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"it's dangerous to believe what you want to be true" cuts both ways here

It really reminds me of the Dot-Com Boom/Bubble.

Some hype merchants thought that adding '.com' to the end of a company name would change everything. Pets .com!

There was another, often forgotten cohort who believed that the internet was a passing fad that would soon go away.

Both attitudes were dubious at the time and hilarious in hindsight.

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but what it can do, what it can't do, and exactly how well it can do the things it can do are all being obfuscated from every possible direction

This is one reason why I question whether I'm on the wrong forum sometimes. Tom Wolfes analogy of the 'Ready, Fire, Aim' mentality vs the 'Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim, Aim...' mentality.

I'm happy to analyze a problem, but looking for rigorous, peer-reviewed, perfect accuracy in a fast moving noisy environment like this simply means that the problem and any opportunities will be history before the analysis is complete.

Since I'm looking to make predictions and ultimately get ahead of the curve and adapt, this necessarily involves making decisions based on imperfect information. Mistakes will be made, corrections will be required. Nature of the beast.

Neither attitude being superior or inferior, but very different priorities.

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So a real anecdote - I received an email last week that a company I use is no longer serving the UK. I have been connecting to this company live via an API for the last decade or so, and I've now got 1 month notice to find a replacement.

So its a technical/business problem with a hard deadline and hence time pressure with severe consequences for failure to meet the deadline.

Evaluating and rewriting to connect to a bunch of competitor APIs, some REST, some in c#/java/python, is incredibly tedious work.

Not difficult. Just brain-dead, boilerplate and time-consuming.

So I pasted in some snippets of the existing API calls I was using to ChatGPT, and said - write me an adapter to these competitors APIs.

It probably would have taken me DAYS without AI, trawling through incomplete documentation and idiosyncratic code samples in multiple languages from multiple companies. ChatGPT did it in MINUTES.

So now, rather than rushing and panicking, I can evaluate multiple competitors in parallel at my leisure.

Again, just an anecdote, not a peer-reviewed data set, but it's my most successful use of AI so far, with a crystal clear cost/time benefit, and definitely has given me food for thought.

I've been thinking about this topic since the last pub too, especially the number of claims revolving around the idea that AI is somehow reaching the limits of its capabilities.

I don't want to dive into the rabbithole of the psychology of this (motivated reasoning, coping etc), and yes there is much hype, but it is also extremely dangerous to believe things are true simply because one wants them to be true. For example if ones livelihood depends on them being true.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been some quite astonishing announcements in the areas of mathematics and software (especially reverse engineering/clean room implementations).

Instead of writing an essay, I'll just link 3 YouTube videos from the last few days.

These are YouTubers I have been following for years, all very capable individuals, definitely not easily swayed by hype, and all in the category of what I would call 'realistic skeptics' who have been surprised by AI capabilities in recent videos.

Video 1: 'Has AI solved reverse engineering?' YouTuber 'LowLevel' uses AI to crack a complex firmware/encryption binary in 15 minutes, which he estimates would have taken him days/weeks without.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIe3eDfGKUo

Video 2: 'Can AI Make a Game Engine?' YouTuber 'The Cherno', who has been writing his own game engine called 'Hazel' for years, asks Claude and Astra to write game engines. You can almost see the existential crisis unfold in slow motion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_uf5OfMGio

Video 3: 'The Mathematics are Mad' YouTuber 'The PrimeTime' looks at the dump of hundreds of AI-generated math proofs that are causing outrage and horror in the mathematical community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXh4LF3zJ1Q

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The mathematics issue is of particular interest to me, since it starts to ask fundamental questions about the nature of knowledge such as 'intuition' vs 'brute force' in cognition.

Some have reacted with horror/depression/nihilism etc. Social media is suddenly awash with depressed mathematicians, but others have seen new possibilities.

For example from Video 3, a problem space which was seen as 'solved', that AI brute-forced a crude and tiny improvement to. Then once mathematicians realised an improvement was even possible, this reinvigorated interest which has already led to humans making further improvements on the AIs work.

What a fascinating world we inhabit.

Would very much recommend this course of action. I've read remarkably little Eco (of his fiction at least, I've read some of his essays and other works) but I should remedy that.

Fun fact, looks like I bought my copy of the book in Hong Kong.

