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Generative AI is not smart to begin with. LLM are basically just compressed versions of the internet that predict statistically what a sentence needs to be to look “right”. There’s a big difference between appearing right and being right. Without a critical approach to information, independent reasoning, individual sensing, these AI’s are incapable of any meaningful intelligence.
In my experience, the emperor and most people around them still has not figured this out yet.
You use LLMs for everything? Seems strange, as they don’t reason. They are specifically designed to mimic human speech. So they are great for tasks that require presenting information that looks intelligible, or at least are very easily testable, but beyond that you run into serious issues with hallucination fast…
Or do you mean “AI” as in data science and automation? That’s a very different thing which is a bit off topic. That Kind of “AI” is neither new nor has the hallucination/ecological/cost/training effort issues associated with it
I dunno dude, all your answers talk about “AI” in suspiciously vague terms. “I use AI to …” is the new “built with blockchain”. Skip the marketing terms and talk shop.
Sounds like neither of you watched the video. Fortunately, I did so here’s a quick summary. The thesis is that music is getting worse, for a few reasons. Author argues:
- Auto tune and other modern digital sound production tools are overused to correct pitch and timing, making music too synthetic. Real music has imperfections that makes music just sound more artificial. Basically, taking the human element out of it.
- Streaming has cheapened the value of a single song because of how easy it is to skip to another song. So arguably it is not technically just worse music, it’s our appreciation for it.
The first point has been touched on by many other people. It’s a common trend in a lot of places outside of music too. People are replaced with machines and processes in a lot of settings especially in corporations and commerce, and while that’s great for efficiency and predictability, it creates a sterile landscape devoid of human expression. This is not to say all music has this. But mass market music is a chief culprit.
The other point really resonates with me with videogames and videogame sales. You can get a dozen great steam games for the same price as a single Nintendo title, yet I probably put 10x the time into that one Nintendo title than all the other steam games combined. Had to get every bit of value out of that expensive Nintendo purchase. YMMV on this point though. I don’t stream music so I can’t say how it has affected me personally.
It’s being made because there is a successful franchise to be exploited to death for the sake of earning a few more pennies for shareholders.
You aren’t looking at the creative human spirit here. You are looking at a stupid money printing machine banking purely on the inertia of fans hoping for more of what made the original work of art magical.
Triple AAA games are usually very polished. But polish doesn’t make games fun. Polish is important with accessibility, and it’s easy to see why accessibility is important for a big studio casting a wide net.
But fun? That comes from creativity and innovation. Big studios are averse to risk taking, and struggle to attract creative individuals, because the corporate culture seeks to stamp out individuality in the name of process and procedure.
So yeah, more evidence of this. My money is going to Indy devs who prioritize fun over polish. (But polish is good to have too).
The wording of the article implies an apples to apples comparison. So 1 Google search == 1 question successfully answered by an LLM. Remember a Google Search in layspeak is not the act of clicking on the search button, rather it’s the act of going to Google to find a website that has information you want. The equivalent with ChatGPT would be to start a “conversation” and getting information you want on a particular topic.
How many search engine queries, or LLM prompts that involves, or how broad the topic, is a level of technical detail that one assumes the source for the number x25 has already controlled for (Feel free to ask the author for the source and share with us though!)
Anyone who’s remotely used any kind of deep learning will know right away that deep learning uses an order of magnitude or two more power (and an order of magnitude or two more performance!) compared to algorithmic and rules based software, and a number like x25 for a similar effective outcome would not at all be surprising, if the approach used is unnecessarily complex.
For example, I could write a neural network to compute 2+2, or I could use an arithmetic calculator. One requires a 500$ GPU consuming 300 watts, the other a 2$ pocket calculator running on 5 watts, returning the answer before the neural network is even done booting.
This comment implies that no humans were involved with operating the AI. Seems doubtful.
It’s one thing for out of touch executives who blindly replace entire departments with “AI” while fundamentally misunderstanding the role of the department being replaced and the capability of AI, tanking the quality of the product–that’s real self harm for everyone involved; it’s another thing to be advancing the creative processes with more advanced tools and automation, something that we’ve been doing for centuries without much fuss.
