Overcome your fear of Daves with AI Weirdness.
Neural networks can feel scary, as artificial intelligence can feel like it’s trying to encroach on fields that us humans believe we have full domain over. The website AI Weirdness (www.aiweirdness.com) is both reassuring and scary, as the AI is still very far from being recognizably human, but sometimes it gets very close.
The site is fairly simple. Janelle Shane feeds a neural network a data set, such as motivational speeches or names of hamsters, in order to teach it what she wants from the data set. She then reports on what the AI thinks fits within the set, and explains a bit about how some of the weirder results came to be. If you want to see the more adult responses you have to sign up for her mailing list, as she strives to make the blog itself family friendly.
The results are frequently hilarious, as the AI often gets patterns right but struggles with words. There’s a motivational speech called “Become Less Roy.” It generated suggestions for a first line of a novel, such as “The telephone is coming.” It generated intriguing Halloween costumes like “pirate firefighter” and “shark cow.” It named an actual craft beer – The Fine Stranger – and some actual guinea pigs – including Hanger Dan.
The absurdist humor that the AI accidentally generates can’t help but make me giggle constantly. It’s the result of it just not knowing what words mean, and as a result it doesn’t quite know what’s stupid. It will never replace a person for that very reason, but it does come up with results that very few people would because an actual person knows both the English language and shame. Who among us would suggest we name a cat Snowpie? Who among us doesn’t now think Snowpie is an excellent name for a cat?
It’s no replacement for human-created jokes, but that’s also why it’s so great.
-Devin Wilger
Mouse tales
When you have always liked reading comic books the ‘Net can be the source of much joy, as there are some great serialized books out there.
Of course there are some duds too, so it can take a while to find one that is both quality and fits your tastes.
If you want to shorten the journey a bit I suggest heading over to www.scurrycomic.com.
There you will find a compelling charming work by artist and writer Mac Smith.
Smith takes a rather interesting vision to the page with Scurry.
“Scurry is the story of a colony of mice in an abandoned house who are struggling to survive a long, strange winter,” noted the book’s Facebook page. “The humans are all gone and the sun is rarely seen. As food becomes scarce and many mice fall ill, the scavengers are forced to search farther from their home, braving monster infested lands in search of anything that will help the colony survive another day. Being hunted by feral cats and predatory birds is part of life for these mice, but beyond the fences stalks something far more fearsome.”
Now trying to blend fuzzy little animals with a post-apocalyptic storyline might seem like something which could quickly fall into the world of pure silliness.
However, Smith avoids that pitfall by simply taking a straight-on approach. He makes his characters realistic from the outset, and as a reader you are quickly vested in what happens to them.
It is interesting how animals can make great characters, and here the assemblage of mice, rats, beavers, cats, wolves and even a short stop by of a wizened old turtle all work seamlessly. It helps that Smith’s art is stunningly beautiful. The scenes with the aforementioned turtle are truly masterful in terms of the art.
The story too is a big one. It has the denizens of the wild dealing with a situation which speaks in part to our own issues as humans. Yet Smith doesn’t dwell on the disaster which has humans out of the picture. Instead it is the ghost lingering in the shadows of the story.
The bigger story is the survival of the mice and their friends in a world changed from what they knew.
The first arc of the webcomic has been collected as 120-page graphic novel entitled Scurry: The Doomed but is also still online at scurrycomic.com.
Arc two; Colony The Drowned Forest is still being uploaded on a page-by-page basis, so jump in an enjoy this completely wonderful story, and its amazing art.
-Calvin Daniels
