiyo-e 浮世絵, connu pour sa tentative de cataloguer les nombreuses espèces de yōkai 妖怪 au Japon.
“Kaibutsu Ehon 怪物 絵本” - le livre illustré de monstres présente des gravures sur bois de yōkai 妖怪 , ou créatures du folklore japonais. Illustré par
Nabeta Gyokuei 鍋田玉英 actif vers 1880.
Note : Le Kaibutsu Ehon est un livre de 1881 qui s'inspire des œuvres influentes de Toriyama Sekien 鳥山石燕 (1712-1788), érudit du XVIIIe siècle et artiste ukiyo-e 浮世絵, connu pour sa tentative de cataloguer les nombreuses espèces de yōkai 妖怪 au Japon.
