r/whatisit • u/Hangry-24-7 • 1d ago

New, what is it? Uncle holding something

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Picture of my wife’s uncle as a boy 7 or 8 yrs old. Grew up on a farm in western NY. This picture dates back to around 1947 or 1948. What is the boy holding? Is it a toy? Or some sort of farm tool?

Update — yes this photo was enhanced using ai to take the graininess out of the original picture. My wife is giving a copy of the image to her cousin for an 80th birthday gift along with other photos.

The AI bashing on this post is unbelievable! How come nobody is bashing the fact that I used a scanner to create a jpeg of the image as opposed to creating a duplicate from a photo negative in a dark room and sending out 250 copies thru the postal service?

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u/The_Kthanid 14h ago

For clarity. You dislike generative AI. It IS a tool, and any tool can be misused. Fire can cook a starving person food or burn down their house. AI can do all sorts of things, from figuring out new drugs and how to help fusion reactors achieve better cohesion. Etc. So I'd day be mindful of blanket "x is bad" statements.

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u/BigSleepyCat 4h ago

Fire can, in fact, cook a starving person.

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u/The_Kthanid 1h ago

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm tonight. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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u/Danielle_is_the_hole 6h ago

There is no such thing as ai. It is large language models.

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u/StrangerKey7930 1h ago

You just summed up how so many do not know what AI is. LLM is a type of AI.. AI has been around for decades. NPCs in a video game are a type of AI, for example. Self driving cars also run on AI, as another example. Microsoft CoPilot, which is on ALL new Windows PCs, is another type of AI. AI, at its very basic concept, is essentially programming that allows a machine to do things that usually require a human to accomplish. That's it, that's all Artificial Intelligence, just as it very basic wording is. AI is kind of an all encompassing junk term, which causing SO MUCH confusion and hate towards ANYTHING when those two little letters pop up and they start talking about all the baf things AI is doing. The issue is, all of those things are not being done by EVEFY type of AI. LLMs being used for generative AI are the big problem. What you are thinking of, by saying AI doesn't exist is also a type of AI, AGI (Aritificial General Intelligence). AGI does not exist yet and for it to exist essentially all of the different types of AI will need to be in place. People freaking out on this guy for using AI to clean up this photo, for all the reasons the above person stated, is not necessarily valid. Could OP have used a piece of software that is attached to a generative AI system? Sure. Could OP have used any number of self contained AI programs or tools, where the ENTIRE program resides on your phone or PC? Yep! Freaking Adobe Photo Shop has AI tools. Your PC and your cell phone have AI tools. You can disconnect internet connection and you know what will still work? Those same AI programs and tools, BECAUSE they wholly reside on your device. Please go and spend some time researching AI (ALL TYPES AND FORMS) and what artificial intelligence means as a basic concept and what it means in regards to what you were thinking (singularity with that type of AI is something you should also look into). There are behavioral tree AI, there is ANI or artificial narrow intelligence, also call weak AI, there generative AI, there is machine learning, there what you were thinking of AGI or artificial general intelligence. These are ALL types of AI and we have been using types of AI for decades. I really, really, really wish people would start using the TYPE of AI when attacking these large data centers, instead of just saying AI. It is similar to saying tool and then using it in place of gun, as that can be a tool in a very broad definition. Then all of the outcry being over tools and not guns. Then people start throwing away hammers and wrenches and attacking anyone seen building a house. You may think I am being obtuse, but I'm not. That is essentially what is happening here. We need to attack the specific "tool" or, here, the specific types of AI causing issues. Not jumping on a guy who cleaned up a photo and then accusing him of erasing the original artist's work and being responsible for driving up memory prices.

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u/OpalRose1993 13h ago

I think there are a few very specific spaces AI can be used and be beneficial to humanity, but a majority of people will understand that I mean generative, LLM and whatever stupid pop ups every platform has now. No, I don't want muse, Gemini, or whatever other thing. Get it out of my fucking face. Also they're a cyber security nightmare.... But I digress

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u/The_Kthanid 13h ago

Never underestimate people being dense. I had someone i was talking to raging about it, purely because of innocent ignorance about what it can be used for.

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u/StrangerKey7930 33m ago

Unfortunately too many people will NOT know you are meaning LLMs and generative AI when you just say AI. Proof of this is just above your post, as well farther down. Many people do not know that AI has been around for decades and that WE ALL use it every day. Any gamer that plays a game with NPCs running around is using AI. AI, just that term is very confusing to so many. And a big reason for that is it is easier to just say AI, instead of denoting the actual TYPE of AI they are talking about. The media is so guilty of this. And with outrage culture getting more engagement, what do they care. If the confusion gets more engagement, they will just keep doing it.

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u/Corgi_underground 10h ago

Just stop alright. The people out there using AI for computational fluid dynamics, physics in several fields, medince, materials research is SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than the LLMs for AI slop, surveillance and corporations using dynamic pricing.

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u/StrangerKey7930 18m ago

So, other types of AI are smaller use that the generative AI and LLMs? Really? Sooooo, video game NPCs used a small number of people? Cameras, with facial recognition, to know where to focus in on when taking a photo (you know, those little squares that can pop up around people's faces before taking the photo) are used by a small number of people? That is ALL AI. So, like the other person said, specificity matters. OP here may have used Adobe Photo Shop's AI clean up tool. That is a self contained program, on his PC or used any number of apps you can download onto your phone, which exist ONLY ON YOUR PHONE. No big data center involved. And these types of AI software have been around for DECADES. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the big marketing campaigns for products was the highlight the AI in it. EVERYTHING had AI during that time, in the ads. Technically it did, as AI is a very broad term. It is no different than saying tool. A gun is a tool in a broad sense. Would you want people replacing that word with tool every time there is a tragedy? No, you say the actual thing that was used; not some broad term that covers so much. I GUARANTEE you that YOU used AI MULTIPLE times today and apparently wouldn't have even known it. Please go look up AI. The history of it, as it's been around for decades. The different types, as there are many, and what they are used for. And the types of AI we use every day and where, in what, and how we all use it and have, again, for decades.

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u/The_Kthanid 9h ago

Specificity matters.