They do often talk about “it needs to be new,” but for the most part the things they release don’t actually follow that philosophy. Artifact was trying to follow the likes of Hearthstone. CS2 is a glowup of CS:GO. DOTA2, League. Deadlock is the closest they’ve come to something genuinely innovative in at least a decade, but even that is still following on the heels of MOBA/FPS hybrids like OW and Paladins, just taking more elements from MOBAs.

And the “not caring about money” thing wasn’t true in 2008. They were probably getting to that point around 2012, as Steam began to turn into a money printer and their microtransaction games took off, but that wouldn’t have been until after HL3 had been cancelled at least once. At some point Valve talked about the difficulties in selling Portal 2 (I think it might have been in the dev commentary? Idk it’s been years) and one of the points they bring up was how even a huge success like that game wasn’t living up to their other titles. They tried to implement microtransactions with the co-op mode, but they learned lessons about how that model only worked in bigger multiplayer games. One of the big stories they tell in both the HL1 and HL2 documentaries were the troubles they ran into with funding, and I guarantee they were not looking to repeat those experiences by continuing work on a game that had far less potential for return on investment. Again, that might have changed by 2012, but by then the momentum was already gone.

I’m not sure I believe that Valve ran out of ideas for HL3. That’s clearly the image they want to project, and maybe even what they tell themselves, but judging from the ideas they did have for Episode 3 they showcased in that documentary, there was more than enough to justify releasing a game. Certainly there was as much or more new stuff than there was for either EP1 or 2. I think it’s much more likely they simply decided their other projects at the time–CS:GO, DOTA 2, even TF2–had way more moneymaking potential. And I mean, they were right! They made a ton of money off of lootboxes and cosmetics for their multiplayer titles. I don’t think Steam had totally taken over the market yet, so they were hedging their bets on multiplayer microtransactions.

I dunno. The whole “it needs to be new” philosophy they constantly espouse to hasn’t really been true at least as far back as Portal 2. Even Alyx wasn’t particularly revolutionary as far as VR titles go. Maybe doing that type of design was new to Valve, but the only standout features that distinguishes Alyx from other games are the graphics and the (genuinely very good) grabbity glove object pickup system. Pretty much everything else is several steps behind other VR shooter games in the name of Accessibility™, from movement to weapon selection to the painfully dumb AI.

They didn’t run out of ideas. The movement FPS genre is alive and well for a reason, even today: there’s lots to be done. They just lost interest in it themselves, and I believe the reason for that is primarily monetary.

Gonna have to double check the next phone I buy has a screen first

I recently read a neat little book called “Rethinking Consciousness” by SA Graziano. It has nothing to do with AI, but is an attempt to describe the way our myriad neural systems come together to produce our experience, how that might differ between animals with various types of brains, and how our experience might change if some systems aren’t present. It sounds obvious, but the simpler the brain, the simpler the experience. For example, organisms like frogs probably don’t experience fear. Both frogs and humans have a set of survival instincts that help us detect movement, classify it as either threat or food or whatever, and immediately respond, but the emotional part of your brain that makes your stomach plummet just doesn’t exist in them.

Humans automatically respond to a perceived threat in the same way a frog does–in fact, according to the book, the structures in our brains that dictate our initial actions in those instinctive moments are remarkably similar. You know how your eyes will automatically shift to follow a movement you see in the corner of your vision? A frog responds in much the same way. It’s not something you have to think about–often your eye will have darted over to the point of interest even before you realize you’ve noticed something. But your experience of that reaction is also much richer than it is possible for a frog’s to be, because we have far more layers of systems that all interact to produce what we call consciousness. We have a much deeper level of thought that goes into deciding whether that movement was actually important to us.

It’s possible for us to continue to live even if we lose some parts of the brain–our personalities will change, our memory may get worse, or we may even lose things like our internal monologue, but we still manage to persist as conscious beings until our brains lose a large number of the overlying systems, or some very critical systems. Like the one that regulates breathing–though even that single function is somewhat shared between multiple systems, allowing you to breathe manually (have fun with that).

All that to say the things we’re currently calling AI just don’t have that complexity. At best, these generative models could fill out a fraction of the layers that would be useful for a conscious mind. We have developed very powerful language processing systems, at least in terms of averaging out a vast quantity of data. Very powerful image processing. Audio processing. What we don’t have–what, near as I can tell, we haven’t made any meaningful progress on at all–is a system to coalesce all these processing systems into a whole. These systems always rely on a human to tell them what to process, for how long, and ultimately to check whether the result of a process is reasonable. Being able to process all of those types of input simultaneously, choosing which ones to focus on in the moment, and continuously choosing an appropriate response? Barely even a pipe dream. And even all of that would be distinct from a system to form anything like conscious thought.

Right now, when marketing departments say “AI,” what they’re describing is like that automatic response to movement. Movement detected, eye focuses. Input goes in, output comes out. It’s one small piece of the whole that’s required when science fiction writers say “AI.”

TL;DR no, the current generative model race is just tech stock market hype. The absolute best it can hope for is to reproduce a small piece of the conscious mind. It might be able to approximate the processing we’re capable of more quickly, but at a massively inflated energy expenditure, not to mention the research costs. And in the end it still needs a human double checking its work. We will need to develop a vast number of other increasingly complex systems before we even begin to approach a true AI.

