People buy AAA games all the time. Look at Starfield. Garbage game, still sold well.

Writer having toyed with AI, here : yeah, AI writing sucks. It is consensual and bland, never goes into unexpected territory, or completely fails to understand human nature.

So, we’d better stop calling AI “intelligence”. It’s text-prediction machine learning on steroïds, nothing more, and the fact that we’re still calling that “intelligence” says how gullible we all are.

It’s just another speculative bubble from the tech bros, as cryptos were, except this time the tech bros have made their nazi coming out.

That means in about 6 months or so the AI content quality will be about an 8/10. The processors spread machine “learning” incredibly fast. Some might even say exponentially fast. Pretty soon it’ll be like that old song “If you wonder why your letters never get a reply, when you tell me that you love me, I want to see you write it”. “Letters” is an old version of one-on-one tweeting, but with no character limit.

You can make it stylized dialogue but it’s just surface mannerisms. Underneath it’s still the same bland AI

Get your slop 'ere! Fresh from the data center!

My hot take. It will never get to even a 6/10. I bet it will just spit out 3/10 faster and faster, most likely.

Only if you assume that its performance will continue improving for a good while and (at least) linearly. The companies are really struggling to give their models more compute or more training data now and frankly it doesn’t seem like there have been any big strides for a while

Sure, but human-written shit still had that human touch. It could be unintentionally funny, it could be a mixed bag that reaches unexpected heights at times. AI writing is just the bland kind of bad, not the interesting kind of bad.

I like the way Ted Chiang puts it:

Some might say that the output of large language models doesn’t look all that different from a human writer’s first draft, but, again, I think this is a superficial resemblance. Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.

There’s nothing magical or mystical about writing, but it involves more than placing an existing document on an unreliable photocopier and pressing the Print button.

I think our materialist culture forgets that minds exist. The output from writing something is not just “the thing you wrote”, but also your thoughts about the thing you wrote.

Yeah… Linear increases in performance appear to require exponentially more data, hardware, and energy.

Meanwhile, the big companies are passing around the same $100bn IOU, amortizing GPUs on 6-year schedules but burning them out in months, using those same GPUs as collateral on massive loans, and spending based on an ever-accelerating number of data centers which are not guaranteed to get built or receive sufficient power.

Great point. There’s no opportunity for “so bad it’s good”. The Room wouldn’t have been a thing if Tommy used AI.

The dialog pushing AI media seems to start from this assumption that I consume media just to have colors and words and sounds enter my face holes. In fact, I consume art and media because I like hearing, seeing, and reading about how other humans experience the same world I do. It’s a form of communication. I like the product but also the process of people trying to capture the bonkers, ineffable experience we all seem to be sharing in ways I would never think of, but can instantly verify.

What’s funny is, due to the nature of media, it’s kind of impossible to not communicate something, even if the artwork itself is empty. When I see AI media I see the communication of a mind that doesn’t know or give a shit about any of this. So in their attempt make filler they are in fact making art about how inarticulate they are. It’s unintentional, corporate dadaism.

I love how you idiots think this tech hasn’t already hit its ceiling. It’s been functionally stagnant for some time now.

Nah, can’t agree. I have postponed few ideas for years, was able to vibe them in a week during evenings, now i have something usable. 70% of it was vibed, just had to fix stupid stuff that was partially on my queries.

Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly

I like this a lot. I’m going to thieve it.

That’s the difference between an amateur writer and a professional writer.

Yes, this is it right here. The whole point of art is communication and connection with another human being.

They already said less shit.

I can see how it could be useful, or mandatory in future rpgs. It can generate a framework for a real writer, with extremely large amounts of logical branching, a billion times faster. Then you go over the top of it and use the framework as concepts to use or revise. This streamlines the process, unifies the creative vision, and allows for such a large game without procedural generation that would haven taken a team 10 years or not at all, done in 2.

Starfield is estimated to have sold 3 millions copies. Baldur’s gate 3, 15 million. Microsoft/Bethesda marketing budgets makes a difference, but not being garbage makes a much bigger difference.