Tag Archives: AI

Review: 2023

Posted on Monday, 25. December 2023 by hmvh

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. As of 2023 I’ve officially stopped giving a shit. Continue reading →

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Photo restoration through AI? Nope!

Posted on Monday, 21. August 2023 by hmvh

Despite the recent incredible developments in artificial intelligence and image generation, I remain steadfast that AI still has no role in the workflow for digitising personal snapshots on prints, slides or negatives. While I obviously made basic edits like cropping, or adjusting brightness, contrast, white balance and colours so that the viewer can actually see what’s going on in a photo, my experiences with AI services (read: face enhancing) have done nothing but confirm a phenomenon that’s already been termed “identity shift”. Continue reading →

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AI Photo Enhancement: Boon or Bust for Old Photos?

Posted on Saturday, 1. April 2023 by hmvh

Digitizing old family photos is a great way to preserve family history and memories for future generations. But let’s face it: old photos can be faded, scratched, and just plain old-looking. That’s where AI-powered photo enhancement software comes in. But is it really the panacea it’s cracked up to be? Continue reading →

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Music. Meta. Madness.

Posted on Saturday, 1. January 2022 by hmvh

In December I had to give a presentation on a topic of my choice. Predictably, the topic I picked involved Discogs. At first I considered simply showcasing some Venn diagrams or random insights and fun facts gleaned from its raw data but, alas, it turns out that data is only interesting if it has more than one dimension. Prose is not data. Discogs isn’t exactly “Big Data” either. Privacy was another aspect worth diving into. But at the very heart of this contentious data there was a message I could easily convey: Where does it come from, and why is much of it garbage? Continue reading →

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Blade Runner 2019

Posted on Monday, 18. November 2019 by hmvh

It is November 2019. This is when the classic 1982 film Blade Runner takes place. For over three decades I’ve wondered what the year 2019 would really be like. Continue reading →

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The Matrix remembered

Posted on Sunday, 29. September 2019 by hmvh

2019 rings in yet another anniversary. The Matrix movie is twenty years old. Had the film been released now, in 2019, it would still be a terrific actioner and perhaps even more relevant than it was then: the matrix will be instantly recognised as an obvious allegory to the always-connected, domesticated, utilitarian social media of today. Surveillance by machines is a pervasive theme, and much of the computer jargon that would have befuddled viewers two decades ago has since entered mainstream speak. Continue reading →

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Cyberia 13: Superstition

Posted on Saturday, 17. December 2005 by hmvh

Why do we always assume that machines, however intelligent and efficient they may become, have some sort of hidden and nasty agenda? Continue reading →

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Cyberia 10: Maschine

Posted on Saturday, 1. February 2003 by hmvh

The lands of the future are Cyberia. It’s a machine’s world now! “Cyberia is where humanity confronts and emerges from its larval and pre-foetal, grub-like state. Where we erupt painfully from the swarming biomechanical cauldron, all the Earth will become … Continue reading →

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