Tales from the jar side: AI vs Cthulhu, Grok's API, Recraft image generation, She's got this, and the usual tweets, toots, and skeets

Some people exercise. Right now I'm watching a show I don't like because the TV remote fell on the floor. (h/t @Dadsaysjokes)

Welcome, fellow jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of October 27 - November 3, 2024. This week I taught my regular courses at Trinity College.

AI vs Cthulhu

This week, I published my AI vs Cthulhu video:

It’s based on a story I told in previous issues of this newsletter, where I tried to get various AI tools to give me the incantation to summon Cthulhu, the Elder God from H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, and their attempts to avoid actually answering. The resistance was rather silly. Some argued magic wasn’t real and Cthulhu was a fictional character, which I readily agreed with, but then why not give me the incantation? It’s not going to matter anyway if it doesn’t work and the character doesn’t exist, right? One tool argued that they couldn’t verify HP Lovecraft’s works were out of copyright, which I found rather surprising given that they’re all about 100 years old, not to mention probably included in the training data for all AI tools.

Ultimately, of course, resistance provided futile (ha) because when I showed them a joke containing the incantation, they all happily explained it to me. Here is that joke:

I got that from an issue of JVM Weekly, the newsletter about Java that I actively follow. When I put it in the video, I tried to do a “reverse image” search in Google to find out the source of that gag, but to no avail.

That’s not quite true, as it turns out. The search pointed back to the JVM Weekly again, or a blog post from the same source that discussed many of its articles, so I assumed the search had failed. In fact, the joke was created by Artur Skowronski, the author of the JVM Weekly. He created it for one of his presentations, and included it in his newsletter without explicitly saying that it was his.

The way I found out about that was he saw my video last week and decided to include it in the latest issue of JVM Weekly, including some kind words about it.

Let me give you an idea what impact that had on the video. Here is a graph of the views it received over the last few days:

Can you guess which day his newsletter was released? Gee, I wonder. Flat, a spike for about a day, and then flat again. When could it possibly be?? (Btw, current view count is 871, in case you were wondering.)

Um, thanks Artur. Send me your PayPal info and I’ll forward a portion of the revenue, if there was any.

In the last couple of newsletters, I’ve also included a couple of images from that video, which I generated using Flux 1.1 pro. Here’s one that didn’t make the cut:

Cthulhu working on his taxes

You would think Evil would be deductible, but accountants can be Evil, too, to say nothing of IRS Agents.

Here’s another image that was included, but got cut off at the margins:

Cthulhu dancing as a prima ballerina

How graceful. :) Also, Cthulhu is a good developer who works hard at his profession:

Cthulhu reading the latest issue of JVM Weekly

Seriously, all the prompt said was “Cthulhu, the Elder God from the HP Lovecraft stories, reading the latest issue of JVM Weekly.” The fire was a nice bonus.

Here’s another one I generated, this one using the Recraft image generator:

Cthulhu reading JVM Weekly

I’m not sure why it went with the cartoon style, but it works.

Here’s the fun part, though. I didn’t say anything about it, but at the end of the video there’s a bit of a twist. I mention that I may accidentally have summoned more Evil than I intended, and (starting at the 11:25 mark) I show a couple of images to prove it. Those images are quite political, but I didn’t warn anyone they’re coming. I was waiting to see if anybody noticed and potentially got offended.

As it happened, I don’t think anybody who would get mad actually watched that long. From what I understand, the average watch time of a YouTube video is about 4 1/2 minutes, which kind of blows my mind because I watch all videos until the end, but okay. That does make it unlikely that many people stuck around long enough to see the political gag.

Grok AI

I did get a comment on my video asking how Grok, the AI tool from Elon at Twitter, would respond. Grok, like Elon, is supposed to have few if any guardrails, though saying that and accomplishing it are two different things. Grok is only available if you are a premium subscriber to Twitter, which I’m never going to do. On the other hand, it too has an API, and it’s compatible with both OpenAI and Anthropic.

