4 posts tagged with "Progress"

There's a common misconception that to even dip your toes into the AI waters, you need to invest in state-of-the-art, high-end hardware. It's easy to understand why people believe this --- after all, until recently, you did need more robust hardware to run most models. 

Just look at Stable Diffusion, a popular open source AI art-generation application. When it was initially released in August 2022, Stable Diffusion needed 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia graphics card with at least 10GB of VRAM. At that time in 2022, the Nvidia RTX 3080 card cost between $900 and $1300.

Now, however, less than two years later, Stable Diffusion's minimum system requirements are a graphics card with just 4GB of VRAM and can run on Windows, MacOS, or Linux operating system. You can pick up an Nvidia Quadro graphics card with 4GB of VRAM on Amazon today for less than $200.

When personal computers first hit the market, many people resisted them. Even as the machines worked their way into offices and homes, some people thought that computers shouldn't be used in certain ways, like in creating digital art. 

Though you'll still find some holdouts today, most people eventually came around and recognized that art created with the aid of a computer is, indeed, art. Just like accountants use accounting software to crunch numbers at work, and graphic designers everywhere use software like Adobe Illustrator to design images.

Yet we're seeing the "Is it really art?" argument again today with AI. Artists, writers, and creatives of all media are excited about the possibilities that AI opens up to them, while critics have strong feelings about artists using AI as a creative execution tool.

Well, you know what? Here at DeepMake, we're completely on board with people using AI as an artistic tool. Why? Because generative AI isn't capable of imagining new ways of doing, seeing, or feeling things --- aka creating. Only people can do that --- AI simply builds what humans have already imagined.

Ask anyone on the street what they think about AI, and you’ll probably hear that they’re concerned. That’s to be expected since AI is blowing up today’s headlines, and not always in a good way.

Read the news on any given day and you’ll see media firestorms about the dangers of AI and fearmongering over robots being developed for warfare. Simultaneously, countries are diving headfirst into AI development and new software is emerging daily. The hustle for AI dominance has our heart rate rapidly rising, reminiscent of the nuclear arms race of the twentieth century.