I’m on both sides of the fence about things like the world cup. For one thing, it’s a joy to see that humans can perform at such a level, but on the other, it seems to me like a complete kill off of any joy in the sport. Joy, which is often replaced by the ugliest form of nationalism. [I just accidentally put my finger on why I found the Norwegian team to be so charming] I also found the World Cup to be a bit disgusting, given that some of the nations involved are cheerfully performing crimes against humanity, while the others appear to be setting that aside, because, yes, the players practiced a lot. I think none of that really holds much water, because the players aren’t amateurs who are giving their lives to sport – they are professionals, who are gambling that they will make millions of dollars if they perform well.
So, I recently had a layover at Paris CDG, and decided to entertain myself by thinking of soccer teams and matches that should have happened. If you’re going to go nationalist: go full nationalist! Don’t beat around the bush.
[The Guard, Garde Imperial, tenue du 1812]
That was what started me on this rampage. I didn’t give the AI much of a prompt, really, but since I had been wandering around the Musee des Invalides with my dad, visiting my favorite Meissonier and Detaille paintings, I added “in the style of Meissonier and Detaille” to the prompt. I didn’t specify the delightful details like the imperial marks on his socks, or the banner “Live as a Hussar, Die Gloriously” and “World Championship” – it immediately captivated me and made me wonder what other things were in store.
[The charge of the Scots Greys, the World Cup at Waterloo]
Again, the details amaze me. The pack of the fellow in the lower right – a French Grenadier – 2e Grenadiers a Pied – is labeled on his backpack. Also, Cambronne’s famous retort: “Merde! La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas.” [“Shit, the guard dies but does not surrender] The British are up by one point, and the score placard enjoins everyone to “Play with honour” This is actually the spirit I wish for. There were brave men on both sides of the battle, who did the best they could and died – often terribly young – for the ambitions of an older generation of plutocrats and monarchists. There is a lot of tragedy to go around here.
I find the dynamism of the poses to be interesting, though I suppose the AI has a lot of soccer poses to go by. Here, the Scots Greys appear to be about to pound the poor French goalie. In the real battle, the Scots Greys were taken in the flank by French hussars and polish lancers and cut to ribbons. As usual, the British made up poetic nonsense about how their “sacrifice” wasn’t to the god of incompetence, it was legitimate bravery. As Napoleon said, “The English have the best cavalry, and the worst led.”
Napoleon, crushed along with his hopes, sits in despair on a drumhead, while Marshal Ney tries to explain that the disaster was not a failure of French arms.
Of course, Waterloo led me to Blucher, which made me think of the great dreadnoughts of World War I and World War II, and the maniacal bravery that was asked of their crews. Here, we see a posed photo of the Blucher’s soccer squad, which played for the KaiserReich in the World Cup, unfortunately losing by a scrape to the British.
They look ready for a re-match against England and France. All too soon, unfortunately.
Another great German team was the incredible Jagstaffel 11, AKA: Richtofen’s Flying Circus. Staffed by some of the greatest pilots in history, and some of the best tacticians, they looked like an odds-on favorite but withdrew when Von Richtofen was felled with an unlucky shot. The Allied teams showed great fairness, and everyone paused to acknowledge what a giant had fallen. He was only 25.
IJN’s Yamato team had the emperor’s personal support, and battled ferociously. Unfortunately for them, the Manhattan Project Team had been busy doing some nearly incomprehensible trickery.
Ok, this one also is worth an extended note. I did not prompt the AI with special characteristics for the squad. I just said a few names. The AI actually added Dirac, and Schrodinger’s cat. It was not my idea to make Heisenberg’s position uncertain, either.
One last one, which didn’t quite work out:
After the dreadful, overheated slugfest of the 1187 World Cup at The Horns of Hattin, the victorious Saladin treated defeated Guy of Lusignan to some ice cold Gatorade (or is it Brawndo?) while Reynaud De Chatillon was escorted off the field after spitting in the umpire’s face.
ai art is still an absolutely amazing technology. i can’t think of anything else to say that isn’t an argument i’m not interested in undertaking at the moment, heh. good job, marcus and allied technologies.
That image with the scientists is spookily good.
I notice the mug says: “E = mc^2; energy = milk * coffee”. Did it come up with that on its own?
