Episode Transcript
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0:00
Hey Grown Ups, this episode of Wow in the
0:02
World is brought to you by Huggy's Little Movers.
0:05
Huggy's knows that babies come in
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all shapes and sizes, and parents
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know that there's nothing worse than
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an ill-fitting diaper, especially on an
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active baby. Phew!
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Huggy's Little Movers offer 12-hour protection against
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leaks, and are curved to fit all
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curves. So your babies will feel comfy
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no matter how much they move around.
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And they do tend to move around. A lot.
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Get your baby's butt into the best-fitting
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diaper. Huggy's Little Movers. We got you,
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baby. Huggy's
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Little Movers. Huggy's
1:10
Little Movers. Huggy's
1:15
Little Movers. Hey,
1:18
yeah, it's summertime. No
1:24
homework, no school. Yeah,
1:29
it's the hottest season. Me
1:35
and Reggie are keeping it cool. Sku's
1:43
out, sun's out, time for fun. Hanging
1:51
with my friends and
1:53
everyone. I'm
2:00
good. I'm good. I'm good. Two,
2:07
three, four! We
2:11
will summon! Summon! Summon! Forever
2:14
and forever! We will
2:16
summon! Show
2:19
them the reflection and do cool stuff,
2:21
yeah! We will summon! I
2:24
don't know what kind of stuff, but we'll figure it out!
2:27
We will
2:29
summon, yeah!
2:35
Hello and welcome to We
2:37
Will Summer Week! Summer
2:39
fun forever and ever! That's
2:42
right, Reggie. This is the week where we have
2:44
all kinds of summer fun, but we couldn't think
2:46
of anything to do, so
2:48
we're going around the neighborhood and bother-y,
2:50
I mean, getting inspiration from everyone else.
2:54
Are you ready to go find someone to talk to, Reggie?
2:57
Okay, let's go! Wack,
2:59
wack, wack, wack, wack! Snooping,
3:02
snooping, snooping! Oh
3:06
hey, look, it's Grandma G for you! Hey,
3:09
Granny G! Where did
3:11
you come from, boy? What do you want?
3:13
Well, I'm just out having summer fun forever
3:15
and ever and wanted to check in on
3:18
my favorite, Mindy's grandma. Well,
3:21
I'm just busy painting this
3:23
diaper house still. Oh
3:26
wow, it looks great! And it's
3:28
gonna stay that way. Now
3:31
get away now, get back! What
3:33
are you painting? Some kind of
3:35
mural? Yeah, it's me and my
3:37
electric guitar riding a saber-toothed tiger.
3:39
Oh, come on! Can
3:41
I paint a picture of me on there too?
3:43
No. Can I paint
3:46
sunglasses on the tiger? No. Can
3:48
I paint calligraphy flourishes and whirls around the
3:50
edges? No. Well then,
3:52
what can I do? Well,
3:55
you can wash my brushes.
3:57
Here, take them. Hooray! For
16:00
bananas go in the
16:02
yellow category. But
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it sorts these pictures into
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hundreds of different categories, like
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their shape, their size, their
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shininess, their brightness. The banana
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also goes in the long
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category and also also goes
16:19
in the medium sized category
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and the non-shiny category and
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the fruit category. So at
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the end of this class,
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the AI knows both what
16:30
these images are. That is
16:32
the ball. But also the
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characteristics are things that make
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up that image. The ball
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is white. It
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has stitches. It
16:43
is round. It is
16:45
used in the game of baseball.
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Wonderful. You're now ready
16:51
for semester two, creation. Yay.
16:54
I finally get to make my
16:56
own art. So now when
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you type a prompt into the machine,
17:01
ahem, one picture of an
17:03
ice cream, please. Hmm,
17:05
okay. Ice cream,
17:08
round, colorful, moist,
17:11
shiny. It
17:13
then arranges a bunch of
17:15
pixels into a shape that
17:17
has those characteristics, like shape,
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quality and shininess. And pixels
17:21
are the tiny dots on
17:23
a screen that make up
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an image. Exactly. Hundreds
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of thousands of these little colored
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dots that all come together to
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make a picture. And the AI
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shuffles these around based on what
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it knows about the object you
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asked it to generate for you.
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Exactoritos. Duh.
