VintageComics

Which I think is ridiculous but whatever. Not my call. Just try not discussing AI in the AI age. People who are saying AI can grade comics accurately, efficiency and in a cost effective manner anytime soon just don't understand complex systems, or how the entire system would work and the complexity involved. It is off the charts, making it unrealistic any time soon. It's not impossible, It's just not happening anytime soon.

If you don't like the post, ignore it. End of story. If I want to splice atoms, I'm going to do it. Stop telling people how to post. Your living room is not my laptop. I didn't beat you up. I explained, based on my extensive experience (I subbed my 1st books in 2003), 1000's of submissions and 100's if not 1000's of personal, direct discussions with CGC. You were speculating out of your butt and I disagreed. When you started to make it personal about me, the beatings started, and they will continue for as long as they need to.

I feel the same way. I think earlier on they may have been allegedly shill bidding and doing other nefarious things, as can be evidenced by the same book showing up multiple times on Ebay, but this current problem being discussed feels very recent. We have a lot of eyes on the internet, especially over the pandemic, and I believe a grand scale deception like this would have been uncovered sooner. It's just a guess but it's what my gut says.

If you want me to stop posting in this thread, I'm more than happy to. I don't need to be here reading 90 pages and trying to help. I'd much rather be doing something else.

As an interesting bit of info regarding CGC sig series, CGC used to allow "official sig series" people to crack and resubmit books, that means Joeypost was allowed to press and submit CGC books at some point. That changed at some point and now only CCS is allowed to do it. But back in 2013, someone else would have been allowed to have pressed the book and kept the Sig Series designation, so this specific instance is not an indicator of anything nefarious.

I'm not a lawyer obviously, but if it was me I would be hanging onto the book for now.

I don't consider a credible company one that takes money for gimmicked grades, aka the Bad Idea transparent bought grades, that was wrong on a few levels. That's just the first thing that comes to mind. There's a tonne more. You didn't answer the question. No company or person is 100%. Everyone does something wrong, including you. You're discussing what you don't like about a company, which is actually a bit of a red herring. Nobody is "credible" using your logic. How much does a company or a person need to get RIGHT for it to be "credible"?

If you don't consider CGC a credible company, how would you define a "credible company"? Anyone?

About 30 years ago I was having a religious debate with a guy about the 10 commandments. I soon realized he hadn't ever read the Bible, he'd only seen the movie. So then I asked him a specific question about his beliefs, to which he replied: "I don't know. I'm going to have to see the movie again." I literally died on the spot.

What’s what? I'm starting to realize there is less intelligent life on earth than I thought.

Well, that's that.

This isn't NASA. It has to be feasible for a business. That means cost, efficiency, learning, adaptability, size, scalability, automation, productivity, profitability, all of these things and more need to be considered. We have @JC25427N trying to explain JUST the software aspect and nobody seems to understand the complexity, and there are probably dozens of other things that need to be considered and co-incide. I don't understand the software but I DO understand the complexity. You'd basically pretty much need to recreate a human to do a 3 dimensional task. It would need to have very fine motor skills, or (again) you're paying a human to do the motor work, slowing down the process and adding human error, thereby in ways (again) corrupting the process. After discussing this for several hours I am fairly certain most people have no clue how complex of a solution that's being proposed this is. I've already been arguing for years in the minority that it ain't happening and my mind still hasn't changed. Nobody yet has been able to produce a reasonable solution.

I've got you. Too late now, but I'll copy your posts from the ASM #252 thread into here tomorrow. You have made some incredibly salient points about AI and are pretty much the only reasonable voice in the entire discussion. Thank you.

Not sure why this is the case. If someone can build one AI that can do this job, they can build a million of them. Could probably get every book currently waiting at CGC graded in a lazy afternoon. So you want to "build a million machines" that don't exist yet? This sounds economically feasible? Or are you going to have 1000s of graders flipping pages for these photo-imaging machines so that the books can be scanned and graded? So we'll pay people to stand around and just flip pages? Or load them into robotic machines that flip pages? I can't believe some of the ducking (pun intended) ideas some people come up with without thinking them through. I guess we can do it this way:

4 times the headache, 4 times the quality control problems, 4 times the opportunity for something to go wrong, 4 times the hassle.

