Musk says he's going to launch an "AI game studio" at his xAI startup.

Musk says he’s going to launch an “AI game studio” at his xAI startup.

  • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    2·
    24 days ago

    I don’t agree with you, but you are onto something.

    Your use of “wokeness” is a good description for the way “Woke” is used to keep minorities in their place, c.f. Simpsons writing Apu out, despite dozens of subcontinent ethnicity comedians all openly saying they’d love the role, or streaming companies just stopping access to “problematic” content for an easy headline, c.f. Many streaming services and Community’s first D&D episode.

    It is shown in people too, usually comorbid with a white saviour complex, where the being seen in the act of “helping” is more important than listening to the voices of whoever is being helped and the actual effectiveness, or desire, for the “help” given.

    I wonder how neatly it maps onto a Liberal/Leftist divide… Probably not especially as everyone has blindspots and hangups over Race and Class that can be buried quite deep in the subconscious.

    • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
      2·
      20 days ago

      I don’t always even know if I agree with myself when I’m trying to figure out stuff that’s outside the edge of my own understanding, so regardless of whether you think you’re right I appreciate the constructive engagement.

      One employment lawyer I heard an interview with once suggested something similar to but subtly different than what you’re talking about, that “woke” is actually a scheme by the ownership class to divide the working class by getting us to attack each other so we don’t work together to get better wages or working conditions from them.

      It’s definitely a multi-faceted issue.

      One of the keys is definitely that “woke” isn’t all progressive thought, it’s a very specific point, so to criticize the piece isn’t to necessarily criticize the whole.

      On the matter at hand though, the fact that the accusations against Musk are very specific and in a very specific order really speaks to the fact that it isn’t really the author’s personal thoughts. There’s lots of things you can go after the guy for that aren’t in order “racist sexist misogynistic homophobic transphobic”. Much more relevant to the article would be that he often claims he’ll be able to do things he can’t, or he sets timelines he can’t possibly meet, or his whole fortune is based on a ponzi scheme where the world’s smallest car company has a market cap that dwarfs any other car company even when those other companies have entire product lines Tesla isn’t even involved in. Most people who play video games don’t play a game engine. Most people agree that once John Romero left id the company really wasn’t the same, and while Quake 2 is a technical marvel it isn’t nearly as fun to play or atmospheric as doom or quake. Doom 3 was also a technological marvel, but most people don’t remember it as a classic the same way they remember doom or quake. Doom 2016 was the first time in decades that id really hit the nail on the head hard, and it was thanks to real creativity and bringing new ideas into the franchise and in many ways into the genre as a whole.

      That’s the actual problem with using AI to produce games, AI is an inherently conservative force – not in a political sense, but in that it is fed data and does a great job of creating permutations of that data. AI is incredibly powerful for creating something like what has already come before it, but true creativity brings something new. Someone writing about a feeling nobody’s ever written about that represents insight into the human mind, that’s something a human can produce, but not an AI.

      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        19 days ago

        Woke is also an exonym, so it doesn’t really have a hashed out definition people who it’s used to describe would agree with.

        On the more pertinent issue, yes - AI can’t create new things or really do anything that hasn’t been done before. And yes, no one really plays an engine, as much as the Occulus Rift fanbois wished about a decade ago.

        I think the article flows reasonably well, though is more a hit piece/jokey opinion piece rather than an actual interrogation of anything Musk said. It’s the lowest kind of news, someone’s musings on someone saying something about someone saying something. The main push is his hypocrisy, with the whole “too many big corporations, so my big corporation should do it” lines.
        But yes, it’s just brainless easy dunking on Musk without giving the whole thing anymore thought than Elon himself has.