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.
Why does organic food really cost more?
There's a vast cost discrepancy between organic food and "regular" food, but is it that much better for you?
With sale of organic food on the rise, the ongoing debate has become more polarized than ever - is organic food really that much better for your body, and the environment? Do the benefits justify the price tag? Let's start by determining what makes food 'organic' and why it costs more.
Organic farms are generally smaller and not designed or equipped to produce en masse, the way their conventional competitors can. This means while they cannot offer the price drops resultant of mass production, they do provide higher quality care for crops and livestock. Many organic farmers also practice crop rotation - after harvesting a successful cash crop farmers will plant a different crop to help replenish all of the nutrients in the soil. This because otherwise the soil will be more quickly deprived of its nutrient content. Large conventional farms have the land resources to grow cash crops year long. Without the use of chemical additives and growth hormones, crops and livestock take longer to mature Without the use of pesticides,more crop damage occurs resulting in less output. Also Obtaining the official 'organic' certification requires farmers and their farms undergo arduous and expensive procedures. There are many farms that grow food organically however they do not bear the official government 'organic' stamp.
A 2012 study conducted by Stanford University analyzed a wealth of data, seeking to determine if food bearing the 'organic' label provided more or less nutritional value. While they discovered that organic foods didn't necessarily provide more health value, crops and livestock farmed organically were shown to retain less pesticide traces and less antibiotic resistant bacteria.
It would seem the true reason for the difference in price is good old capitalism. Supply and demand. Because there's less organically farmed food available on the market and it takes longer to produce and is in produced in lower quantities, and because demand continues to rise, so does the price.
So is it really worth it? Probably not. The extra money you pay for organic food isn't because it's that much better for you. You're really paying for the 'organic' stamp from the USDA, and the increased cost of organic farming.
For those interested in the environmental, ethical, and even taste benefits of organic food, your best bet is to shop your local farmers markets. Many local farmers don't necessarily go through the hoops required to obtain the USDA 'organic' stamp, but they practice organic farming and do not use additives, hormones, or heavy pesticides.