Is this a bad time to announce my $799 course that's available today for only $795?
But seriously - I've also been considering making an eBook of my past posts (it would be much less practical than yours, more of a "Volume 1" of Artificial Ignorance). Let me know if you want to share notes on the process!
I hope I'm getting a 10% cut now that you're using this comment section to blatantly advertise your course!
And yes, I'm absolutely game for sharing notes. More than that, it could be cool to do some co-working sessions. I think one major reason I don't get started on these bigger projects is that it feels daunting to dive into those solo. So to whatever extent possible, I'm happy to try a "work group" of sorts where we work on our own projects and share the learnings, etc.
Go for it! I published an ebook 3 years ago and the process sucked (very tedious), but I bet it's a snap now, especially if you can compare notes w/Dan.
I actually don't think making an eBook out of my Substack archive would be too bad - I've built myself a tool to export posts as Markdown (minus all of the Substack-specific cruft), and then I can use Pandoc to convert them to an eBook or PDF. The time-intensive part would probably be customizing the look and feel, not the content.
Oh yeah, I actually haven't found a way to make Substack's default "Export all posts" feature usable. It's all saved in folders as separate HTML files, and when I tried using that with LLMs, etc., it never worked.
Would be happy to find a process/tool that lets me easily extract all of my archives into usable format.
You're already several steps ahead of me when I started! I will say that the look/feel was tough to get right due to format switching. I bet you can anticipate and figure out how to deal with that much more easily, though.
Don't you go taking Chad's side. He knows what he's done!
My thought for "hot takes" was less "controversial" and more "quick and unscripted" so I don't put too much pressure on making these. Looks like it's a relatively popular idea after "video guides," so I might even combined the two and make my hot takes recordings of me using the tools and sharing my thoughts.
If you could crank them out sure; I always think of video needing more time to edit, etc. But for sure I’d eat up clips of new stuff with your commentary but skip 10+min walkthroughs. WhyTryAI Shorts WTAI Reels AIStories AIdeos. Maybe video is the secret to notes
Yeah my thought is really quick takes with not much intro/ blalaala and little editing. Just one-shot screen recording of me trying the tool. Let's see.
I only try ImageFX. Gemini drawing people requires subscription. But considering the chatbot overall ability, I think ChatGPT and Claude are better than Gemini, which make my work and life easier. I don’t see much improvement of Gemini 2.
Gemini did a rather decent "Otter using wi-fi on an airplane" (Ethan Mollick's favorite image/video testing prompt). What impressed me is that when I asked for tweaks afterwards, the character consistency on the original otter was pretty impressive. But I do wonder if the "Imagen 3" it uses under the hood is the same as the pure Image FX one. Probably, but I'd like to test it out.
And I agree that the standard Gemini chatbot is subpar. If you want to use Gemini, it's better to go to the Google AI Studio and use the latext Exp-1206 model directly.
I love the idea of selling a book for AI Jest. Let me know if I can somehow help with that - some of my readers might actually be into the idea, especially since we used one of the cartoons in something I wrote/we collaborated on.
Second, you definitely should publish something to do with your MJ experience. I've learned a lot just from taking similar principles and applying them to places like Dall-E, but for MJ specialists, these are very good tips.
I love that this is your top pick:
"1. Reasoning models converge in performance"
I believe we have spoken at some length about this phenomenon, and I fully expect this to continue happening with reasoning as it has with the other features.
Yeah it might be fun to do that "AI Jest" book one day. But judging by the current polls, it's clearly the least popular option. Also, I'm not sure whether I'd want to sell it or use it as a nice incentive/giveaway thing. I'll think about it.
For now, MJ-related stuff is winning, especially the "Prompts" book. It might also be the easiest to realize, since I already have a lot of the written part ready. Gotta research the best way to turn all of it into a high-quality eBook.
For sure, 2025 is gonna be lit, as the cool kids used to say back in the day!
Is there a thread somewhere called "MJ on MJ", where people just share "dank memes" they made in Midjourney? I'm sure lots of other people have had this dumb joke run though their minds too.
"While I couldn't locate a specific thread titled "MJ on MJ" that combines MidJourney with marijuana-themed content, there are several online platforms where users share AI-generated art and memes related to cannabis. Here are some communities and resources you might find interesting:"
I should've known. But these pun-based images were all the rage back during the early Stable Diffusion days. There was "Adele with a Dell" and I ended up posting "Eminem eating M&Ms" too. Utter silliness.
Is this a bad time to announce my $799 course that's available today for only $795?
But seriously - I've also been considering making an eBook of my past posts (it would be much less practical than yours, more of a "Volume 1" of Artificial Ignorance). Let me know if you want to share notes on the process!
I hope I'm getting a 10% cut now that you're using this comment section to blatantly advertise your course!
And yes, I'm absolutely game for sharing notes. More than that, it could be cool to do some co-working sessions. I think one major reason I don't get started on these bigger projects is that it feels daunting to dive into those solo. So to whatever extent possible, I'm happy to try a "work group" of sorts where we work on our own projects and share the learnings, etc.
