AI can't tell time

 kw: ai experiments, prompts, ai art, failures

In various corners of the universe of knowledge, SI (Simulated Intelligence) is manifestly ignorant. This can be seen in certain everyday tasks, such as reading (or drawing) an analog clock. I heard mention that most advertising for clocks and watches shows the hands set to 10:10 because ad writers think that has the most attractive appearance. Since SI has no knowledge of what clocks even are, or how the hands show time, they are dependent on their training image sets, which are only useful if there is text accompanying the images. I decided to see how various art generators would handle this prompt:

An image of a very decorated mantel clock showing the time as 4:15

I first used Gemini. This is the result, showing my prompt (one has to tell Gemini this is to be an image or picture):

The program did a good job with the decoration. That is its strength. But, sure enough, the clock's hands are pointed at 10:10, or very nearly so. If you look closely, the hour hand is exactly at the 10, where it should be 1/6th of the way to the 11. 

Gemini produces only one image at a time, in contrast to all the other programs at my disposal.

I next tried DreamStudio, the most recent program I use. I set the number of images to make at 2, because I pay for credits, and each image costs something. Using the same prompt:

DreamStudio is playing a trick in the first image. The hands have a "head" at both ends, so the time being indicated is ambiguous, but one interpretation is still 10:10. Though the hands have different shapes, it's also hard to tell hour from minute hand, so eight interpretations are possible! Don't try to teach your kid to read a clock that has such pathological hands!

The second image at least has a hand pointed at the 4, but given that the other is pointed at the 8, indicating 4:40, the hour hand should be a bit more than halfway between the 4 and the 5.

Next victim: ImageFX (driving Imagen 3, the same as Gemini). It is free to use, so I let it run four images. I also left the aspect ratio at 16:9, the setting I usually use with this program.

All hands point to 10:10. the expected result. Next, Leonardo, using the "bare bones" Leonardo Lightning style and the default (Dynamic) substyle:

Here we find an interesting variety of responses. 

• Upper left: The hands are so nearly the same length it's hard to say if this is 10:10 or 2:50, although whichever hand is the hour hand, it's pointed right at the digit, not advanced as it should be.
• Upper right: This looks the most like a real clock. The hour hand is between the 4 and the 5. It still isn't showing 4:15.
• Lower left: The hour hand is near the 6, but on the wrong side of it, unless it is just a little too far over and the time should be read as 5:40.
• Lower right: 4:40, with a misplaced hour hand, as seen before.

Finally, here is the response from Dall-E3 in Bing:

Assuming I've figured out correctly which hand is which in each case, the times shown are 10:07, 2:50, 10:09 and 12:55.

So there you have it. Not one 4:15 in the bunch.

Dinosaurs triumphant!

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, history, fossils, geologists, victorian era, dinosaurs, evolution

As a fun retirement job I work at a natural history museum. A few years ago the exhibit hall was being redesigned. Several of us were discussing the plans, and the kinds of exhibits to be included. One experienced scientist—like me, retired, and a volunteer in the research division—said primarily one thing, persistently and steadily, every couple of minutes: "Dinosaurs." It was true when I was a child and it remains true that having several dinosaur skeletons on display will bring the crowds.

As told by Edward Dolnick in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party: How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World, people had found big fossilized bones for millennia, and fitted them into whatever worldview they had, usually as prehistoric, or sometimes contemporary, giants. For example a fossil elephant skull, with its large central hole for the trunk, is behind the myths of Cyclops with a single, giant eye. As the Industrial Revolution cranked up in the late 1700's, with all the digging of canals, tunnels, and deep foundations, many more large bones were unearthed. A few chapters are devoted to Mary Anning, the most productive fossil finder of her generation. Comparative anatomy became a thing, and by the early-middle 1800's a great number of the animals to which these bones had belonged were being likened to reptiles with certain mammalian characteristics, such as upright legs rather than the sprawling legs of a crocodile.

The word "dinosaur" was coined by Richard Owen in 1842. Not long after, marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs, and aerial reptiles such as pterosaurs, were recognized as parallel to dinosaurs, but not included. By this time it was also becoming more and more clear that the Earth was a great deal older than the comfortable assumption of "around 6,000 years", or the more specific "created in 4004 BC", based on Biblical interpretation of the time. Also, the geological principle of superposition—rock layers and their fossils found below more shallow layers and their fossils are older, and a succession of layers represents a succession in time—showed that most creatures from long, long ago had gone extinct, even that there had been entire assemblages of living things that vanished from the scene, to be succeeded by other assemblages that then became extinct, several times.

This upset the simple theology of the time. Then when Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 the faith of many was shaken. Time was impossibly long (about 750,000 times as long as they had thought), the vanishing of 90+% of all living species (more than once!), and the sudden insignificance of humans and human history seemed to relegate God to the status of a minor, and indifferent, demigod.

Side note: How is it that so many people retain Biblical faith to this day? I was taught from a very early age about The Gap: that verse 1 of Genesis 1 describes an original creation, which was damaged and became chaotic, such that verse 2 and onward describe a restorative creation. Hebrew has certain complications in its grammar. One is this: the past tense of the verb "created" in Genesis 1:1 is different from the past tense used for the verbs in the rest of the chapter that describe God's actions on the Six Days. Therefore, whatever one may think of the six days (such as whether they were 24-hour days or eons or something in between), the time of the first verse is not in any way constrained. In the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), the second note on Genesis 1:1 (using "but" to mean "only") is, "But three creative acts of God are recorded in this chapter: (1) the heavens and the earth, v. 1; (2) animal life, v. 21; and (3) human life, v. 26, 27. The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all the geologic ages." This last sentence is the key to understanding that God's focus is on His relationship with humans, and that is the emphasis of the entire Bible. It is not a text of natural history.

In this very entertaining book we learn how the people of the Victorian era (~1837-1901) were practically dragged out of their comfortable, small and short-lived world into a dramatic, vast and eons-long spectacle. Once dinosaurs had been discovered, many thought they and their flying and swimming kin might be found in the unexplored parts of the Earth. Eventually they understood, this was not to be.

In the next-to-last chapter, "Dinner in a Dinosaur" we learn of a fantastical dinner party held New Year's Eve 1853 inside a life-size model of an iguanodon. By the late 1800's dinosaurs had thunderously earned a seat at the table.

The last sentence of the Epilogue ends, "…with no warning, no foreboding, they vanished." I would add the proviso that today's birds are dinosaurs. If you are ever in the presence of a Cassowary or Ostrich in the wild—and you'd be in mortal danger in either case—you'll understand.