So it has followed me all around the planet, and I still haven't got around to reading it!

Yeah, maybe the time has finally come.

[Baudolino]

2026's first reading - Baudolino, by Umberto Eco.

Hmm, interesting choice. I love Umberto Eco but haven't read that one, its sitting on my bookshelf staring at me right now in an accusatory fashion.

Maybe it's time to promote it from my bookshelf to the giant pile of unread books sitting next to me.

I'm not sure if I count among the people 'talking it down', but I'll clarify my opinion

Fallout is probably my favourite game franchise of all time. If not outright, then definitely up there in the top 2 or 3.

So saying that Fallout 3 is my least favourite Fallout is like saying that its my least favourite thing out of my absolute most favourite things ever. So not really negative

Yeah there's a bit of 'uncanny valley' going on I think, plus the fact that ragdoll physics always feels more like a clever tech demo than an immersive experience to me.

Compare that with the sheer love that the 2D artists put into the 'gibs' in both Fallout and Doom. The brutal death animations for characters like Gizmo and the Overseer in Fallout 1, and the joy that artist Adrian Carmack put into every flying chunk of flesh in Doom. Such as taking scans of their own scabs and blood to use in game

In fact, come to think of it, that is the unifying feature of both Fallout 1/2 and Doom - the emphasis on the 'gibs' and gore. Maybe this is a reason why the combination works?

That was one of John Romeros core design principles wasn't it? In in doubt, add more gibs!

It is based on GZDoom, which is an open source project, so I'm guessing they can do as they please if they have the skillset and time.

There are already various RPG elements visible in the HUD - hit percentages, combat/world log, item interactions etc

I'd forgotten that the Necropolis level is the first time you encounter a Cathedral member as well. Fallout 1 is still the only game that genuinely convinced me to join a cult

And wow, those death animations look brutal, they really nail the visceral feeling of Fallout 1 and 2.

Especially the SMG and Plasma Gun, absolutely nasty. Sprite-based 'gibs' and gore. Way better than the 'AAA' ragdoll nonsense in Fallout 3 and even Fallout 4.

I would pay truly unreasonable amounts of money to play the Cathedral level from Fallout 1 done in that style.

Unity. Pray. Follow.

Nothing suspicious here, nope, move along

ok, this is looking even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Wv6kkloCU

Who knew that Fallout 1 and the Doom engine would work so well together?

https://www.thegamer.com/fallout-bakersfield-remake-original-1997-game-gzdoom-engine-boomer-shooter/

Necropolis from Fallout 1 as a 'Boomer Shooter'

End of this month is a tricksy period for me too, family obligations etc

Yeah, the FO2 ending just seemed to culminate in a fairly boilerplate 'hahaha ultraviolence' type end-boss, despite all the variety leading up to it.

Whereas the FO1 bosses were just so damned... INTERESTING. Horrifying in appearance and nature, but charming, articulate, and just downright weird.

And I absolutely LOVED the pacing of the Cathedral, especially in a gaming era with far fewer spoilers. The descent into the Cathedral really did feel like some kind of descent into Hell or Madness.

Yes, I thought that FO2 was an objectively 'better' game due to mechanics, variety of quests/decisions etc.

But I preferred FO1s much tighter narrative, and the villains in FO1 gave it a much nastier 'horror/mystery' vibe which definitely fit my tastes better.

https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998

"A new global gender divide is emerging" - the political/ideological gap between young men and young women has been widening for the last 30 years, and widened rapidly in the last 10 years.

Why this has happened, and what the implications are, are pretty profound questions for democracy.

Hey everyone!

My name's Cosmic Void and I make adventure games with pixel-art graphics, mostly point and clicks, but also some text parsers.

My upcoming game is Twilight Oracle, a comedy point and click adventure.

Some of my favorite adventure games include Space Quest II, Sam & Max Hit the Road, The 7th Guest, Sanitarium, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and Little Misfortune, just to name a few.

Yep, I also loved adventure games of that era.

Space Quest 3 was my favourite from that series, and I played the hell out of Leisure Suit Larry. Also loved the Police/Kings Quest series, and all the other late 80's-early 90's smorgasbord of adventure games, from Rex Nebular to Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle to BioForge etc.

I think the pinnacle for me was Grim Fandango. Damn, that was a game.