The creative part of voice acting isn’t just in moving one’s lips. The creative part of voice acting is just as much, if not more, in feeling and direction–in deciding if a sound sample produces a certain desired emotion, and if that emotion is valuable to the overall experience or not. This is not the territory of generative AI. This is the territory AGI, which does not yet exist. Producing the sound with your lips is just a small part of that. There’s still a human involved in producing the work of art (and if not, then yeah, we are back at that first category, of leadership ignorant of the creative process, and we should bemoan a crappy product lead by executives who have no clue how to retain talent).
These freedoms are a strength indeed, but they are also a vulnerability that can be exploited by foreign powers. Freedoms remain free so long as the people exercising those freedoms do so responsibly. I think a lot of people in the US do not exercise this freedom responsibly. I think a lot of Americans are being manipulated into voting in autocracy. Ironically.
Complete and total freedom is just anarchy, and anarchy collapses on itself and turns into autocracy.
when they were a scrappy bunch of nerds working out of a house
Much of the recent criticism relates specifically to toxic/bro culture and a work culture that encouraged cutting corners, mistakes, and burnout. I’m not sure what was going on in the house behind the scenes was a model of a professional workplace.
FYI, fans of FF7 have been clamouring for a remake for over two decades now. So yes, people are really excited.
Except perhaps those who are disappointed that the remake isn’t how they have imagined it. And fair enough, but let’s be happy we got one at all, and that it isn’t just some shovel ware that a lot of properties are pushing out.
And finally, Fallout 4 targeted gamers. It’s a gamer’s game, you know? It’s for lore nerds and RPG fans and tacticool nuts and all the rest. HogLeg was for Harry Potter fans. It needed to drag fans across media types to secure a big enough audience.
This is… perhaps, the very formula for its success. Perhaps the gaming crowd isn’t that big. Perhaps, HL was not chained to a particular demographic and instead had the freedom to appeal to a wider audience.
I know of people who picked up a controller for the first time in their life because HL was a Harry Potter game… just saying.
This article replaces the “Google is cracking down on ad blockers” mantra with “Google is consolidating control by restricting general purpose computing as the model of security”.
Honestly, I’m not sure this is a better look. It’s true that this is “more secure”, in the sense that it limits the power afforded to malicious extensions, but it completely ignores the collateral damage. It strips the power individuals have to enact their own policies, instead having to go through Google to accomplish the same thing.
Honestly, this is just another step in the direction of WebDRM and centralized control. This is more erosion of what made the Internet great. It’s just one more step of turning the Internet into a TV set.
Fuck. This. Shit. Give me back web 1.0.
Lack of graphics settings aren’t why I stopped playing. It’s the game mechanics. The game isn’t that fun for two major immersion breaking reasons.
- Loading screens. So many loading screens. Just reminds me I’m using software instead of being in a universe.
- Over reliance on fast travel. Yeah, space is boring. But why have a space setting at all if we are going to skip through it? Why bother building custom ships if there are no real challenges to overcome with them because spending time in space is not necessary at all ? Worse, it’s a bad experience because of the loading screens.
Just admit that you stole something and that you don’t care, it’s not that hard.
You are not wrong, but maybe just a bit of perspective:
In my city, you can go to the public library, borrow a DVD, take it home, watch it. 100% legal. 100% free. No library membership fees. And they have multiple copies of most DVDs, so it’s not like it’s some lottery to use the service.
It feels a lot like downloading a movie without paying anyone to watch it. The only difference is you gotta go outside. Oh, and no guilt tripping.
Anyway, what’s my point? Well piracy is only illegal because some people (not everyone) decided that everyone is going to pay an equal, but not necessarily an equitable, share to fund the development of said IP (unless you have a library in your area to counter this, partially). Worse, that everyone will keep paying a very small group of people money we’ll after the development of said IP has been paid off. Even worse, that small group of people will use their profits to corrupt the legal system to ensure that that protectionism continues to serve their benefit, not others… Point being, you can pirate, and care… care a lot.
