Tag Archives: Science

I made some AI generated comics. Is that ethical?

I’m a scientist and I want to communicate science with comics. I tried a bunch of ways to make a comics, and the MidJourney AI was my favorite. I tried conventional image software, collage software, I hired freelance artists, and generative AI. The fact is: making good art takes skill, time, and effort. Some art seems simple, but if people love it, it’s almost certainly a product of a lot of hard practice. AI is a shortcut. It uses other peoples’ art to generate higher quality comics than I can make, without me having to do the practice.

Is this ethical?

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Brief: New Channel Announcement, the OTHER scientific method, Links

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I’ve been making comics with the new generative AI Art software. I put up a video all about it on my new channel for long form video essays. You can check out the whole video on the topic over at PeterAllenWrites (link). I do have concerns about the ethics of AI-generated content, but I can also see the value of AI art for science communication. As an example, I made this comic about the scientific method, as performed in real life.

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An act of self-deception

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Thanks to XKCD, I have been paying more attention to hand dryers. Randall Munroe points out (via aircraft-towed aerial billboard) that the hand dryer feels cold because the water on your hands is evaporating. That’s true even if the air is quite hot. But that’s the best-case scenario with hand dryers. I’ve run into plenty that definitely do not have warm air. And I’ve also encountered empty paper towel dispensers that I thought were touchless blower hand dryers and waved my hands around wildly under them. My frustration has become art by way of MidJourney. Let’s talk about placebos.

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Anti-science on the internet

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I had to take a break from social media because I was spending too much time worrying about people being wrong ABOUT SCIENCE on the internet (credit to XKCD for articulating it first). I moved house and had to focus on catching up at work. But the subject nagged me. I started working on a long form writing project about anti-science online. Why are people against science? There are a lot of answers to that question. It’s not as simple as just saying “fundamentalism” and throwing my hands up. I want to understand the problem better.

As I started researching the issue, I found a book called The War on Science. I realized that I don’t need to write a book about this because it has been done already (and better than I could manage). The book is exhaustive.

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“BDSM Eye Drops” turned out to be a bad idea

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My wife and I have the weirdest conversations, and I absolutely love that. I am a lucky man. I found someone who can turn her magical perspective into a set of tiny numbers in a computer that we perceive as colors that are then assembled into a picture that makes me laugh. This person is called an “artist.” The result is this week’s comic. There’s a video version of this post available, too.

Life is full of unpleasant things. Everything from having-to-put-in-eye-drops to the-inevitable-fact-of-our-demise. But it helps me to find a little humor where we can. And… while the script is loosely based on true events, in the interest of the joke, the comic did take liberties with the outfits.

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