Promises so outlandish they work on humans like Laforge and Data’s virus on Borg.
Author Archive
“Call Off the Asteroid, We Found an In-House Solution”
Brought to you by the Department of What Could Go Wrong.
François Chollet on the Prospects of Developing General Artificial Intelligence
Chollet cuts through all that LLM AGI nonsense in ways that can still leave you excited.
Guillermo del Toro on Generative AI and the Value of Art
“How far would you go for a semi-compelling screensaver?”
Shorter Eric Schmidt: “The road to success is to work everyone to death, fuck everyone else over, and let your lawyers piss on their graves.”
These techbro billionaires really are the French aristocracy of our time.
The Innovation That Wasn’t: “Burst Damage”
Boiling lakes and burning $$$ doesn’t equal innovation.
OpenAI’s Five Stages of Nonsense
The first cracks appear, and the light that falls through is a mountain of money on fire.
LLM Support for “Clarity” in Creative and Scholarly Writing
A brief look at “AI enhanced” spell and grammar checkers that promise to “clarify” your text.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, February: Some Technical Points of Interest
On scaling, interpolation, and fractal boundaries.
Study: “Kool-Aid Drinkers Found to Match Top 1% of Human Thinkers on Standard Cognition Test”
Top-notch science reporting from the bottom of the barrel.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, June 28: A Whiff of Doom
Spoiler: it’s not about Skynet.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, June 13: AI Gods and Old Timey Religion
Seems as if Neil Gaiman’s New Gods have become just another pack of Old Gods rather quickly.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, May 24: From Selling Bootlegs to Creating Godzilla
Prepare for AI tea leaves cognoscenti to rave over *ASI* with gullible snootiness on all channels.
Shorter Sam Altman Senate Hearing: “Let Me Bamboozle You Into Handing OpenAI a Monopoly on a Silver Platter”
Welcome to the Magic Show.
That Which We Call Autonomous / By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet
“AI will kill us all” is a marketing proposition, but it’s not aimed at you.
Can We Mind-Upload These Tech Bros Into Their Chatbot Trainers and Send Them on Fully Autonomous Rockets to Mars?
If you listen long enough to Hinton, you begin to wish Skynet became a reality.
Keep Your Fire Extinguisher Handy for This Interview with Geoffrey Hinton on ChatGPT
Honestly, I didn’t expect Geoffrey Hinton’s interview to be yet another unpleasant surprise.
“AI Drake Just Set an Impossible Legal Trap for Google”
It might be a good idea to start stocking popcorn
Why Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Time Op-Ed on How Current AI Systems Will Kill Us All Is Even More Unhinged than You Think
Keep a fire-extinguisher handy. Your brain will need it.
The German Ethic Council’s Statement on “Humans and Machines”
While essentially reasonable, it’s already being undermined by the council members themselves.
LLM’s True Problem with Misinformation, Job Impact, and Security Risks
This risk matrix comes in handy.
Adam-Ruins-Everything Conover: “A.I. is B.S.”
All that’s been said, but funnier and with more f-words.
A Response from the “Stochastic Parrots” Authors to the Future of Life Institute’s Open Letter
Gebru, Bender, McMillan-Major, and Mitchell being on fire.
Bill Gates Again Manages to Keep AI in Perspective (And Autonomous Driving)
While I’m excited about advances in autonomous driving, I’d be even more excited about advances in sustainable transportation.
Pausing the AI Hype Would Be a Good Start
This “Open Letter” wants to slow things down by stepping on the gas.
The Best You Can Say About Bill Gates Is That He Isn’t Carried Away by AGI Nonsense
Everything else, of course, is reassuringly appalling.
Levi’s to Use AI-Generated Models in the Name of “Diversity” and “Sustainability”
Welcome to Minidiv and Minisus.
You Can Run a ChatGPT Clone Locally on Your PC Now
Business model sits on the wall, business model will take a great fall.
Using ChatGPT-4 as a Coding Assistant
Don’t set the cat on fire.
Ubisoft’s New AI Dialogue-Writing Tool as a Case in Point
The problem isn’t new technologies. Unfettered capitalism is.
The Word “Arrested” Is Now Banned on Midjourney (Good Luck with That)
The Great Firewall of Midjourney.
John Carmack on What Coding Is About, With or Without ChatGPT
When I became interested in games, John Carmack was among those I looked up to.
Some Nifty Proof-of-Concept Code for Using ChatGPT in Unity
The trick is to jump off of the hype train and make stuff work at smaller scales.
The Bleeding Edge of Scam-Powered Technology (Microsoft Leading the Way Pt.II)
This has the potential to become the most fun event since Mentos met Coke.
