[pessimizer]

The main thing we learned from this is that this a terrible problem to use machine learning for. These are far better, and readable. The algos couldn't even figure out that letters are a bunch of straight lines and neat curves.

[yarcob]

I had a similar thought. It's amazing what you can do with machine learning, but this example shows that you can't just throw machine learning at a problem and expect good results.

And it shows that, at least for now, machine learning isn't going to make humans obsolete.

[alpaca128]

It showed that machine learning is useless if the input format doesn't match the problem. The result would probably be better if the problem was approached more on a vector graphics-based level rather than throwing a bunch of pixel clusters at the program and expecting it to figure out the underlying shapes by itself.

I mean, children in school don't learn to write by copying printed letters out of a book either, instead they're shown the individual strokes and their direction step by step.

[miloignis]

His first attempt was vector based, the blobs of pixels / signed distance fields were his second attempt that worked better.

[gwern]

Incidentally, to update my comment there, I asked someone who had a font GAN and he mentioned he'd already found uppercase/lowercase latent directions which can automatically "more-uppercase" letters. It's not that this is a 'terrible problem' - it's borderline trivial. (I've seen highschoolers do much more impressive GAN things.) He just didn't do it even remotely right, is all.

[Sebb767]

> He just didn't do it even remotely right, is all.

To be fair, this was for April's fools, he probably did not intend to get something actually usable (as far as upperercase letters can be usable) .

[gwern]

He put in way more work than would've been necessary to get StyleGAN or CLIP to do a vastly better job, is my point, because he used totally the wrong tools and approach. (And he could put in vastly more work, and it still wouldn't work that way either; the level of effort one would or would not spend on a SIGBOVIK paper is just irrelevant when his approach is doomed from the beginning.)

[Recursing]

Do you happen to have a link with some examples? After seeing tom7 video I'm now terribly curious on what a 'more uppercase' font would look like

[gwern]

He didn't provide any samples, sorry.

[mcphage]

Yes but on the other hand, he could play chess with them, so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not

[tripzilch]

Almost if it's emulating the wrong kind of stroke ...