Go for it! I published an ebook 3 years ago and the process sucked (very tedious), but I bet it's a snap now, especially if you can compare notes w/Dan.
I actually don't think making an eBook out of my Substack archive would be too bad - I've built myself a tool to export posts as Markdown (minus all of the Substack-specific cruft), and then I can use Pandoc to convert them to an eBook or PDF. The time-intensive part would probably be customizing the look and feel, not the content.
Oh yeah, I actually haven't found a way to make Substack's default "Export all posts" feature usable. It's all saved in folders as separate HTML files, and when I tried using that with LLMs, etc., it never worked.
Would be happy to find a process/tool that lets me easily extract all of my archives into usable format.
This is what I've got, but it would be pretty straightforward to make it automated across an entire archive: https://www.loom.com/share/e24115ede07e4612bb7dfa18bbf27096
That looks epic. I'll try to message you later in the week so we can talk about the options here.
You're already several steps ahead of me when I started! I will say that the look/feel was tough to get right due to format switching. I bet you can anticipate and figure out how to deal with that much more easily, though.
Hot takes are fun. Go be strongly opinionated and epically wrong and no one will blame you. Make sure to liberally use 🔥🔥🔥
Shoutout to Chad; I think he's getting a bum rap.
Don't you go taking Chad's side. He knows what he's done!
My thought for "hot takes" was less "controversial" and more "quick and unscripted" so I don't put too much pressure on making these. Looks like it's a relatively popular idea after "video guides," so I might even combined the two and make my hot takes recordings of me using the tools and sharing my thoughts.
If you could crank them out sure; I always think of video needing more time to edit, etc. But for sure I’d eat up clips of new stuff with your commentary but skip 10+min walkthroughs. WhyTryAI Shorts WTAI Reels AIStories AIdeos. Maybe video is the secret to notes
Yeah my thought is really quick takes with not much intro/ blalaala and little editing. Just one-shot screen recording of me trying the tool. Let's see.
Imagen 3( aka ImageFX) is excellent now. I have been using it for the whole year. It beats my legacy SD or recent ComfyUI workflows.
Nice! I didn't test it quite as heavily lately, but I definitely saw improvements over the year.
Have you found any difference between ImageFX and the Gemini chatbot? Both have Imagen 3 under the hood now, but I didn't try to compare closely.
I only try ImageFX. Gemini drawing people requires subscription. But considering the chatbot overall ability, I think ChatGPT and Claude are better than Gemini, which make my work and life easier. I don’t see much improvement of Gemini 2.
Gemini did a rather decent "Otter using wi-fi on an airplane" (Ethan Mollick's favorite image/video testing prompt). What impressed me is that when I asked for tweaks afterwards, the character consistency on the original otter was pretty impressive. But I do wonder if the "Imagen 3" it uses under the hood is the same as the pure Image FX one. Probably, but I'd like to test it out.
And I agree that the standard Gemini chatbot is subpar. If you want to use Gemini, it's better to go to the Google AI Studio and use the latext Exp-1206 model directly.
I love the idea of selling a book for AI Jest. Let me know if I can somehow help with that - some of my readers might actually be into the idea, especially since we used one of the cartoons in something I wrote/we collaborated on.
Second, you definitely should publish something to do with your MJ experience. I've learned a lot just from taking similar principles and applying them to places like Dall-E, but for MJ specialists, these are very good tips.
I love that this is your top pick:
"1. Reasoning models converge in performance"
I believe we have spoken at some length about this phenomenon, and I fully expect this to continue happening with reasoning as it has with the other features.
Looking forward to a crazy fn year!
Yeah it might be fun to do that "AI Jest" book one day. But judging by the current polls, it's clearly the least popular option. Also, I'm not sure whether I'd want to sell it or use it as a nice incentive/giveaway thing. I'll think about it.
For now, MJ-related stuff is winning, especially the "Prompts" book. It might also be the easiest to realize, since I already have a lot of the written part ready. Gotta research the best way to turn all of it into a high-quality eBook.
For sure, 2025 is gonna be lit, as the cool kids used to say back in the day!
Is there a thread somewhere called "MJ on MJ", where people just share "dank memes" they made in Midjourney? I'm sure lots of other people have had this dumb joke run though their minds too.
It's the Internet. The answer is 100% "yes"
"While I couldn't locate a specific thread titled "MJ on MJ" that combines MidJourney with marijuana-themed content, there are several online platforms where users share AI-generated art and memes related to cannabis. Here are some communities and resources you might find interesting:"
I should've known. But these pun-based images were all the rage back during the early Stable Diffusion days. There was "Adele with a Dell" and I ended up posting "Eminem eating M&Ms" too. Utter silliness.
I may or may not have made a few dachshund memes along these lines. I guess most awesome things tend to begin with silly!