Elena Esposito on Explainable AI
Transparency, meet explanation. Explanation, meet transparency.
Following OpenAI Into the Rabbit Hole
Nothing to see here. Everything’s fine.
Following Bing over the Chatbot Cliff, Google Could Actually Be Trying to Be Clever
Sometimes, it’s not easy to differentiate between strategy and pathology.
Late Stage Enshittification: Microsoft & LinkedIn Leading the Way
No lengths these platforms won’t go to on the final leg of their enshittification journey.
The AI-Populated Social Network Is Coming
Hell on Earth just arrived.
Voice Actors Forced to Sign Away Their Voice Rights to AI
Multimodal my ass.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, March 06: Lofty Ideals & Harsh Realities
Parrots are great, but humans aren’t parrots.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, February 26: Teaching and Research
Research for educational purposes isn’t—or shouldn’t be—all about fact-checking data.
OpenAI: “Our Mission is to Ensure That AGI Benefits All of Humanity”
Assuming these people live in a fantasy world is the charitable option.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, February 20: Bing Antics & AI Pareidolia
Self-awareness in chatbots is the new faces in toast.
AI/LLM/GPT Roundup, February 13
AI/LLM/GPT-related stuff worthwhile to be discussed.
Ted Chiang: “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”
Maybe I’ve been too optimistic.
Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and Transformational Change: A Brief Wet Towel–Rundown Likely to Piss Off Nearly Everyone Currently on Fire
It’s just business as usual, only that the acrobats have been replaced by their likenesses and no longer need to be paid.
GPT: Like Crocodile Tears in Rain
What if we changed the system and made AI useful and welcome for everybody?
What Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello Thinks About You
Behold the beauty of Unity’s giant strawman!
Unity’s C-Suite Is Showing Its True Face
Heartbreaking.
Embracer’s Building a Kind of Library of Congress for Physical Games
Imagine all the paintings in the Louvre were hidden inside boxes and you could only read their descriptions.
Valve Loses Bid to End Antitrust Case Over Steam
No offense, but it’s high time Steam got its ass kicked.
Square Enix Dumps Western Game Studios and IPs
Selling off some of your jewels in a fire sale to invest in cryptoshit seems totally reasonable.
An Old, Dank Pub
I was blown away by SMBC’s metaphor of liberal education as an “old dank pub.”
Indie Game Developer Funomena Is Shutting Down
Terrible news chasing terrible news.
New Yorker Interview with Miyazaki Hidetaka
An illuminating interview with FromSoftware’s game director Miyazaki Hidetaka.
Ukraine Charity Bundle at itch.io
Paid products only, all download-ready, no external keys or other bullshit.
Buy Me, I’m Toxic
Being open to buy-outs is now the fashionable thing to do if you’re a toxic publisher.
America’s Army Calling It Quits After 20 Years
Haven’t played it for years, but it sure feels like the end of an era.
Even More Graphic Wordle Greatness
You can now turn your lovely little Wordle graphs into lovely little buildings.
“Something Free and Fun on the Internet”
Wordle is a rare game that doesn’t want much of your attention.
Managerial Lego
Turns out, I was still way too generous regarding Ken Levine’s 2014 GDC talk.
GAN Theft Auto: Playing Within a Neural Network
You’ve seen AI play within an environemnt, but here the AI is the environment.
Narrative Lego
“Radical Recognition” sounds catchy, but I’m not holding my breath.
Kimberly Voll & Robin Hunicke on Player Behavior
Great podcast chat to listen to.
John Danaher’s “Case Against Teaching”
This is the bleakest assessment of teaching I’ve read in a very long time.
Touch-Ups
A few minor changes to my Secret Level.
The Zombie Model of Cognitivism
The problem with cognitivism is not that it doesn’t want to die, it’s that is hasn’t noticed it’s already dead.
Opening Schools in Times of Plague
True to its nature as a fetish, schools demand the willingness to sacrifice.
Hanukkah Special — Day Eight | Summary & Outlook
Today, on the last day of Hanukkah, we will wrap everything up; talk about period style, game type, and game loop; and draft a list of tasks needed to advance this conceptual sketch toward a pitchable game treatment.
Hanukkah Special — Day Seven | Architectonics
Today, we will engage with the fourth and final design territory of the Ludotronics paradigm, Architectonics.
Hanukkah Special — Day Six | Narrativity
Narrativity, our design territory for today, is all about “emotional appeal,” seen from the viewpoint of narrative qualities or properties that work toward conveying specific meaning in a specific dramatic unit for a memorable gameplay moment.
Hanukkah Special — Day Five | Plurimediality
So what’s the aesthetic experience of our Hanukkah game going to be? To answer this question, tentatively, we will look at the game’s style and sound.