Victims are created when piracy affects small production houses struggling to make ends meet. Victims are created of everyone else when the law is abused beyond it’s original purpose to squeeze consumers.
So you too should be honest and not call it theft. Piracy is piracy, good or bad. To compare it to the crime of theft is to perpetuate the marketing of those to stand from a black and white view on the matter.
Back to the reviewers primary issue that in a traditional Bethesda game you experience the journey of going from one place to another, at least for the first time. Starfield has none of that. You never experience the journey of traveling to a new location, you just teleport. So effectively you are constantly disoriented, with no Tru sense of scale or journey.
Hard disagree. For no other reason that it’s impossibly difficult to find/sort missions by proximity. You got one blue blip on the map or hud, maybe a white blip if it’s not active, but no options to make it active or to even find the mission in your mission list.
Not to mention, all travel is menu based. In space when you target a planet as your next destination, all it does is bring up the menu to fast travel to a location on that planet instead of… giving you the option to fly there yourself at warp speed.
Sure, you could do it one planet at a time instead of skipping systems… but it’s all the same experience You never truly experience the part of exploration involved in experiencing the space between origin and destination. So it might as well all just be exploration by menu, even if you pretend you aren’t.
Starfield has fantastic art direction and ambience. The gunplay is really good, perhaps the best gunplay of any RPG, and a surprise coming from Bethesda. Story hits some good beats, and exploration is rewarding, though repetitive about 50% of the time in the typical Bethesda fashion (remember Draugr crypts?).
That being said, the game has some shortfalls, primarily in the roleplay aspect. The ship building and crew management is good, but it doesn’t feel great, and is sometimes just frustrating, so you never feel truly immersed in your own ship. Lack of low earth orbital and terrestrial flight is immersion breaking (even if players might opt to skip it if it were present) along with the fact that the ship is relegated to being a flying mule and most transportation is basically instant teleportation via menus, which IMO hurts the isolation and exploration RP and challenge. Ship combat is straight up mediocre for a space game in 2023. Gun selection and modding is decent, but far from top tier. I would describe the apparel as a bit on the bland side, few of the clothes and armor pickups made me go: I want to put this on, I’ll look badass (Cyberpunk 2077 syndrome).
In fact I think starfield shares a lot with Cyberpunk 2077: massive budget, AAA art direction with gameplay spread across so many systems and features that a lot of them leave you wanting more.
Patents protect the details of achieving an invention, not the idea for an invention itself (thereby allowing multiple different approaches to serving a market). Most courts are likely to rule that an electronic tablet is a market segment, rather than an invention. But listing out all the electronics and software needed to build one and or the industrial processes and machinery to build one at scale might be granted a patent. Fiction virtually never produces any such detail.
We may be entering the dark ages of general purpose computing, as the pioneers (tech giants) of this space hoard technology for themselves. How is the next generation going to pioneer new tech innovations when they don’t even grow up in an environment where they can learn about computing? Because general purpose computing will be locked away from the public. This is not just a disaster for privacy and liberty, this greed is a disaster for the economy.
Boycott (loudly) websites and buisness that implement this scheme. Maybe file customer support tickets and play dumb. Maintain/use a forked version of chromium that has this patched out, then file more customer support requests showing the websites broken. Chromium is advertised as open source, so exercise it! Force Google to admit that Chromium is not open source. Other than that, this is anti-trust territory, so it would require political/collective legal action.
Not so different than dealing with “This site is designed to be used with a modern browser. Download Chrome to continue” bullshit, just cranked to 11.
The problems start to happen when buisnesses adopt this en masse. Expect all banks to implement this for example. You can use Firefox all you want, but then you won’t be able to do online banking.
Standards are really fucking important to help people stay functional in a society. This is one area that the ANCAP mindset just gets it totally wrong, unless you like the idea of being a hermit.
Anyway, we are already seeing some websites basically reject browsers like Firefox because they basically give the consumer too much protection and freedom. Arguably we’ve seen this before, but this may be a new tier of corporate lockout of open standards as consumer protection gets thrown in the trash. Thanks America.
Seems like an irrelevant detail.
Wait, you are telling me he drank water too???