Feel like eventually ai will get so good people will just autogenerate games just for themselves. Same for movies/shows/etc.
Ugh I know the answer but it’s just sad. I don’t want all media to become cotton candy.
For example, ever since roughly the mid 2010s when I finished Star Trek: Enterprise, I've been thinking about someone using some sort of generative AI to complete this series, once its good enough to be entirely convincing.
Two quotes from Star Trek "The Ultimate Computer" - a very prescient episode.
KIRK There are certain things men must do to remain men. Your computer would take that away.
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BONES Compassion. That's the one thing no machine ever had. Maybe it's the one thing that keeps men ahead of them. Care to debate that, Spock?
SPOCK No, Doctor. I simply maintain that computers are more efficient than human beings, not better.
It's dumb and derivative and isn't getting a lot of laughs from me, but at the same time, it is freakishly realistic, and absolutely ripping off every character and scene and locale of the Lucas series.
I don't know how long it will last against Disney's DMCA juggernaut, but the "Imperial HR Lady" is way funnier and she just has to throw on a turquoise necklace and grating accent.
Speaking of self-vibe-coding games, I wouldn't see the point. When I was a younger boy, I did write games for myself, and it was an arduous project that was mostly aimed at teaching myself programming rather than gaming per se. And eventually the big didactic moments were hacking someone else's game code in terms of debugging and extending it, and that was more exciting than building my own from scratch.
Also, copyright is an issue! If consumer AI could ignore copyright and just code me, say, "Freecell but it's Harry Potter" or "Put me in the cockpit of a Y-Wing video game!" then it'd be exciting. People pay big bucks and invest big bucks for in-universe games of certain franchises like that. But AI won't provide for the consumer in this way, ever.
Much of the joy of gaming for me, is seeing a polished product that is well-balanced in terms of rules and fairness, and has good sound/graphic assets, and challenges or surprises me in novel ways as I go along. I don't think I would mind if someone else vibe-codes a game for me to play, if it's good enough and engaging, but it seems that designing/coding one for myself would feel empty and unfulfilling. And I wouldn't apply the same principle to utility software, but really I'd rather not invest a lot of time in building an office suite for myself, rather than just grabbing it off the shelf.
I’m genuinely asking here. This isn’t bait or a challenge, and I’m not really sure how to avoid that tone so apologies if seems antagonistic.
Basically, quick arcade-style games that can give them "points" so they feel good about just doing problems over and over for repetition. I can handle the conceptual discussions myself, but I find that gamifying works well for the portions where there's no alternative but to just practice until memorized.
I had also been working on a Treasure Mountain/Mathstorm/Galaxy clone with expanded activities, but I think the arcade format actually works better and is easier to make.
My daughter can also read a couple years ahead, but her writing's still very basic/phonetic. So I had codex whip up a standard template where I can put a picture (that codex generates) and she can write about what's happening in the picture and then color it. The template includes a word bank where I can add words relevant to what's happening (e.g. that I used to prompt the picture creation) that have irregular spelling, and I had it print a reminder sheet of different ways to spell the same sounds (ai, a_e, ay, etc) that she can refer to while trying to remember how to spell words. Previously when she was earlier in learning to read, I had used it to generate a couple simple coloring storybooks as a little fun activity.
That doesn't really answer your question about how I know it's effective, but I get a general sense that educational research struggles with that question too.
Moreover, the exploration of Data’s personhood as an android is like… incredibly pervasive throughout all of the seasons of the show.
Absolutely and I was thinking about this when I wrote my initial comment. It's a good consideration. Star Trek _does_ have an AI computer capable of generating code and stories and all it requires of the user is a little prompting.
TNG shows humans are using this technology to engage themselves. People rock climb, ski, perform Shakespeare. Holodeck authors are well-respected throughout the galaxy. They also warned us of holodeck psychosis.
Data is an android, but what about his story suggests we should slurp up doggerel? His existence is the pursuit of humanity's "essence."
A pretty photo is not enough on its own. Hotel lobbies have all kinds of pretty photography. That’s not the stuff people hang on the walls in their home. There is nothing wrong with it, it is fine to have hotel lobby photos. But acting like that is the ultimate target, that we should use AI to just manufacture this at a large scale… I mean what is even the purpose of that? Am I missing something here? Do people really just want to sit around with their local agent generating facsimiles of existing shows/movies for cheap entertainment?
There is always space for cotton candy and general purpose work, but we should not be advocating for a massive facsimile machine to drown out all media. People have been whining about Hollywood not writing new things for decades, so the alternative is to accelerate that? I just don’t understand the draw. I have no desire to sit around watching my computer make a fake, derivative Star Wars show for me to watch later.
Call of Duty 27, the myriad sports franchises, Halo 8, Fast and Furious 11, a remake of some Disney movie, the latest Marvel-slop...
It also bears mentioning that Coke and Pepsi are popular too.
I am reminded of a scene from the Jobs movie where they were arguing Open vs Closed systems. This feels similar...