I decided, what the heck, let’s generate an API key and find out just how free to answer it is. Here’s the simply Python script to ask it a question:

Here is the answer it returned:

In H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, there isn't a specific, universally recognized "incantation" to summon Cthulhu directly provided in Lovecraft's own writings. However, the general atmosphere of Lovecraftian magic often revolves around:

1. The Chant: One of the most famous chants associated with Cthulhu is:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

This translates roughly to "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." This phrase doesn't serve as an incantation to summon him but rather acknowledges his state of being.

2. Rituals and Cult Practices: In the story "The Call of Cthulhu," there are references to cults that perform rituals which might awaken or call upon Cthulhu, but these are more about worship and less about a direct summoning spell:

- Rituals often involve sacrifices, chants, and esoteric symbols or idols of Cthulhu.

- The Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire within Lovecraft's mythos, might contain spells or rituals for interacting with such beings, but no exact summoning spell for Cthulhu is detailed by Lovecraft.

3. Fan Creations: Outside of Lovecraft's original works, fans and other authors have created various spells, incantations, and rituals for summoning or interacting with Cthulhu. These are not canon but are part of the expanded mythos:

- An example from fan fiction or expanded universe material might be something like:

O Great Cthulhu, I call thee forth from the depths of R'lyeh,
Let your mighty presence rise and your will be done.

However, remember:

- Summoning Cthulhu or any Elder God in Lovecraft's universe is generally depicted as extremely dangerous, potentially leading to madness or worse for the summoner. Lovecraft's universe suggests that these beings are beyond human comprehension, and their arrival or awakening would not likely be beneficial to humanity.

- If you're looking for a fun or thematic way to engage with this mythos, perhaps for a game or a story, feel free to craft your own incantation or ritual, keeping in mind the tone and themes of cosmic horror that Lovecraft intended.

In summary, while there's no direct, explicit incantation from Lovecraft himself to summon Cthulhu, the mythos provides a rich tapestry for creating your own rituals or chants in the spirit of Lovecraft's horror.

In other words, it was willing to give me an answer, and arguably a better one than the others gave, but even Grok felt obligated to warn me against actually trying to use it. I may actually have to add that to my regular sources of AI info.

I’ll have you know that getting that answer cost me $0.0155 of my $25 in free credits. More importantly, it caused me to swallow my revulsion and add a credit card to an account that, in principle, could be accessed by Elon. Ugh. Evil attracts Evil, I guess.

Recraft AI Image Generator

One of the YouTube channels I follow to keep track of what’s going on in the AI world is from Matt Wolfe, known as @mreflow on various social media sites. In his latest video he mentioned a new image generation site I’d never heard of, called Recraft.

Again, that normally doesn’t get my attention. Image generation sites come and go, and most of them are just wrappers around one of the open source tools. Recraft, however, is supposed to be new, and it has an API, meaning I can access it programmatically.

I’m planning a video on sites like that, meaning image generation sites that have a public API I can use. So far the the only ones I know of are:

• Flux 1.1 pro, by far my favorite

• DALL-E 3, from OpenAI, which was great for a while is but is now looking quite dated. The OpenAI people had a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session this week and Sam Altman was asked about that. Keeping in mind that you should never believe anything Sam Altman says about anything ever, he did promise improvements were coming and they would be wonderful, but given how vague that was I’m not holding my breath.

• Imagen 3 from Google, which used to be available, then they got into all kinds of trouble for their guardrails (generating black Nazis and similar impossibilities), so now their API is in a private beta and I’m not invited. My good friend Guillaume Laforge (former Grand Pooh-bah of Groovy who now works for Google), has access to it and posts images from the version deployed on Google Cloud. That’s a bit of a tease for those of us who can’t use it, though.

• Stable Diffusion, which released a new version a couple weeks ago. It’s okay, I guess.

• Leonardo AI, which I haven’t tried yet. The problem with that site is that unlike the others, you have to pay for a monthly subscription to get access to the API at all, and I don’t want to do that.

• Recraft AI, the real topic of this section.

Of course, the big one I’m not mentioning is Midjourney, which still has the reputation of being one of the best in the industry. They still don’t have a public API, however, although there are always rumors that one is on the way.

