Hacker News Reader

Comment by sparrish | Hacker News Reader

And my nightmares now have new fuel.

At some point, after we start unlocking more secrets of the brain, we're going to understand how some shapes and biological attributes have been instinctively ingrained in our brains.

Then Hollywood will have some scientific basis to proceed from to make some true nightmare fuel that ticks all the right horrible boxes.

It's not hard to just guess. What is a spider? Radial lines that move.

I posted that after viewing this[1] from the article. I would say there's quite a bit more there going on that gives me the heebie jeebies than just radial lines that move.

1: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/02/06/science/06OBS-ARA...

Maybe.. radial lines with sharp angles? Whatever it is, it has to be a fairly simple combination of geometric primitives.

I agree with you, and this reminds me of the Black Mirror Playtest episode where, (spoiler alert), they create an artificially intelligent game that adapts itself to maximize terror.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtest_(Black_Mirror)

This reminds me of the Mind Game from Ender's Game: http://enderverse.wikia.com/wiki/Mind_Game

Not necessarily terror, per se, but it generated itself based on the imagination and interests of the characters IIRC.

That episode was more disturbing than most. I can't imagine signing up for something as horrible as that. It's literally torture as described in 1984, but worse.

Hayao Miyazaki had a scathing critique of a team that created a neural network designed to draw/animate on its own. It’s worth noting because his main criticism is that the more we offload these techniques to machines, we lose an element of creativity in ourselves.

Videos only two minutes but even that little time of ripping into the team that made the NN is hard to watch.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/12/that-time-miyazaki-absolut...

I see no value in a machine that draws pictures like a human except to shovel monstrous quantities of mass produced crap to further starve the masses of any attention span. If the future of entertainment is plugging in a bunch of parameters and spitting out some optimal result that appeals to some demographic, a practice that we can almost see fully realized today except for the part where machines create all the content, then there will be no new entertainment worth consuming in the future.

NN generated books, movies, shows, paintings, all worthless. It's the maximum viable version of youtube videos made for children that are cobbled together with a bunch of random assets, so that perhaps a baby will stay quiet and maybe click some ads.

The future value of NNs for creative media is in human productivity enhancement, not in replacement. Speedier asset generation, probably new procedural content, new image filter techniques. Personally I'm very excited to see what humans will be able to do with all of our new tools.

None of those things require NN.

You could set a scene on a “city street” or “small town street” or “country road” and have the NN make the setting without it having to be drawn by hand.

After all, movie studios already do something to that effect. When I was in Rochester a few years back they were using a few streets to film action scenes for Spider-Man 3, which would have been far more expensive in New York and hardly anybody would have noticed the difference.

What about enabling humans who can't draw pictures or animate to still put their ideas into an attractive-enough visual form to tell a story? How many amazing stories are there out there right now that never get made because of the enormous cost in finding and retaining talented animators?

Not every story needs to be animated. Find a medium that lets you tell your story.

I’d like to make a graphic novel but I can’t draw for shit. A combination of software and machine learning could help me do such a thing.

But the plot, design, and everything directorial is still up to me.

Don't let a lack of drawing skill hold you back. Try reading the web comic Schlock Mercenary [1]. A good writer who couldn't draw started making a comic anyway, and now he's a good artist too.

[1] https://www.schlockmercenary.com

Just pick up a pencil and start drawing. scan it up, add the text, start with what you have. this won't hurt a bit.

Yikes, isn't being this blunt extremely rare in Japanese culture? Miyazaki must've been pissed.

From what I've read and seen of Miyazaki, he is pretty blunt person irrespective of cultural norms. I think a lot of successful, deep creatives are like this.

When you're Miyazaki tier, you've earned the right to be blunt.

Also taken to new heights (or depths, depending on viewpoint) by this will be Japanese game shows and "enhanced interrogation".

I don't know... The Mist, and the bug pit in the Kong movie with Jack Black are pretty close to my nightmares come to life.

Note that it's only 2.5mm long.

Though it does remind me of that facehugger from aliens.

Right?

2.5mm is the perfect size to crawl into your mouth while you sleep.

Midnight snack is ok by me, but in my ear? Aiiiieeee!

If you'd like to keep things in perspective, go back and watch some videos involving Japanese giant hornets (shudder).

And now I have a great idea for a "random" encounter in the next gaming session I run.

At 2.5mm size you would probably wouldn't even notice if this thing attacked you.

Just add wings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com