I personally have stated many times that AI can do aspects of grading, but grading an entire comic is not going to happen anytime soon for a zillion different reasons, but the primary one being that you need to intersect the following i) handling the actual comic book is complex ii) time constraints - sure, if I had an hour to feed all my info into a computer I may be able to get a reasonably accurate grade, or grade range but you need this done in seconds iii) cost constraints - how do you build something this complex, in a space that doesn't take too much room, is cost effective and accurate iv) you will ALWAYS need some level of human interaction throughout the grading process, whether it's from receiving packages, to unpackaging, to laying them down on an assembly line, to removing them from Mylars, to grading them (flipping through all pages) to putting them back into Mylars, etc. so where does the human stop and the AI start and visa versa? v) you need to TEACH the AI to learn along the way (or from past experience) - that's a stall every time you find a new problem to solve, and this happens daily when grading 1000's of books a day. For example, there are things that happen in the grading process EVERY DAY when weird defects, or a crossover of defects happen that need actual human conversation to make a decision. This will stall the grading process and needs to be learned and it happens daily. vi) you'd need to make AI changes every time a new defect or variant is discovered - new learning curve ---------------------------------------- The way I see it the variables are myriad and not easy to solve. Humans do this sort of learning very quickly. I just don't see AI grading books accurately, in a cost effective and timely manner anytime soon. Thoughts?

I started a new thread for the AI / grading discussion. You're welcome.

...so as not to distract from the other thread. Have at it!

Seriously. It's like asking if AI can make a tricycle reach the moon. I mean, maybe. If Buzz Aldrin is commandeering.

How do you know it's an MJ insert and not someone's nudie pics that they hid in there?

So you're going to put your ASM #1, Hulk #181 or Action #1 into that machine and let it flip pages? How do you get the book out of a Mylar? How do you get the book into the machine? How do you get it off the machine? How do you get it to encapsulation? I don't think some people think anything they're saying through. Or maybe they just can't. This conversation is ridiculous.

What was the timeline on that? I don't think this is Dylan, but that public discussion could have given people reading the threads ideas to exploit that avenue.

Again, most people don't seem to grasp ALL the factors involved in grading a book. AI isn't a magic wand. If you want AI to do one thing, it's relatively easy. If you want it to do 2 things, it becomes far more complex. If you want it to do 3 or 10 things, it's complexity multiplies incredibly. Now factor in physical movement. Do you know how much it would cost to build ONE ROBOT to pick up a book, hold it and turn pages without damaging a book? Millions? Now try to build a system that will do ALL of that, be accurate and make it cost effective. Like I have been saying, by the time they do that we'll all be half human, have implants making us cyborgs (I'm not talking hearing aids and hip replacements) and who knows if comics will even be a thing. It's one thing to dream. It's an entirely different thing to do. Again, I CAN see AI doing mundane tasks like, say, zeroing in cover grades into a certain range, or giving page quality opinions, or weighing books for missing components, but to put it all together in one effective package?

Grading is FAR more than just page quality. Not everyone is incapable of comprehending real possibilities and separating them from improbable ones. Using AI for various aspects of grading? I've already said I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening but there is no way AI is grading books without human involvement any time soon.That's spaceage thinking that is just fairy tale stuff for the foreseeable future. By the time this happens, we'll only be half human. And THAT is the point I'm making.

I don't think most average people can think in terms of complex systems. Just like examining a 2D painting is different for AI, putting a metal fender in place on an assembly line is different than picking up a comic book, turning the pages and assessing them all. You might eventually be able to make it happen in the distant future with NASA type tech, but by then all human labor will have been replaced. I think the challenge is in the complexity of how fine of a handling touch is needed, complicated by the the diverse methods of analysis AND cost structure to make it viable. These are all going to be obstacles and making them all work together? You can do one thing well, but tying all of those things together is space age stuff.