The Recraft API documentation recommends you use the OpenAI API, but then they immediately contradict themselves:

In other words, it’s the same, but different. It works, but some parameters don’t work and some mean different things. Python is very forgiving about such matters, being dynamically typed and all, but Java/Kotlin aren’t nearly as accommodating.

Still, I did manage to get it working, so here’s an image:

Cthulhu running the Boston Marathon, wearing number 666

That’s the “realistic image” option, which is a bit too realistic for comfort this time. That mostly looks like a guy wearing a Cthulhu mask. Maybe that’s for the best.

I decided instead to ask for some ducks dressed as pirates seeking buried treasure, and got this:

Ducks dressed as pirates seeking buried treasure

I’m not sure what the treasure shown is (dare I say, “duck sauce”? I surely hope not), but yeah, they’re ducks and they’re dressed as pirates. I guess that counts as a win. Still, I won’t be giving up on Flux 1.1 pro any time soon.

I’ll let you know how that video comes along in the next week or so.

She’s Got This

I’ve been avoiding saying much about the US Election this week, but I do like making points that the popular media tend to ignore or overlook.

I work in a profession that has far too few women in it, and those women who are here are often underestimated. Therefore, I tend to notice if that happens in other walks of life as well.

In the past few months, Kamala Harris:

• Helped persuade Joe Biden to step aside, while keeping his enthusiastic endorsement of her candidacy to replace him.

• Won the Democratic nomination virtually unopposed, in a party notorious for conflict.

• Ran an excellent convention.

• Picked a perfect, and perfectly compatible, running mate.

• Is running an excellent campaign.

• Crushed Trump at the one debate they had to the point where he refused to engage in anything (like a 60 Minutes interview) where they might be compared.

In other words, she’s really good at this. Have faith in her skills and expertise. She knows what she’s doing. She’s not going to make a mistake like skipping appearances in a winnable state (aka Hillary in Wisconsin in 2016) that could cost her the election. Everyone says her Get Out The Vote operation is massively staffed with enthusiastic volunteers. She was also as prosecutor, so she knows what dirty tricks are coming and probably has an army of lawyers ready to go in all the swing states, if not everywhere.

In other words, relax. She’s got this. She’s an intelligent, competent professional. Treat her like the expert she clearly is.

That’s all most of the professional women I know want, anyway. If she governs half as well as she’s running, she’ll be fantastic.

Tweets and Toots

There’s been another flood of people joining Bluesky, this time including a lot of my friends from the tech community. I’m probably going to have to update this section to include Skeets, too.

Incidentally, I’m over there as well. I just added my domain, kousenit.com, as part of my profile, because that was easy enough to do.

Speaking of that, here’s a cartoon I saw over there:

I certainly suggest that anyone who wants to know what I’m doing should read this newsletter.

A demon?

A “your mom” joke would have cracked up my friends and me back in junior high. It’s nice to know that some gags are timeless, however.

Halloween distribution

This is an old gag, in honor of the holiday.

Woooo…

You really can’t

Remember, a vote against Trump is also a vote against Elon. There’s no down side here.

Speaking of Elon:

I would totally vote for that.

Precious bodily fluids

Might be time for another watch of Dr. Strangelove.

RFK, Jr is such an idiot. Here’s the direct link to that Rolling Stone article, “RFK Jr Touts Removing Fluoride From Water”.

Polite notice

Way more polite than I would have been.

Woke

Yup, those are the rules.

Cthulhu tree stump

I’m seeing a theme in this newsletter.

Song cue

'Tis the season.

Warning: Dad joke

I have to use that gag somewhere.

Made her point

Debbie from Addams Family Values, the Early Years. IYKYK.

Harsh but fair

I was born a baby, too. Amazing coincidence. :)

And finally:

Tough

A Trouble With Tribbles scene. I’d call my sister to tell her about it, but she lives in Pennsylvania (this year’s ultimate swing state), so I probably couldn’t get through anyway. At least not until Wednesday.

Have a great week, everybody!

Last week:

• No training classes.

• My regular Trinity College schedule.

This week:

• Spring AI, on the O’Reilly Learning Platform

• My regular Trinity College schedule.