17:44
What do you think, Mrs. Teacher
17:46
Man? It's horrible. Oh
17:48
no. The first attempts are never
17:51
good, but then the AI
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goes away and improves it, moving the
17:55
pixels around just a little bit. And
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it does this over and over and
18:00
over. again thousands of times a second.
18:03
How's this? No. This?
18:07
No. This? No.
18:10
This happens over and
18:12
over and over again,
18:14
improving little by little
18:16
until... This? Oh,
18:19
now that's what I call an A
18:21
plus ice cream. Excellent.
18:24
Here you are, man, with just one
18:26
picture of ice cream. I love it!
18:32
And that, Guy Ross, is how
18:34
you train an AI generator to
18:36
become an artist. Oh, wow! That
18:39
was quite a lot to take in, Mindy. So
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let me get this straight. This
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AI program is taught what images
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look like. Uh-huh. And then it's
18:48
taught the characteristics of those images,
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like its size and color and
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shape. Uh-huh. And
18:55
then it puts a bunch of
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pixels together that have those characteristics.
19:00
You know it. And then the
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AI keeps rearranging those pixels over
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and over again, making slightly better
19:07
images every time until it has
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a brand new picture of whatever
19:12
you asked for. Yep. That's
19:15
it in a nutshell. Wow. That's
19:17
kind of incredible. Yeah, almost
19:19
as incredible as Reggie
19:21
riding a skateboard over
19:24
the Grand Canyon. Check
19:29
it out. Wow. Okay,
19:31
what should I put in next? How about...
19:34
I've got it! How
19:36
about three best friends? Uh,
19:38
sure. Yay! Three
19:40
best friends! Three best friends! Three best
19:42
friends! But, Mindy, aren't you worried about
19:44
these machines replacing artists in the real
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world? I mean, it might take a
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real human artist months or even years
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to create a piece of art like
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this. But these machines
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can do it in the blink
19:57
of an eye. Well, that's a
19:59
good point, Gyroz. some people are
20:01
worried about these machines. I mean,
20:03
on one hand, you can see
20:05
them as just another tool for
20:08
artists to express themselves. Right? Because
20:10
these machines aren't creative. To them,
20:12
these images are just a bunch
20:14
of pixels and numbers. It's us
20:16
humans who input the prompts to
20:18
make them generate art. Huh. But
20:20
on the other hand, some people are
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worried about these AI generators copying real
20:25
life artists and not giving them credit
20:27
for their work. What
20:29
do you mean? Well, remember how
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that AI generator had to go
20:33
to art school to learn how
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to generate? Yeah, the University of
20:37
the World Wide Web. Right. Well,
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when it's learning how to recognize
20:41
and sort objects, it's doing that
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based on millions and millions of
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images from the web. Uh-huh. And
20:47
a lot of those images are
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created by artists who never gave
20:51
their permission for their art to
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be used to teach robots. Right.
20:55
And I'm guessing that when these
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AI art generators are asked to
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produce a work of art, it
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can sometimes end up looking very
21:03
similar to those artists it was
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trained on. Exactoritos. So is this
21:07
a good thing or a bad
21:09
thing? Well, it's a new thing,
21:11
Gyros. It's up to us humans
21:13
to make that choice of how
21:15
we use it. It's done!
21:18
It's done! The three best
21:20
friends! Look! All right. Oh,
21:22
look, there's Mindy. And that's
21:25
Guy with his glasses. But
21:28
wait a minute. Mindy, I think this
21:30
machine is broken. Oh, boy. This one
21:32
in the middle doesn't look anything like
21:34
me. It's got a tail and feathers
21:36
and a beak. Uh. Ah,
21:40
Rachi! Ha ha ha! Grown-ups,
21:47
if you like Wow in the
21:49
World, you can listen early and
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And before you go, tell us
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in the World is written by
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Mindy Thomas and Tom Van Calken
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with help from me, Guy Roz.
22:19
Original sound design and music editing
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is done by Tyler Thole with
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help from our supervising producer, Jed
22:26
Anderson. You can also hear Jed
22:28
Anderson in the voices of Dennis,
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Thomas Fingerling, Reggie, and many of
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the other silly characters you hear
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on our show. Jessica Bodie keeps
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our facts straight as our fact
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checker and Meredith Halpern-Ranzer powers the
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wow at Tinkercast. Our theme song
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at thepopups.com. Special thanks
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