He’s simply gone to the Garda (Irish police) and reported a “crime” (that Google have apparently broken the law). The Garda will “investigate”, inevitably find that, no, the law designed to arrest blackhats breaking into computer systems does not cover this scenario despite its vague wording, and inform the complainant accordingly.
A small waste of police time and taxpayer money, reported on by trashy clickbait websites as though it’s some meaningful event in order to drive arguments in the comments on the legitimacy of the complaint.
The Bungie purchase isn’t puzzling if you look at Sony’s future trajectory. They have 10 or so live-service titles in development, and have stated very openly that they aim to greatly expand their offerings in that area going forward. There are only a handful of studios that have created successful live service games and even fewer that haven’t leant on popular existing IP (such as Call of Duty: Warzone) to do so, Bungie (and Epic) are pretty much the pioneers in this space, and Bungie have learnt a lot from their trials cultivating the Destiny franchise.
Sony purchased Bungie to essentially teach them how to make successful live service games, not for the IP. They hold so much power inside PlayStation studios that they, as per the recent The Last of Us factions leaks, review and determine if a multiplayer title meets their requirements for success (factions didn’t).
I don’t think it’s a good thing (as I personally disapprove of the way Destiny operates & see a focus on these sorts of games from Sony as a major blunder) but the business logic of the purchase is obvious.
I don’t really agree with your interpretation of the character, I would argue she’s more understandably frustrated and desperate given the context of the story than whiny. To me that makes her a more realistic and well-rounded character. She’s certainly nothing close to an anime cliche even at the characters more stubborn or impulsive moments.
Edward Kenway (Assassins Creed: Black Flag) is a similar character that comes to mind, though I concede it is difficult to think of many open world video-game characters that deviate from blank-slate people pleasers.
Do you think you would feel the same about Aloy if she were presented as a male character?
As the protagonist of the story she’s privy to information and intelligence far beyond the knowledge of much of the rest of the cast. She’s treated as a literal outsider for much of the early story and is often held back from completing vital goals by archaic and arbitrary belief systems throughout both games.
The character is arguably too nice and accommodating to those blocking progress, given the situation, yet your complaint is fairly common.
I’m not saying that, I just believe those people are myopic and completely missing the wider picture because they’d rather delude themselves with fantasy and thought experiments than consider the crude reality of the economic situation.
This technology doesn’t need to be AGI to complete its objective. It just needs to be good enough to replace or
lower the skill threshold for humans in current knowledge roles.
If I were a wealthy capitalist I’d find it hysterical. I’m about to ensure vast portions of the current middle class are my future wage slaves and those same people, rather than realising the threat, are pontificating about science fiction or actively supporting the development of my technology thinking it’ll make them “more productive!”.
You speak of competition, but the logical end goal here is a handful of companies in control of something that automates large quantities of the current knowledge economy in a way never yet before seen, in a capitalist society already struggling to deal with vast wealth disparity; handing unprecedented power to a handful of people who have already proven they have no regard for the common person.
I don’t agree that there is a historical precedent for the kind of situation this could put the world.
It may all be moot as I doubt the technology will advance to the level we are discussing, but in that scenario I would like you to be correct, but strongly doubt it. We shall see I guess.
I feel like you’re missing the larger picture here.
You’re focusing the discussion around art. Historically art has always been a difficult way to make money. Open source tools that make it trivial will just reduce the number of individuals able to make a living creating art. The same is true across all areas of knowledge work should this technology eventually reach the promised heights. Any work that requires specialised knowledge on a computer would become as simple as creating art, and thus can be paid less and performed by a wider range of people. It will save the capital class a substantial amount of money and ensure that those left employed have even less power.
“There isn't a lot of proof that ChatGPT will be in the hands of OpenAI alone forever, so likely everyone will have similarly capable machines in the near future.”
Microsoft didn’t invest 10
billion dollars in an eventual open source project. There’s no way these tools or their source will be available to all, you’d have to be rather naive and completely ignorant of the history of the people involved in funding OpenAI to believe that (and I don’t just mean Microsoft).
