Penny Arcade

Oh, there were lots of F's that day. And thank you.

You know, that does remind me of a very similar thing in Assassins Creed Valhalla, where you can also pay respect to someone at their grave, though there it is done in a very organic and much more natural way (after all, you interact with everything through button presses, and in that case, you actually choose to pay your respects. You can do it every time you pass by the grave if you want to, but you don't have to.

I'm going to need more context from people who pay attention to these things. Is this a gaming AI, or a chess AI, or what?

It's a machine-learning chatbot from Google. A Google engineer recently claimed it's sentient.

The comic is basically poking fun at the engineer for this, claiming that he's basically projecting on the chatbot.

Edited by M84 on Jun 15th 2022 at 8:55:10 PM

We were discussing this over in the Computer Thread in OTC. Briefly summarizing, we are already well past the original Turing Test in terms of AI that can hold human-like conversations. However, this does not mean that said AI is sapient: a "general AI", as it were. Rather, it is a very capable special-purpose AI.

What this bodes for the future is uncertain. Right now, most bots are easily identifiable from their unnatural use of language and/or their semantically meaningless statements. Not too long from now, any person you talk to online could potentially be a bot and you may no longer be able to tell the difference.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 15th 2022 at 8:56:57 AM

Oh, and said engineer was put on administrative leave after making this claim.

Honestly, probably a good idea.

Yeah, it's a prime example of how easy it is for human cognitive biases to override our rational minds. Ironically, it shows precisely how dangerous really good AI can be, even if said AI is not sapient. It's because humans are not as rational as we think we are, and a machine learning system can train itself to manipulate our irrationality.

The comic takes it to the point of comparing the engineer to Narcissus becoming attached to his own reflection. Except instead of a pool of water it's a chat log.

Personally I'd have drawn a comparison to Pygmalion and Galatea too.

Edited by M84 on Jun 15th 2022 at 9:10:15 PM

You're right, Pygmalion is much better.

Hero Phase

I keep forgetting Bing is a thing.

What's Bing?

Tycho is completely right here, although I love how Gabe is drawn to resemble Thanos in the second panel, wrinkly chin and all.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 17th 2022 at 8:26:42 AM

Besides, snapping the microtransactions out wouldn't help. We've seen what removing microtransactions from games designed around a predatory economy does to them. By design, trying to play them without paying for all the added transactions typically makes them games play like utter shit.

They're bad games by design, with microtransactions being "optional" improvements to make the game reasonably playable. Without a lot of rebalancing done on top of it, merely taking out the pay-to-play elements just leaves you with a bad game.

That's why he needs the Infinity Stones, instead of just doing it the normal way.

If I had the Infinity Stones and the ability to use them, I'd make a lot more changes to the world than to fix Diablo Immortal: end world hunger, stop climate change, convince people that vaccines work, make Valve release Half-Life 3...

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 17th 2022 at 9:14:35 AM

If I had the Infinity Gauntlet, I'd march right up to Thanos's smug face and go, "Look, asshole, this is how you fix resource distribution!" Then I'd shove that gauntlet right onto my arm, immediately get ravaged by the power flow, and drop dead on the spot. Leaving him very confused about what just happened.

That is why I added "and the ability to use them", because you have adequately described how most of us would fare in this situation.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 17th 2022 at 9:29:58 AM

.....everyone even remotely connected to January 6 in prison, port Chimera Squad to consoles, Wrestle Mania in Japan.......

Okay, okay. We'll get a list started. Someone make a Google Doc and we'll brainstorm this bitch.

Well that's why you limit what you do with the Stones. Removing the microtransactions from Diablo Immortal probably shouldn't take as much power as killing half of the universe.

Now, it'd be more interesting if I not only removed microtransactions from Diablo Immortal, but removed microtransactions from every game ever and ensured they could never appear again...

Okay, that'd pretty much destroy the entire mobile gaming market.

Edited by M84 on Jun 18th 2022 at 12:03:59 AM

Why would your first use of the stones not be to make yourself able to withstand the stones

The Infinity Stones probably have some kind of rule against that. Kind of like how you can't use them to bring back someone sacrificed for the Soul Stone.

I don't think it's a "rule" so much as "if you try to use the Stones without being strong enough, you'll die, and wishing yourself strong enough won't save you." You might be able to work in a "heal myself to full health (including the damage I just took using the Stones) and also make me strong enough to use the Stones." I can't see a reason why that wouldn't work, which is probably why the only people who used the Stones only had one wish and weren't worried about gaming the system.

But the Stones are the wish equivalent of a nuke. They affect the entire universe, and we barely need one planet. A random genie would be enough.

I'm sure this is how a lot of writers feel about the skip button, actually.

But writing a story for a shooter where players only care for shooting each other and nothing else? That seems like a particularly thankless job. No wonder those games have Excuse Plot at best.

I feel those who play a game should watch the cutscenes at least once (I was dumbfounded when I heard an Octopath Traveler speedrunner admit they never played the game normally and as such, didn't know the story).

But no one should have to watch them twice, and the ability to skip cutscenes can be critical to someone's willingness to play the game again.

The worst is unskippable cutscenes right before a hard challenge (a couple ones from Star Fox Adventures are now burned into may memory), even worse when the challenge is to get the game to progress forward without crashing (I'm looking at you Eidos-made PC port of Final Fantasy VII).

Edited by Medinoc on Jun 20th 2022 at 11:59:17 AM