bigsocrates

@manburger: Creating an algorithm designed to fake knowledge by scraping the Internet but not actually understand anything so it is completely credulous and then having that answer real people's real questions is something so brilliant only a techbro could think of it. A perfect system.

@cikame: Changing people's minds is hard, but one good thing is that while someone might not admit they were wrong in the moment and change their mind then, later when they are less emotionally driven and in a different situation they might reflect on what was said and modify their beliefs. Of course this only happens for some things and with some people, but it's something that gives me a little comfort.

I agree that modern AI is not "true" AI but AI is what we're calling it and language is malleable. Can't fight every battle.

That video may be AI or it may be something human written with a computer-generated voice. That happens a lot these days, as does AI scripted content. If it was human written it is almost certainly by a non native English speaker because no native English speaker would say "because it looks like a lot of countries would want to get their hands on this aircraft." Those kinds of awkward constructions are hallmarks of both AI and non-native speakers.

If I had to guess I would say an AI script with maybe a human touch up and definitely a computer generated voice. But TBH I only watched like 15 seconds because those kinds of videos creep me out and the fact that it has 200,000 views just makes me sad.

@sethmode: It's true. There are more bots than we think because only some of them are obvious but some are not.

I agree the Internet has gotten much worse. I think pretty much everyone agrees at this point. Except the people who are making billions of dollars by making the Internet worse for everyone else, I guess.

@retris: I'm sorry but I can't agree. Copeland was jumping off a 15-foot cage on to a man wrapped in barbed wire (and some people think the barbed wire was what made him hesitate.) That's not a "regular spot" and his getting injured is by no means a "freak accident." Randy Savage got seriously injured doing something very similar. You can say it's a spot that can be done safely, unlike the Kingston spot, but it's an incredibly high-risk spot, especially for a 50-year-old with a history of injury. The fact that you can call it a "regular spot" just shows the depth of the problem, because it's the kind of thing that used to draw gasps from the crowd and that was used sparingly because it is so dangerous, and now it has become routine.

If we're channeling Jim Cornette (but not the horrible parts) I'd also say it was totally unnecessary here. This wasn't a super hot angle between two guys who'd been fighting for months or years building to this. It was a hastily built angle between a star and a guy who's been very underused and is likely on his way out of the company, and it was on a card where they were already going to have an anarchy in the arena match complete with car crash and flamethrower (I don't even want to get into that; it's clearly for somebody but it's not for me.)

What would have been wrong with them just wrestling? Just having a normal wrestling match? Maybe throw in some spooky stuff or something else, but you don't need all these matches with people doing crazy stuff because it exponentially increases the chances someone will get hurt. Maybe Copeland's spot could have been done safely, but if you do it often enough someone's going to get hurt eventually. And yeah you can say the same for a suplex, but the number of times you can do one of those before someone gets hurt is much higher. You can build to the big barbed wire cage match if it's warranted on a show where it's the main event and after you've wrung everything else out of the feud. Instead AEW has tended to just jump right there, have the big match with not enough build, and move on.

To move away from Cornette and quote the less controversial Lance Storm "We used to pretend to hurt each other and everyone thought it was real, now we really hurt each other and everyone thinks it's fake."

There's a lot to criticize WWE for even with Vince gone, but look at the mileage they get out of things like The Rock beating Cody with a strap (painful but safe) or Logan Paul's drone shot when he frog splashed Cody (higher risk than a suplex but much safer than a cage jump.) AEW used to do that stuff more effectively too. They had a big strap angle with Cody long before the Rock did and it was safe and kept the audience rapt.

I just think that smarter storytelling and more restraint could lead to just as much attention as these dangerous stunts with a lot fewer injuries.

Most of us at this point are familiar with Dead Internet theory; the quasi-conspiracy theory that most of the Internet now consists of AI powered bots talking to one another with little direct human involvement. I say quasi-conspiracy theory because while I think it's nowhere near the majority of Internet traffic (at least as measured by traffic if not raw content produced) it's clear that we're seeing more and more bot an AI powered content all over the place.

If you try to Google or especially Bing information on a game, especially something specific like how to unlock a trophy, the vast majority of results will clearly be AI written and may or may not have any accuracy or validity. A lot of the news stories that get served up via random links are clearly at least partially AI written. And now AI has started making serious inroads into places like Reddit, posting uncanny valley posts that can sometimes fool you at first readthrough but mostly come off as unsettling; using human language to express non-human ways of "thinking" (often lacking in the personality and specificity that characterize most human expression of any length.)