Hence my belief that these tools will eventually be used to further the already growing class divide. Those with capital will have full control of the means of production, employees won’t need specialised knowledge (and thus have no bargaining power to extract decent salary and working conditions). Knowledge work has led to the best conditions for the working class in history. Its destruction is not a good thing unless you’re a member of the “elite”, which, as you’re posting on HN, you’re probably not.
I have no idea what you’re talking about in the final two paragraphs, this isn’t a science fiction film, nobody is talking about a Terminator scenario. This is a capitalism problem that tools like this will only intensify. There is little evidence to suggest a utopian vision, but plenty to suggest the opposite.
Given the current emerging wealth gap and all trends in the Western world I fear you’d have to be incredibly naive to think the long term goal here is to benefit the average person.
This is simply a play by capital to reduce and remove expensive knowledge worker roles and drag them more in line with the rest of the population already struggling to get by. You won’t be a “25 year old retiree” because that’s bad for those in charge.
You’ll be a “25 year old working 3 jobs just to scrape by on your rent because you’re just a warm body and we can replace you easily”.
UBI is political fantasy, the US can’t even offer proper universal healthcare - you genuinely believe they’d pursue that when the alternative is more power and an even greater reliance on capital?
I believe you’re simply taking the wording too literally.
You may not cease so exist, but a decent role for you in society might. The capital class have invested tens of billions of dollars into AI in the hopes that it will be enough to replace and heavily reduce the wages of knowledge and creative work.
Given the increasing wealth gap already emerging it’s highly likely the long term goal of technology like this (however overhyped it might currently be) is to essentially enslave the population.
Knowledge workers have had it good for a long time. This technology will attempt to ensure you have no further role. That’s what the OP is worried about, not some philosophical nonsense about the self, the long term possibility this profession, and thus a huge part of their identity, becomes obsolete.
Limited exclusive deals and outright buying two of the largest publishers in the industry with mountains of valuable IP are two obviously completely different propositions. There’s little point in a discussion if you’re going to try to conflate the two.
Nonsense, Sony have every right to be aggrieved at this deal. They have worked hard to maintain their position and work closely with third parties to create excellent games that consistently approach GOTY status.
Microsoft tried this approach and spectacularly mismanaged a large amount of the successful IP they managed to create (Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Fable). They’re now attempting to catch up not through the creation of quality products, but by throwing around ridiculous amounts of capital gained through other parts of the business. Why would any direct competitor not feel aggrieved? It’s essentially impossible to compete with companies as large as these tech giants.
The parent posts talks about Spyro and Crash Bandicoot as potential Microsoft mascots. Those were characters and franchises that Sony helped create and were the original PlayStation mascots.
Right now Sony are ahead, but over an extended period it will become impossible for them to constantly create new IP to compete with nostalgia and established brands - I find it difficult not to sympathise with them.
Agreed, we’ve been here before, repeatedly, over the past few years:
- The Metaverse was going to change the internet.
- The Internet of things was going to revolutionise our homes and cities.
- Self-driving cars would change the motor industry.
- Crypto is the next big thing in finance.
- NFTs are going to revolutionise digital ownership.
Most of those technologies have introduced niche or useful applications, but the ridiculous, breathless hype about how this technology is the one to change everything is getting more predictable and increasingly frustrating.
I don’t agree with that, it wasn’t even a complex situation, Google just didn’t like the idea that a paper attributed to them could point out all the obvious unethical implications of this technology and shut it down.
The drama afterwards is largely irrelevant and if anything Gebru’s refusal to just meekly accept the company line demonstrates just how valuable she is in this field. The dismissal isn’t the real story, the retraction of the paper is the real problem the OP is referring to when discussing Google’s moral issues.
He’s simply gone to the Garda (Irish police) and reported a “crime” (that Google have apparently broken the law). The Garda will “investigate”, inevitably find that, no, the law designed to arrest blackhats breaking into computer systems does not cover this scenario despite its vague wording, and inform the complainant accordingly.
A small waste of police time and taxpayer money, reported on by trashy clickbait websites as though it’s some meaningful event in order to drive arguments in the comments on the legitimacy of the complaint.