Hanukkah Special — Day Four | Interactivity
Today, we will explore the first design territory for our Hanukkah game, Interactivity.
Hanukkah Special — Day Three | Audience & USP
Today, on the third day of Hanukkah, we will explore possible target audiences and the game’s unique selling proposition, or USP.
Hanukkah Special — Day Two | Theme & Core Experience
Today, we will turn to the meaning Hanukkah has acquired over time, from the Talmud until today, to find our game’s theme and its core experience.
Hanukkah Special — Day One | Intel
Along the eight days of Hanukkah, of which today is the first, let’s sketch a game concept about Hanukkah along the Ludotronics paradigm as an exercise.
Native Informants in Game-Based Learning: Gender
Calling in native informants as consultants is exceptionally useful for avoiding mistakes, designing convincing characters, and broadening a game’s reach beyond its mainstream audience.
Boss Exam!, or: Grading in Games
“Tests” in well-designed games not only test the player exclusively on what the game has taught them, but push their proficiency even further.
The Other Thing on the Doorstep: Games and the Classroom
If games and new technologies can’t be integrated into the classroom, then we should start building our own multilearner online game-based learning classroom today.
The Thing on the Doorstep: Technology and the Classroom
To become a true knowledge society, learning and teaching must become a shared quest of lifelong exploration.
Book Release: Ludotronics
Release of my book Ludotronics: A Comprehensive Game Design Methodology From First Ideas to Spectacular Pitches and Proposals for intermediate and advanced game designers.
Academic Paper: “Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: An Integrated Design Approach for Learning Experiences in Video Games”
Academic Paper: “Learning to Play, Playing to Learn: An Integrated Design Approach for Learning Experiences in Video Games”
Entering Game Space: A Very Compact Primer
A brief essay on passages in game design that I wrote for my university’s news room page.
Academic Paper: “Tuning Aristotle: An Applied Model of Emotions for Interactive Dramatic Structures”
Academic Paper: “Tuning Aristotle: An Applied Model of Emotions for Interactive Dramatic Structures”
On Flow and Flow Control
A brief essay on “flow” in game design that I wrote for my university’s news room page.
Academic Paper: “Making Sense: Juxtaposing Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Design Elements to Create Meaning, Reinforce Emotions, and Strengthen Player Memory Formation and Retrieval”
Academic Paper: “Making Sense: Juxtaposing Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Design Elements to Create Meaning, Reinforce Emotions, and Strengthen Player Memory Formation and Retrieval”
Academic Paper: “A Functional Model for Dialogic Speech in Video Game Design”
Academic Paper: A Functional Model for Dialogic Speech in Video Game Design
Breaking Down Siloed Educational Subjects & Learning with Computer Games: Finland Leads the Way
What I feel now is the powerful urge to immediately move to Finland.
Thing Is, Austin Walker Is Creating Great Video Game Criticism (And You Can Chip In Some for It on Patreon)
Or, in the immortal words of Harlan Ellison: “Pay the Writer.”
#ECGBL 2014: The Pitfalls of Gamified Learning Design
Game-based learning can provide us the tools to learn and create collaboratively, and to teach us to learn and create collaboratively, for sustained lifelong learning-experiences.
#ECGBL2014: Welcome and Keynote
8th European Conference for Game-Based Learning & 5th International Conference on Serious Games Development & Applications in Berlin, October 9–10, 2014.
“#GamerGate Isn’t Over But” Addendum
“I got into the game industry to make games. And it’s time for me to get back to it.” —@spacekatgal
European Conference for Game-Based Learning
This week, I’ll be off to the ECGBL 2014 in Berlin.
It’s All in Your Head: How Do We Get People to Understand Programming, Math, Literature?
Game-based learning should be designed in such a way that a) you can walk up to it and start playing and b) you can walk up to it and start learning.
No, @intel, That Is Not an Apology
The only thing this “apology” demonstrates is that Intel’s PR department is run by spineless weasels.
What About #GBL and the Humanities?
Two fatal mistakes the humanities must avoid at all costs: putting themselves on the defensive about their own self-worth and/or positioning themselves in the “training” camp.
The Declining Value of the Indie Game Customer
Puppyblog’s long, rambling, and eminently realistic blog post about indie game customers everybody interested in gaming culture and indie games should read.
A Game-Based Learning Reading List
Five recommendations for critical readings on games and learning from ProfHacker.
“Let’s Make Earnest Games, Not ‘Serious’ Games”
“Maybe what we want are not ‘serious’ games, but earnest games. Games that aren’t just instrumental or opportunistic in their intentions.”