Dall-E Mini, the AI-powered text-to-image generator has taken over the internet. With its ability to render nearly anything your meme-loving heart desires, anyone can make their dreams come true.
DALL-E 2, a portmanteau of Salvador Dali, the surrealist and Wall-E, the Pixar robot, was created by OpenAI and is not widely available; it creates far cleaner imagery and was recently used to launch Cosmpolitan’s first AI-generated cover. The art world has been one of the first industries to truly embrace AI.
The open-sourced miniature version is what’s responsible for the memes. Programmer Boris Dayma wants to make AI more accessible; he built the Dall-E Mini program as part of a competition held by Google and an AI community called Hugging Face.
And with great technology, comes great memes. Typing a short phrase into Dall-E Mini will manifest 9 different amalgamations, theoretically shaping into reality the strange images you’ve conjured. Its popularity leads to too much traffic, often resulting in an error that can be fixed by refreshing the page or trying again later.
If you want to be a part of the creation of AI-powered engines, it all starts with code. CodeAcademy explains that Dall-E Mini is a seq2seq model, “typically used in natural language processing (NLP) for things like translation and conversational modeling.” CodeAcademy’s Text Generation course will teach you how to utilize seq2seq, but they also offer opportunities to learn 14+ coding languages at your own pace.
You can choose the Machine Learning Specialist career path if you want to become a Data Scientist who develops these types of programs, but you can also choose courses by language, subject (what is cybersecurity?) or even skill - build a website with HTML, CSS, and more.
CodeAcademy offers many classes for free as well as a free trial; it’s an invaluable resource for giving people of all experience levels the fundamentals they need to build the world they want to see.
As for Dall-E Mini, while some have opted to create beauty, most have opted for memes. Here are some of the internet’s favorites:
pic.twitter.com/DbLoe1s00c
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 8, 2022
pic.twitter.com/cxtliOrlHz
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 12, 2022
no fuck every other dall-e image ive made this one is the best yet pic.twitter.com/iuFNm4UTUM
— bri (@takoyamas) June 10, 2022
pic.twitter.com/rEBHoWR7lH
— Weird Dall-E Mini Generations (@weirddalle) June 12, 2022
pic.twitter.com/RSZaCIDVV7
— Chairman George (@superbunnyhop) June 9, 2022
back at it again at the DALL•E mini pic.twitter.com/iPGsaMThBC
— beca. ⚢ (@dorysief) June 9, 2022
There’s no looking back now, not once you’ve seen Pugachu; artificial intelligence is here to stay.
How Safe is Your Smart Home?
With high tech security measures becoming the norm, you'd think we'd be a lot safer.
From smartphones to smart cars to smart hotels, the market for interconnectivity has never been higher. The ability to control the majority of one's home from an app– everything from the thermostat to the alarm system– is ubiquitous. There are definitely benefits to this tech; speed, comfort etc.- but are our attempts to make everything smart leaving us vulnerable?
When it comes to smart homes, the technologies involved can vary, but more often than not they're centered on security. Some using motion-sensing technology to automatically turn on cameras. Others contain sensors for all types of issues including flood water, burglary, smoke, and carbon monoxide. The requisite paranoia required to purchase one of these systems aside, there is a growing concern that these security programs can be hacked and easily monitored by would-be burglars. While self-driving cars are still a work in progress (Uber just killed a woman with one of theirs), hackers were able to shut down security features on a Jeep and prove how connected utilities are just as easy to hack as anything else connected to the Internet. The same principle can applied smart homes.
Alexa and her hackable friends
On one end of the hacking spectrum, you have a previous home's owner. There are currently no standards in place to prevent a seller from having access to their old home's smart features. This means the flickering of your lights and the constant opening and closing of your home's garage door could be part of a prank by the last person living in your house. This can also leave home owners vulnerable to burglary, though the police would probably have an easy time cracking that case. Burglary is more likely to occur from an outside force, one that you haven't met and agreed to purchase a house from. That said, tech savvy burglars could have just as easy a time robbing you while you're at work or on a vacation.
Direct denial of service (DDoS) attacks have been used to disrupt the Internet connection for entire corporations, and can now, via the Internet of Things (IoT), be accomplished with ordinary devices such as TVs and washing machines. When these devices were designed, many of the companies hectically released them without putting much thought into their (the devices) security. There are now over six billion everyday items connected to the Internet, with IoT spending to hit around 1.7 trillion by 2020. But how and why would burglars perform cyber attacks on smart homes, when it'd be just as easy to break a window wearing facemasks and steal as much as they can carry before the police arrive? While burglars could perform DDoS attacks on homes and shutdown security systems, this could raise suspicions, as homeowners might notice that their cameras and motion sensors aren't working. Burglars can however, hack into less obvious devices and use them as a means of surveillance, casing their target at a safe distance. Recently, it was discovered that the MyQ garage door system could be hacked and used to spy on homeowners, alerting hackers when the door opens and closes, and giving them the ability to reopen the door after residents leave. This sort of thing is much more useful to burglars performing smash and grab robberies and makes it far too easy for robbers to keep track of a homeowner's schedule.
New security systems are at risk.
So, what can you do?
The fact of the matter is, smart homes are no more or less secure than regular homes. If someone is dedicated to robbing your house, they're going to find a way to get the job done. That said, smart homes do provide a baseline of coverage against standard, non-tech savvy burglars and having visible cameras on the outside of your house can be a serious deterrent. If none of the devices in your house are smart though, it might be worth it to wait until cyber-security measures become standard before buying that new app-controlled washer. As for alarm systems, at this point the old school systems that alert the police department via a landline rather than the Internet are far safer and effective. Like anything though, it's important to do your research before buying.