Now of course you can just ignore obvious AI posts and not engage, but there's something dispiriting to reading what starts out seeming like a real question and starting to formulate an answer only to realize that this is just some bot prompt trying to gather more data for its LLM model, or being tested and fine tuned. It's like going to a bar to watch the big game and looking around for someone to chat with, only to realize that many of the other patrons are just dummies, dressed and posed like people but not actually alive.

I confess that of all the dystopian cyberpunk stuff that's been happening recently this is among the most jarring for me. So much language being generated for purposes other than expression or actually imparting information, just muddying the waters.

That's not even getting into how the bots have no morality or lines they won't cross because they're literally just code running in a data center. There are reports of bots joining Facebook groups for grieving parents who lost their kids and inventing entirely false stories about children who never existed to farm engagement. It's the kind of ghoulish thing that we'd label sociopathic if a human did it, but all these bots have sociopathy baked into their very design.

That has made me appreciate the Giant Bomb forums even more. Yes they're dying like all forums are, but there's some degree of security by obscurity, and the mods work hard to try to keep the conversations mostly bot free (though some have definitely slipped in.) The level of discourse is also higher than it is in most places like Reddit these days, which makes it harder for bots to hide among the low effort human posts. It feels like a bit of a shelter in an increasingly hostile virtual world.

I mean could a bot generate @imunbeatable80's idiosyncratic ranking of games? No. They couldn't. There's no data source you could draw on that would result in that order.

What I'm saying is thanks to the humans who populate this place, and the hard working mods and team that keep it running, and that horrible takes on Super Mario 3D World are the realest Turing Test of all.

I don't really think this will work to move Xboxes. People aren't going to spend $500 (or $400 or whatever) to buy new hardware just to get a subscription to play a game when they can already just buy the game for a lot less money. I'm also not sure how many Game Pass subscriptions it will move since many COD players don't play that much more than COD.

I don't really agree with @cikame that there's a conflict between COD and Gamepass because Gamepass has a lot of all consuming games already and a lot of people DO get subscriptions and only play a couple things when it would be cheaper to buy those things. Some people just do the "$20 now is cheaper than $70" math and don't really think about the recurrence. It's dumb but common.

I also think that COD makes a lot of its money on microtransactions so if they can bring more people into the COD ecosystem they might ameliorate some of the "full price" downloads they don't get. Gamepass and PS+ launches are just begging for micros because they transform games into sort of an FTP model. The games aren't actually free to play but if you already have the subscription they FEEL free to play.

But to me this just feels like flailing. I don't think any one game can keep Game Pass growing. I'm not sure anything can. It's not just Game Pass that's struggling. The console business has stopped growing overall for the most part. There are much larger structural issues around how people play and consume games and other media at work.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I don't think it will change at all. So far the PS1 and PSP games have trickled out. PS2 will do the same, I'd wager. But we might at least see some good titles, as we have with PS1/PSP.

Suikoden 5 seems unlikely because there are Suikoden remasters coming. I think they know they can charge more than $10-15 or whatever for those games, old as they are.

Hello and thanks for your interest in the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. If you don't know what it is you can see more about the Game Club here. There is also where you can suggest games for future cycles, though this current vote will stay with the games listed below.

To vote in this thread simply list your top two choices with one labeled choice 1 and the other labeled choice 2. Choice 1 gets 3 points and choice 2 gets 1 point. The game with the highest point count wins. If there is a tie then I will break it, but I will not be voting otherwise.

You can vote even if you have not participated in the Game Club (and voting does not obligate you to participate but we ask that you not vote if you have no interest in participating) and you do not need to vote to participate in this or future cycles. You are also free to vote for games you are interested in and not participate if that game does not win, though it's more fun if people are willing to try games they may not be initially interested in.

Voting will close on June 3, when the results will be announced. I will tabulate the votes then so you may change your vote at any time prior by editing your post. Please do not make multiple voting posts in this thread, though discussion is encouraged. You can feel free to campaign for the game you want to win and make arguments why it is the best choice.

Games for which there appears to be interest will remain on the list in subsequent weeks but may be cycled out if we reach a point where there are too many nominated game for orderly voting. Games removed from the list will remain eligible to be nominated for future cycles at which point they will be put back on the list.

NOMINATED GAMES:

You Suck at Parking Vehicle obstacle racing game where the goal is to park. (Approximately 9 hours long.)

Amnesia: The Bunker: The latest in the Amnesia series of games where you hide from things that go bump or sploosh in the night and try to escape with your life and your sanity (Approximately 5 hours long)

The Big Con: An adventure game where you scam and steal your way across the American landscape of the 1990s. Will there be Zima? Probably not. (Approximately 4 hours long.)

