Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Can't decide whether or not to drop a note to the auctioneer. Description seems to have been written without consulting the very clear photos. It's quite a piece:

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/235206968

but Victorian shell cameo it ain't. Both the cameo & the mount are clearly marked "Di Luca", something not mentioned in either title or description. It doesn't take much searching to learn that it is no earlier than 1957.

 

Being able to carve something beautiful, so small is such an incredible talent and artform, I don't understand how people don't appreciate it. But, thank goodness they don't. Her collection gets to grow.

 

You can write them. But, they're from Jersey, and they won't care. If they started that at about $50, I'd probably watch it. It is striking. But, it also looks very modern, because it basically is.

 

Was trying to decide if it qualified as commesso or en habillé. Once again, I figure anyone willing to pay that kind of money for a cameo probably will know better just from the photos, so I'll leave it be.

 

HEY, WE'VE HIT OUR 400TH PAGE!

 

Recently wrote an eBay seller/friend that a cameo they had IDed as Hebe was actually Ceres. I guess the Bay will now offer AI-crafted replies sellers can use? He shared the one he was given:

EBay AI answer “Hey there! The cameo depicts a classical female goddess figure, and identifications like Hebe or Ceres/Demeter can be subject to interpretation. Your perspective is noted, as attribution of such figures often varies among collectors and scholars.”

This rather scares me. I've been working to help collectors & sellers be more accurate in their descriptions of cameo subjects & along comes a computer to dumb them down again.

 

I was conversing with gemini (who I really like. But, google is just out to know EVERYTHING about you. I'll get my answer, and it will ask more personal questions), and it was explaining the complexity of Portuguese diamonds. So, I show it a photo of one I really loved. Unfortunately Gemini can not read or see video. It explained the faults in this diamond. It kept calling it pink, when I only wrote blue. When I corrected it, it completely changed its mind on the beauty of the diamond. When AI gives what really seems like a good answer, it all makes sense. When it gets one little thing wrong, the answer is totally off.

On a completely off topic note: If you want to know how AI is slanted in it's knowledge, ask it something political. I was so close to getting AI to admit it was wrong a certain subject, and it cut off the conversation with "your limit has run out for the day."

 

When AI gives what really seems like a good answer, it all makes sense. When it gets one little thing wrong, the answer is totally off.

Either way....it's spitting out ones & zero's in a coded form to resemble human speech............. it don't know shit !! ... at least , not yet !!

 

When it starts calling itself Skynet, it's time to go Prepper and get thyself off of the Grid.

 

I'm seeing tin foil hats as a good investment !!!!

 

Exactly! We all work hard to get the best information and IDs out there, but that is wasted time because of the eagerness to use AI for just about everything.

 

AI picks what looks good to the AI instead of reality. I was in the grocery store today when Europe's (80s one hit wonder "supergroup") "The Final Countdown" came on over the Muzak. Dang that's appropriate now.

 

My correspondent's reaction was ""

If there was anything like true intelligence there, it would have "looked" at photos of the item in question, then found the pages on Hebe & Ceres on Cameo Times, compared photos of them all, & come to something like an actual conclusion. So much of what comes out as if it were a definitive answer is really like a politician's verbose non-answer response to a question asking for specifics. I don't know if these programs have any way of assessing the reliability of the sources they crib from.

 

The magic 8 ball says: doubtful. I'd rather trust a magic 8-ball.

 

And now we also have "prediction markets", which seem to be sort of a financial ouija board, when they're not being gamed by bettors who have inside info or are in a position to make what they predict happen. Wisdom of the crowd my asphodel.

 

Wisdom of the crowd is an oxymoron. Beware, and watch out for dismounted cameos.

 

Whoopee!!

 

The emojis that showed in the draft did not come through in the post. It was 2 indicating amusement & 1 that was aghast.