Except for the Manhattan Project team (which could draw on named individuals’ photos and showed a surprisingly cheeky sense of humor), the ai seems to have a single face it deems “soldier soccer player.” At least there is some variation in facial hair and coloring, except for the Japanese team, which are all apparently clones, and only just barely Asian looking.
i like the physics teams. looks like all the players actually look like the real person.
and the equations on the black board are all correct, though the time dependent schrodinger equation is typically written the time derivative term on the right…
and the quote attributed to Heisenberg is actually by Feynman.
Gotta admit, the Theoretical Physics Football Club is hilarious.
The only thing missing (in the sense of not committing fully to the bit) is that Heisenberg has a definite number in the line up. His name should be spaced out a bit from the others, with a “?”, or “TBD” rather than a number.
Now I’m wondering about “Jesus and the Disciples” FC, maybe vs “Pilate and the Centurions” FC.
I’d be reluctant to try “Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin” FC, which would probably emit something antisemitic.
Did it come up with that on its own?
Yes, it did. No prompt at all; in fact I didn’t mention coffee cups or blackboards or anything. Nor Schrodinger’s cat, or Heisenberg.
The image creation with GPT gets spooky, especially if you ask for images after a bit of conversation. The whole conversation affects the image.
In this case it was sort of extra spooky. I had the initial conversation about the soccer teams while I was waiting for a flight to board. I ended the conversation, got back to the USA, thought of the soccer team of physicists then popped up the old conversation and added: “oh, I just had an idea. let’s see the soccer team of manhattan project scientists. Bohr, Einstein, Feynman, Von Neumann, etc.” That was the first image that came out.
Another thing that’s cool about keeping the context like that, is you can correct the image from previous states, e.g.: “please add Schrodinger” (but it added Schrodinger already)
Marcus
Why does your robot artist depict *everyone* with a chin cleft?
The mug, by the way, is something that is already existing. Or at least, mugs with that witticism on them do; just do an image search.
In fact, looking at the mug, and all of the quotations and equations and diagrams and affirmations etc on banners and boards and blackboards and whatnot cluttering up the image — I suspect that all of those things are in the image because they are all associated with physics and the physicists of the Manhattan Project. Physics nerds have probably been requesting one or the other of those quotes for their own posters and mugs and computer wallpaper and such, along with one or more of the physicists depicted, so now, all of those things are associated with each other in its database of visual concepts, and when it generates an image with some, there’s an increased probability of pulling in associated images.
Or something like that.
The physics football team will be displayed at my place of work – thanks for sharing!
Your Physics team has Teller but not Oppenheimer? :-/
What was the prompt for the physics one? A soccer team of Manhattan Project scientists should not include Heisenberg, who headed the German nuclear program, nor Landau, who worked on the Soviet nuclear weapons project.
Dirac contributed to the British Tube Alloys project, on the centrifugal method to purify U-235, but refused to travel to America to join Manhattan project, and preferred to work on gravitational waves and particle physics. https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:770703
I don’t think Planck, who stayed in Germany during the war, was involved in any bomb project, nor Schrödinger, who fled Austria and ended up in Ireland.
“Now I am become Death, the Striker of Goals”
@12:
In the other football sport, they sometimes play to sudden death overtime.
In the spirit of Marcus’ soccer battles…my wife and I were in Florence 2 weeks ago where we learned about an annual tournament in the city that is a mix of soccer and hand to hand combat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcio_storico_fiorentino, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsRqSNSjy3E, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utzwIsH2s28. The 4 neighborhoods of the city each put forward a team dressed in uniforms reminiscent of the period of origin (1500s?). It is just crazy to me!
chigau@#7:
Why does your robot artist depict *everyone* with a chin cleft?
Such things are contained in the models’ weightings, which are derived from the training sets. It’s interesting because you can tell pretty quickly what cultural norms the trainer was coming from. Usually, people who don’t like a particular result just look around and find a different checkpoint. The current models are 6-16 billion nodes, which is a heck of a lot of work to replicate. I’m often scared by the Korean checkpoints, which feature a norm of extreme simulated plastic surgery and odd body distortions.
Raging Bee@#10:
Your Physics team has Teller but not Oppenheimer? :-/
It’s not my physics team. I didn’t ask for Oppenheimer; dunno why.
I wasn’t trying to be canonical.