Broforce: Action platformer with destructible levels starring parodies of famous action heroes. (approximately 7 hours long.)

Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem: Throwback FPS featuring tons of enemies and creative weapons. (approximately 4.5 hours long.)

Close to the Sun: First person horror adventure game about a journalist trying to find her sister in an alternate history steampunk world. (Approximately 4 hours long.)

Figment: An isometric action-adventure game with puzzles and combat set in a surreal world based around music. (Approximately 5 hours long.)

Spirit of the North: An adventure game about a fox based on Icelandic lore. (Approximately 5 hours long.)

Tin Hearts: A story focused puzzle game where you move the environment to help a tin soldier cross environments and guide him to his goal. (Approximately 12-15 hours long.)

Bramble: The Mountain King: Adventure game about two young Scandinavian siblings exploring a dark and spooky mountainside at night. (Approximately 4.5 hours long.)

Botany Manor: A puzzle exploration adventure game where you explore your manor and experiment and learn about the plants within (Approximately 3 hours)

No More Heroes III: Travis Touchdown returns to take on more assassins in Santa Destroy in another zany action game (Approximately 12 hours.)

Bluey: The Videogame: Platforming, adventure, and minigames in the magical world of Bluey. Spend time with your favorite characters from everyone's favorite epic TV masterpiece. (approximately 1 hour long.)

Chants of Sennaar: A critically acclaimed adventure game about language and communication (Approximately 9 hours long.)

Haunti: A stylish adventure game about searching for your lost love in the afterlife. (Approximately 6 hours long.)

@apewins: It shouldn't require PS5 Pro AI upscaling to get games running at 4K, considering that 360 games can do that on the One X, but maybe it can further improve image quality, though I wouldn't want it to mess with the display of the underlying assets.

I agree that large chunks of the library are no-gos for various reasons, but while you're right that the most value games will get saved for remasters and re-releases, if you look at the PS1 and PSP catalog released so far there have been some big third parties and even big franchises involved. Namco has released Tekken and Ridge Racer games. Capcom has released Resident Evil (though not for ownership.) Disney seems super happy to release Star Wars and Pixar games. Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare, Grandia, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature...there have been some decent games. And if you go back to games licensed during the PS3 era the catalog is even better with stuff like Street Fighter Alpha 3.

I don't know how deep they'll go with this program but non-Sony stuff is definitely possible if there's not a strong reason NOT to put it out. While we haven't seen anything from Activision yet I wouldn't be shocked if some of that stuff shows up, given Microsoft's new PlayStation friendly stance.

Sony owns the Spider-Man license so could we see PS2 era Activision Spider-Man games show up? Probably not. But umm Pitfall: The Lost Expedition is possible. And there was a Wolfenstein game.

I just looked at the list and basically every Activision game from the PS2 era is either licensed or full of licensed music or both (Tony Hawk.) We make fun of Activision for being the COD company now, but it's not like they were putting out a lot of original bangers prior to the COD era. What a horrible era for Activision the PS2 was (though things are slightly better if you include PC.)

@judaspete: Do I remember the Eliza Dushku game in the style of Tarantino? HELL YEAH I DO. Never played it but I remember it well!

I really don't know how to deal with the whole "what Max Payne should have been" thing, though. I mean...Max Payne was amazing for a 6th gen game, at least IMO. Way over a 6/10.

@brian_: Good to see the horny card guys club has each others' backs! I have no idea how anyone could actively dislike Super Mario World. And 3 has cards in it! Multiple cards! Your favorite things! Is there a particular reason? I'd ask if you are just an RPG guy but you seem to have liked the non-RPG and cardless Wet...

@chamurai: The library will at best be a smattering. They add like 3 games per month across 3 platforms with enormous libraries so while you may occasionally see something cool pop up it's not going to cover much of the PS2 library. And that's without even getting into how many games have licensing issues that make their reissue economically impossible.

@av_gamer: The PS2 library is incredible. There's a TON of trash too, of course, but so many classics.

@csl316: I think the biggest reason there wasn't full backwards compatibility, besides Sony wanting to resell you the same games over and over (though it DOES have PS4 backwards compatibility and they're still reselling those) is the PS3. The Cell processor was very powerful but it's proved very difficult to emulate well enough to release official emulation. But yes PlayStation has arguably the best back catalog in gaming history, though Nintendo's highs are arguably better.

I hope the new PS2 emulator can smooth out frame rates. Xbox did it with their 360 emulator on Xbox One so you'd think that a PS2 emulator on PS5 could handle it! But yeah some of the frame rates can be a bit rough. We will get a resolution buff at least!