They can call it what they want to deflect scrutiny, but the fact is that it mirrors breeding mechanics from other games, like FF7’s chocobo breeding. So calling it “breeding” as a joke is not really that wild or unusual.

I think you’re laser-focusing on a weirdly specific thing, I think it’s just a joke. Gita clearly enjoys the game, the subheader is just a funny elevator pitch for the game.

Did u read the article? Gita seems to be in love with the game, I wouldn’t say they were shaming it at all!

That makes sense actually. I’m guessing they have been sued for similar stuff in the past and as you said, the small revenue stream is not worth the cost in lawsuits.

can anyone speak to why payment processors care about AI porn at all? With the duopoly of PayPal and Stripe, I’m not totally clear why the payment processors think that AI Porn will impact their bottom line in the slightest. If people take issue with the payment processors’ implicit approval of these practices, what are they gonna do? It’s not like there are any viable alternatives.

This must be Grok’s ultimate mission, create an AI in Elon Musk’s image so he can live on forever in the AI. It would totally track with his weird mission to pollute the planet with his progeny. His main goal in life seems to be legacy, having as many people as possible say “Elon Musk is cool” for as long as possible.

right? it was like the only thing that made me sort of okay with the lack of sales.

i guess my point is that I understand why the researchers are doing it - the UN gave them money to research ways the UN could use AI, so that is what they did. It’s not like the research is unethical in the sense that it directly harms participants. Maybe it’s a dumb waste of money, but at that point, the question is more for the UN leaders that said “we should give someone money to research AI”. And I don’t know that 404 Media has the pull to interview those people.

definitely licensing issues, 100%. The record company owns the old song and doesn’t want to allow it in the game again, at least not for a reasonable price. Could the artists re-record songs to bypass the record company, like Taylor Swift did? Yeah sure, but only if they are still around, and only if they care that much about being in the Tony Hawk remake. Re-recording songs includes re-doing all the mixing and mastering, and that is a decent chunk of time and money for essentially no return on investment. Most of the bands in original Tony Hawk that are still around are pretty focused on ROI at this point.

I feel like the article answers the question, or rather it gives the researchers a chance to answer the question:

When I spoke with them, both Albrecht and Fournier-Tombs were clear that the goal of the workshop was to spark conversation and deal with the technology now, as it is.

“We’re not proposing these as solutions for the UN, much less UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). We’re just playing around with the concept,” Albrecht said. “You have to go on a date with someone to know you don’t like ‘em.”

Fournier-Tombs said that it’s important for the UN to get a handle on AI and start working through the ethical problems with it. “There’s a lot of pressure everywhere, not just at the UN, to adopt AI systems to become more efficient and do more with less,” she said. “The promise of AI is always that it can save money and help us accomplish the mission…there’s a lot of tricky ethical concerns with that.”

She also said that the UN can’t afford to be reactive when it comes to new technology. “Someone’s going to deploy AI agents in a humanitarian context, and it’s going to be with a company, and there won’t be any real principles or thought, consideration, of what should be done,” she said. “That’s the context we presented the conversation in.”

The goal of the experiment, Albrecht said, was always to provoke an emotional reaction and start a conversation about these ethical concerns.

“You create a kind of straw man to see how people attack it and understand its vulnerabilities.”

So if you read the headline and have the obvious visceral reaction, if you are asking yourself that question from the article, it kind of sounds like that is the point. They’re doing it now so that if people see it and say “that’s stupid”, hopefully that stops xAI or someone else from trying this to profit on the suffering of poor people. Alternatively, if people see it and say “wow this actually helped me understand”, that is also useful for the world at large. It doesn’t sound like the latter is the case, but that’s why you test a hypothesis.

there are apparently a few cases where they didn’t get the same song, but they got a new song from the same artists. But yeah…it’s a bummer from a game preservation perspective

I seem to remember even FF7 allowing this.

Question: what would happen if the server implemented something like Anubis on the application and/or create post pages? Would that not block most bots from completing these forms? Is that just not feasible at our scale?

Yeah I hear that a lot, I tried to speed run ARR but just ran out of motivation before I got there 😔

I played for a lil while, trying to get into it to play with my friends. The only MMO i’ve gotten DEEP into was the original Guild Wars, and that is obviously a bit different from other MMOs, so I wasn’t sure if it would be my cup of tea. I ended up falling off before finishing the base Realm Reborn MSQ. I found the same problem I always have with MMOs - the initial loop is really fun and addicting and I’m enjoying learning the world, but then I hit a point where doing the quests just feels like a slog to endgame. I did some dungeons with my friends once that was possible, and it mostly just felt like I was struggling to keep up with something that everyone else had done 50 times over already. It stunk that I had to do story quests solo, and could only really party up for dungeons. Much preferred the GW experience of playing the MSQ together.

Idk, I’m not trying to trash on the game, I can tell it’s really well made and I’m happy for all y’all. It just didn’t resonate for me.

This snip at the end is so good:

Iaso said she thinks AI companies follow her work, and that if they really want to stop her and Anubis they just need to distract her.

“If you are working at an AI company, here’s how you can sabotage Anubis development as easily and quickly as possible,” she wrote on her site. “So first is quit your job, second is work for Square Enix, and third is make absolute banger stuff for Final Fantasy XIV. That’s how you can sabotage this the best.”

i mean…they already have the versions with e/OS? Does that not fit that bill?

I think Fairphone would say that they want you to keep using the FP4 forever, replacing individual parts as they fail. Their goal is the reduce waste in the smartphone industry, that’s why they make it so easy to maintain your device. Maybe eventually the main processor on your FP4 will be too slow to keep up with even those light apps. At that point, you come back to Fairphone and buy whatever the latest one is.

And as Sunshine said, continually releasing new generations of phones keeps them enticing to the vast majority of smartphone consumers that don’t already use a Fairphone. I’m literally looking at this new one and considering if that will be my next smartphone when my Pixel 7’s battery starts to turn. Seems like a pretty good deal to me, tbh. Might finally rip me from Google’s grasp.

Regrettably…they kinda do. At least for studios like Obsidian and Double Fine, the landscape has become very grim. They are studios of a size that is very difficult to keep afloat in this environment. Investor funding in the gaming segment has dried up post-COVID, and these kinds of mid-level (or higher) devs were very reliant on that kind of funding. In light of that, these studios may have seen Microsoft as something of a safe harbor. They knew these layoffs were always a possibility, but I think it was better for them than the alternative. Or at least, it was the best choice for the people leading these studios prior to their respective Microsoft acquisitions. The devs that are being laid off are not the same people that signed off on the acquisition.

great tip, checking it out now