Getting to know a hive mind

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, mysteries, murder mysteries, space fiction, space aliens, sentient starships, writers, generated images

In the opening scene of Infinite Archive by Mur Lafferty, the protagonist, Mallory Viridian, is learning to communicate with a hive mind that consists of a large number of wasplike aliens. As I read, I realized that I would really like to illustrate the book. My "contract artist" for the images in this post is GPT-Image-1.5, accessed via Leonardo AI.

The book is chock full of ideas: multiple kinds of hive minds; aliens ranging from the Gneiss (my favorite; they are living rocks) to the Sundry (one of a few species of waspoids) to the Miu (catlike), and of course, the spaceships themselves; living libraries—both the larger spaceships and the hive minds—; language interpretation via a brain app…and so forth. The setting for most of the action is a mystery writers' convention being held on an enormous spaceship that is quite different from the others nearby at a station cluster. Mallory is a mystery writer. She also has a "talent" for being if not present, then nearby when murders happen. She solves the mystery, then writes a book about it. It's a living. In this case, communion with a hive mind, and the powers that this unlocks, are crucial to catching the murderer.

In the 2040's or so, First Contact occurred a number of years in the past (apparently about 2030), there are lots of loosely confederated alien species, and humans aren't yet trusted enough to be given the secret of space flight. But humans can apparently afford space tourism and even get jobs aboard certain ships, so they get to gallivant around the galaxy with everyone else. In a charming turn, spaceships aren't built, they are grown. Mallory has been given custody of a baby spaceship about the size of a tennis ball. It seems to be able to lift out of her jacket pocket and zip off at times, without burning anything. The drive mechanism is not mentioned. Antigrav, perhaps? By the time things get serious the little ship, named Mobius is bigger, softball sized, and beginning to look more like a rugby ball. Later on he (ships have gender) figures in a rivalry between different wasplike aliens.

It is hard to get too deep into the plot of the story without giving too much away. So let's stick with some ideas and their ramifications. Two of Mallory's allies are seen in this image, along with a catlike alien rather different from a Miu, but this is the best that the program could offer. The Miu is no ally, not quite an enemy, but definitely a player, just in another conceptual direction.

I'll skip to the convention. It doesn't get off to much of a start before there is trouble. First, Mallory's book agent is present, and tries to get her involved in a LARP (Live-Action Role Play) "game" that doesn't go well. I'll leave it to the reader to learn why she storms out. Then, it appears that some of the other authors present who have the same agent aren't all happy with one another, nor with the agent.

The convention itself kicks off with several acts including a performance by a popular Punk-ish band, apparently all human, though this isn't explicitly stated. 

During the musical performance, the first murder occurs, soon followed by a second. Mallory goes into high gear. She is now comfortable communing with, and getting help from, the Sundry hive mind she's been bonding with. This helps a lot, and I'd better leave it there.

I understand that Ms Lafferty has written other books. I plan to track them down. This one is an enjoyable romp.

Troglodyte fantasy

 kw: generated images, ai experiments, caves, cave dwellings, underground living

I have been experimenting with image generation "AI" software for just over two years, having first tried out Dall-E2 on November 11, 2022. I frequently use the software to produce various kinds of backgrounds for Zoom meetings, to use with a green screen. Some are forest glades, some are mountain scenes, some are desert scenes, some are views of alien planets, and some that are intended for "business"  sessions are laboratories or offices.

I had the idea to make images of an office in a cave. I love caves. Preferred vacation destinations are places such as Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave, Luray Caves and the several caves along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had several art generators produce hundreds of images, and kept about thirty of them. Two are standouts:

This is from Leonardo AI, using the Preset "Illustrative Albedo" and Style "Stylized Illustration", which produced this colorful result. It's a bit fanciful, which appealed to me.

To see an image full size, click on it. Click next to the image to return to this page.

This is from ImageFX (in Google Labs), which does things differently, having an option to choose from numerous adjectives, which then are appended to the prompt. I appended "Cinematic". This looks more like a natural, though dry, cave (I wouldn't want an office in a drippy, living cave!).

A week or two later I decided to generate the rest of the rooms of a cave dwelling, one I might like to live in.

The original prompt for the Cave Office was an extra-long 50-word prompt, about 275 characters. Several of the art generators put the first 32 characters of the prompt in the file name, in addition to the name of the program and, often, the "seed" number (The seed is supposed to allow you to regenerate an image and then modify it in a later session). I keep a text file of long prompts so I can re-use them. This helps with product comparisons. I change the file name to a prompt identifier plus a program ID, the date, and a serial number.

