i should be gripping rat

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I don’t think “destruction vs. licensed cars” is the binary in racing games. NFS3 Hot Pursuit had licensed cars, and that probably added to the fun of the game. I think we def need more games with destructible cars and destruction-focused racing, and I agree that you need unlicensed cars to get the most out of that these days, but there are plenty of other ways to make a fun car game. Beam.NG is there for the people that want truly next-level destruction simulation, and it has multiplayer support via mods but we could use a more mainstream version of that. Wreckfest is out there, but maybe that is too “demo derby” for die-hard burnout fans. We had games like OnRush and NFS Unbound come and go, and those games were probably the closest we got to Burnout in recent times, but audiences didn’t show up for those games so they have all but died.

    Forza Horizon (which I mention all the time bc it is the only modern car game I have played) is plenty fun and arcadey with a whole smorgasbord of licensed cars. The cars get smashed up a decent amount, though it obviously isn’t quite like a Burnout game. Tweaking the driving settings can make the game feel even more arcadey, if that is your style. If you want the destruction to affect how your car handles, that is a setting you can turn on. If you want a more simulationy driving experience, you can tweak the settings to turn that on, too. It isn’t Burnout exactly, but something about it scratches a similar itch for me. I know the Horizon series is one of the most popular racing series in the current scene, I wonder sometimes if its popularity and live service model are eating the lunch of those other, smaller arcade racers.






















  • 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.



  • 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.