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Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

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Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#141

Post by darkteflon »

asdff wrote: post #126
munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? NYT is now 10x as thick? Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? Not at all. Seems output in this brave new AI era is more or less the exact same as it was in the dark ages. The only output that has gone up, logarithmically at that, is spam and other low effort fodder. I also want to push back on the…

Doesn’t the claim in the first paragraph only make sense if you assume that content becomes irrelevant as it ages? That holds for news but not for most other media.

I have a huge Steam backlog and a Plex server stocked with (ymmv) many of the finest movies available in the form. There’s so much media there that there’s no realistic path to experiencing it all in my lifetime. That certainly has an impact on my inclination to purchase new games or movies.

I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggering.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#142

Post by nitwit005 »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #101
daemin wrote: post #93

The one that sticks out to me is the last quote lamenting the fact that you can't talk about AI in games any more since the term AI has been hijacked to mean LLM instead. I wonder how long it will take for job ads in the game industry to bifurcate into AI (LLM) developer and Behaviour (game AI) developer.

Unrelated but are there any games using LLMs or ML for the NPCs? I really want enemies that adapt to the player.

Excepting strategy games, the industry's experience has been that most players won't notice clever AI.

There have been a number of games that have tried AI conversations, but you're basically trying to sell a Chat GPT prompt, and many players are aware they don't have to pay you to get a similar result on their own.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#143

Post by nitwit005 »

hax0ron3 wrote: post #22

>They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job. If AIs get just a few times better than they are now, the CEO probably actually will be able to press a button that makes a good quality game. The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor? The buying without a job part isn…

> The problem for the CEO is that every other CEO will be able to do the same thing, so what will be the distinguishing factor?

No, the problem is, no one will need the CEO. They'll press the button on their own.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#144

Post by b0rtb0rt »

munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

metal gear solid 2 predicted all of this 25 years ago

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#145

Post by bugbull »

zetanor wrote: post #120
munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

>people are also demonstrably not that discriminating at what they spend their attention on now matter how unsatisfying the experience was, once it's spent it's gone I've refunded more games than I've kept on Steam over the past decade. While there's now a much wider pool of games, there's not necessarily a much deeper pool of games. Since trash sells and since marketing a game has been absurdly difficult recently, I…

What I’m really shocked is that mobile gaming is as dire as it is. My iPhone from some years back was capable of running full blown Civ6 and earlier total war games. Despite the hardware clearly being capable of running interesting, complex games, the market is dominated by shitty gacha games, copy paste puzzle games and scams.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#146

Post by bluefirebrand »

asdff wrote: post #126
munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released? NYT is now 10x as thick? Every source of quality has upped its quantity by 10x? Not at all. Seems output in this brave new AI era is more or less the exact same as it was in the dark ages. The only output that has gone up, logarithmically at that, is spam and other low effort fodder. I also want to push back on the…

> I'd argue that supply isn't really increasing. I mean, are we seeing 10x as many movies being released?

Steam is releasing 50-70ish games every single day now from what I understand. That's a crazy number.

Compared to 2016 which saw 10-15 per day

And in 2023 (pre AI?) it was 30-40ish

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#147

Post by eviks »

munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

> a unit of digital media is not a commodity good.

Indeed, so there is no limit on how much of supply can simply be ignored, so 100x every year doesn't need to push anything off the rails.

And in reality there is no 0 cost, the marginal cost isn't about pushing bits in the wires

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#148

Post by bugbull »

markerz wrote: post #75
smcg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get rid of patents and copyright then entire industries would have to roll over and die (the music industry, publishing, Disney, etc). Also, people only invest in things if there is an expectation of profit. Your model for raising capital does not make sense.

Property rights are not the only way to create profit. That's a very capitalistic mindset. Plenty of societies have functioned adequately without our current form of property rights, either physical or intellectual. Before AI, it was the internet that really challenged intellectual property rights. When information flows freely, what happens? Example: many musicians make their pay by performing live, not from royalti…

> When information flows freely, what happens?

Mostly, the signal to noise ratio goes to hell.

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#149

Post by bluefirebrand »

b0rtb0rt wrote: post #144
munificent wrote: post #20

1. Human attention is a finite resource. 2. Digital media allows a single authored work to consume the attention of an unbounded number of people with near zero marginal cost. Further, once a work has been authored, it is available to be consumed forever. 3. Computers, software, the web, and now AI have drastically lowered the cost to produce a work of digital media. You can't have fixed demand and have the supply in…

metal gear solid 2 predicted all of this 25 years ago

And Kojima's predictions in MGS2 were based on writings by Richard Dawkins in the 70s

Re: Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI

#150

Post by [deleted] »

iamnothere wrote: post #86
fzeroracer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly an old thing. Wizards of the Coast hired the Pinkertons to seize cards and harass people extra-legally as recent at 2023. As I said, even if you remove the legal barriers preventing control over IP companies can and do operate on the fringe of or outside of the law to enforce it anyways.

If that were to happen on a large scale, people could band together to provide security/resistance. Since what you’re suggesting is a complete collapse of rule of law. If IP law is the only thing preventing society from descending into anarchy, then maybe we deserve anarchy.

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