I eventually prepared twelve more "Trog" series prompts, ranging from 17 to 48 words. Note that most of these programs take in no more than 77 "tokens" (an unusual number...), and a "token" can be a word, a syllable, or a punctuation-space combination, so I don't let prompts go much beyond 50 words.

Is Troglodyte a new word to you? It means a person or animal that lives underground. In old literature it was used in a derogatory way to refer to, for example, underground-dwelling "dwarves".

I won't dig deeper into the technicalities. Here I want to showcase the different rooms I dreamed up, and the way each of these two programs responded to the prompt. I present them four rooms at a time, and each "room" is my favorite from 4, or 8, or more images offered up by the art generator. I start with all the Leonardo AI offerings:

Clockwise from upper left: 

• Entryway. An arch has been built into the cave mouth, and case of shelves full of pots stands nearby. I asked for a coat closet; this is the only "closet" I was offered! Note that this combination of product and its presets has every room adjacent to a skylight or a cave exit.
• Living Room. The floor is paved. I'd have asked for Grow Lights for the houseplants if I'd realized the program would create some.
• Kitchen, complete with a window to outside. The prompt included "refrigerator" but none was offered.
• Formal Dining Room with a chandelier. The pool is a bonus.

• Sitting Room and Library. It takes a dry cave to be a safe place to shelve books.
• TV Room. I debated asking for theater-style seating, but opted for this look instead.
• Office. The original cave room, which inspired all the others.
• Game Room. What's a grand home without a billiards table and some board games?

• Hallway to Bedrooms. This was as close as I could come, in the Leonardo offerings. The floor is close to natural. I asked for wall sconces, and got lots of them.
• Master Bedroom. I asked for a canopy bed, but never received one.
• Utility Room and Laundry. The most natural floor of all the rooms. The tool bench is minimal. Though no stairs are evident, this is clearly a "basement" area.
• Walk-in Closet. This is intended to be attached to the Master Bedroom. One presumes the view is from an archway in the bedroom.

OK, let's compare the ImageFX offerings, in the same order:

As before, clockwise from top left:

• Entryway. Here, the entry is apparently around a bend. Coat closets and a chair make it inviting.
• Living Room.
• Kitchen. Complete with refrigerator! IFX is more compliant to details in the prompt.
• Formal Dining Room with chandelier. The buffet off to the side, with warming pans, is a nice touch.

• Sitting Room and Library. I didn't ask for the Oriental rug, but I'm glad it was included.
• TV Room. Here the seating is facing the screen, in an informal arrangement.
• Office. Of all the rooms, this looks the most like the cave is a backdrop rather than integral.
• Game Room.

• Hall to Bedrooms. This is what I had in mind.
• Master Bedroom. With canopy bed! The knitted rug is as I asked for every time; here it is most evident.
• Utility Room and Laundry. A better work bench.
• Walk-in Closet. The central dresser is nice. I had asked for both men's and women's clothing to be shown. IFX did so.
  

The big lesson for me is that tremendous variety is available; it takes lots of experimentation to learn the uses and limitations of each tool. The IFX images tend to be low key. To make a presentable image, I'll raise the lightness with the Gamma tool in IrfanView, which I use to trim an image and add a signature (as any artist would!). I use Upscayl to double the x- and y- pixel count.

If you have a sharp eye, you may note that the aspect ratio of the images differs between the two programs. Both Leonardo AI and ImageFX have various aspect ratios available. I always asked for 16:9, the same as HDTV, which also matches the screens of my computer setup. However, Leonardo AI images, for all its Presets except "Phoenix", yields images that are 1368x768, or 1.78125 or 57:32. ImageFX images are even wider, 1408x768, or 1.8333... or 11:6.

When I make a Zoom background, or a wallpaper for my Screen Saver, I want exactly 16:9, so images must be trimmed. I'll prepare an essay about that later on.

A Stable Diffusion glitch

 kw: observations, generated images, simulated intelligence, hallucinations

While creating an image to illustrate the prior post, an image was presented that had an odd-looking hand holding a distorted microphone. I was using Playground's Stable Diffusion engine. Even though Playground has a stock of "negative prompts" (stuff to avoid) including "deformed", "distorted", "poorly drawn hands", "missing fingers", this peculiar item still showed up. But it was just one out of 28 images produced, so the percentage isn't awful.

This is about 15% of the total image.