I very much doubt that makes literally even the smallest difference. The problem is that Facebook isn’t selling your data–as in, not specifically yours. They sell everyone’s data. And the companies which buy that data aren’t going out and looking for anyone who’s licenced their data under whatever license, either. They buy a gigantic pile of data from Facebook and whatever parts of it are yours are gonna be in there either way.

7 years??? To me that sounds like it never goes away, people just stop reporting it because they’re used to it

the current climate for GPUs is terrible with no relief in sight.

Not only no relief: it’s gonna get so much worse. Between the buying power of the dollar spiraling into the depths of hell and the tariff war heating up, this might be the last opportunity for a lot of people to buy cards for the foreseeable future. It’ll be years at the very least.

I was online when the 9070 listings first went live and had to fight not to impulse buy, which I was proud of at first. Then they instantly sold out and the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to regret it lol.

That’s just my perspective, though. Maybe with Americans no longer buying cards they’ll drop the prices internationally to try to boost sales… but the cynic in me knows they’ll boost prices even further to try to make up the difference.

Just like basically every mental attribute, ADHD is a spectrum. I’ve been diagnosed ADHD but don’t have it half as bad as many of the people here seem to, and yet I’ve also had a variety of bad reactions to every medication I’ve tried. Other people may have a few symptoms but not enough to bother getting a diagnosis, as it may not affect their daily lives at all.

But also I’m another person who has too many favorites to ever properly read through, so this is a definitely real, medically valid internet comment diagnosis that you undoubtedly have ADHD

Unfortunately I don’t know the physics, maybe something to do with how lights scatters through the windshield? Idk, all I can tell you is my repeated experience: turning the brights on definitely helps with seeing through oncoming traffic. But you are right, my older car is both smaller and lower, so I’m sure even the modern cars with lights aimed downward are more likely to shine directly at me

I mean I guess I’m stupid but I straight up can’t see if there’s oncoming traffic and my brights aren’t on. Doesn’t go for every oncoming car (if its lights are reasonable then I have no issues) but the vast majority of cars have newer, hilariously bright headlights that shine in a way where my normal lights simply don’t seem to cut it.

Meanwhile I’m out here driving a 20 year old car with correspondingly dim headlights and need to have the highbeams on just to be able to see anything when there’s oncoming traffic. My normal headlights are fine when there’s nothing coming the other way, but that’s not really how that’s supposed to work lol. Kinda defeats the purpose of ever turning the brights off! I swear any newer car’s normal lights are brighter than my brights

Good thing they already put the “TP” logo on there so I won’t forget to wipe my ass with it.

No u

You were acting like computers mimicking a conversation is something that wasn’t possible until genAI. That makes the fact that it’s been since at least 2008 relevant.

Animation is not a shifted goalpost, I was demonstrating an example of what AI is actually capable of. It helps with the inbetweens, not human moments. From animation to physical acting to voice acting, you can get a blend of the most generic, but nothing memorable, nothing that stands out, no quirks. That is literally a core component of the technology and no amount of development can fix that. GenAI can be a tool to help us focus on those human moments instead of mountains of generic shit, especially in massive games like RPGs, but it will never outright replace the creative process.

Again, Cleverbot. You could have “conversations” with a computer as far back as 2008. Generative models are better, but still terrible at giving accurate information or even at staying on topic without constant nudging in the right direction. Actual acting is FAR out of their range.

Take the robotic, stilted automatic animations that have been used for decades in games like Skyrim. It’s fine if you don’t care at all about looking natural, and AI can make that trashy bulk animation a lot better, but it will never replace the quirks and characterization provided by hand animated cutscenes like you can find in Uncharted or Red Dead, let alone stylized games like Pikmin and Mario.

Oh yeah, that’s why nobody reads regular fiction anymore, it’s all choose-your-adventure these days.

Bots will never be able to act as well as humans do until they are literally sentient. They might sometimes sound like someone naturally speaking, but they will never be able to intonate the correct emotion the way we do. They will never be able to make creative decisions and work with a director. And they will never be able to hold a real conversation. ChatGPT and Deepseek can hold their own longer than Cleverbot did, but they still devolve into nonsense in short order. Zero chance they’ll be able to hold together consistent fiction the way a human writing a script does.

No doubt they’ll be working together on it. Trump isn’t replacing generals for no reason.

Depends on how much other media you consume. If you’re forced to get a VPN anyway I bet you’re more likely to start looking into pirating everything else, too

it literally happened to me but ok

I did a quick install of windows (last year I think?) and it sorted everything into a onedrive folder. documents, pictures, videos, downloads, all that stuff, looked normal from the file explorer, but was sneakily placed into a onedrive folder. it went something like c:/users/me/onedrive/. didn’t realize what it had done until like 2 days later and it gave me some popup about not being able to upload. i don’t even have a onedrive account; it just decided that was how it should be done. no idea what, if anything, it actually uploaded.

now if i have to install windows i have a script from privacy.sexy i run before doing anything else. havent had that happen again yet. still, probably best to assume anything on a windows machine is not private.