Sci-Fi HUDs ๐พ, Machines Learning How to Learn ๐, The Roman Brady Bunch ๐ช, and AI Love Letters ๐ฌ
This Week in Creative Coding
Arwes Sci Fi Framework
Creating a Sci Fi UI is something that every creative technologist will want to do at some point in their career. Some projects call for a cyber punk feel, but that's a look that's hard to replicate using Bootstrap or Tailwind.
The Arwes framework by Romel Perez has filled a hole in my heart that I didn't know needed filling, and I'm excited to use it in some future project.
What is Meta Learning Anyway?
I'm currently reading a book called AI Superpowers by Kai-Fu Lee, that claims that we are currently living in the implementation era of Artificial Intelligence. The research used in Deep Learning is decades old (the first general algorithm was posted back in 1967!), and the computational power needed to run the neural networks has just caught up. So the stuff weโre seeing come out today is applications of the research done back in the 70s.
Meta Learning is something new. Well, not new-new. The first paper about it surfaced in the early 90's, but the technique is just recently starting to attract attention from the Machine Learning community. The motivation for Meta Learning is to be able to train a machine without having large unsupervised data sets.
This paper is pretty dense mathematically, but serves as a nice intro to the space if you want to know what might be the โnext big thingโ in machine learning.
The Claudians Sing Baka Mitai
There's a meme going around on YouTube where people are combining First Order Motion Models and the pop ballad Baka Mitai (from the game Yakuza).
The results show a lighter side of what AI can be used to create. This version is my favorite. I'm a big fan of ancient history, and it's cool to see these statues come to life using computational techniques.
If you're interested in creating your own Deepfakes/First Order Motion Models, I recommend watching Gene Kogan's tutorial on the topic.
Training a Neural Network in VR
This project is amazing, especially in a time where we're all looking for ways to be productive and social remotely. @SCRNinVR has created a way to train a neural network in real time in VR.
I see this being useful by having some kind of virtual gallery where the attendants can "train" the gallery to display better art; kind of like an MTurk experience in VR. VRChat gets better and better! I should really go buy a VR headset!
Using GPT-3 to write Handwritten Love Letters
The project I took on this week examined how GPT could be used to write conversational fiction. I fed GPT a prompt with details about a fictional war, and the characterization of two lovers in the war, Alice and Bob (shout out to RSA ;)). I then seeded the first letter using a real letter written in WW2. Then I let GPT do its thing! The results were quite emotional, and GPT-3 left me impressed yet again.
I then took the results and passed them into the handwritten.js library, and voila! Love letters from people who live in the year 3812.
That's all for this week, thanks for reading.
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