Saturday!

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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10 Responses

  1. dhex says:

    dark souls 2 – bell bros are kicking my face in. i refuse to play offline. will likely double back and go join sunbros for some of that jolly cooperation, which is the most enjoyable part of the game for me.Report

  2. KatherineMW says:

    Yes, the concept of AIs (or artificial sapience, which is how the term generally seems to be used; I don’t know if there’s a distinction) disturbs me. There’s really only two options:

    1) You create something that is as smart or smarter than humans and completely free-willed, in which case the rest of humanity is completely at its mercy.

    2) You create something that is as smart or smarter than humans but is compelled to obey them/not harm them/ protect them. In that case, you’ve created something that is conscious, intelligent, self-aware, but lacks free will – a condition that’s even worse than slavery, because slaves have the capacity to try to run away, to at least conceive of not being slaves, whereas this being wouldn’t. I didn’t question the concept of the Three Laws of Robotics the first time I read Asimov, but I’ve become increasingly disturbed by it over time (thanks, Patrick Stewart!).Report

    • Jaybird in reply to KatherineMW says:

      The distinction made in the Mass Effect universe is between “AI” (which is, like, totally sentient) and “VI” (virtual) which isn’t sentient at all, just something that presents identically to sentience but is just a fairly complex network of responses to stimuli.

      And I’m over here wondering how you can tell the difference from the UI and I’m guessing that you can’t but the robotics folks can say “I’m in charge of the hardware and I assure you that these things aren’t capable of doing AI stuff.” Which is all well and good until you realize that a full two-thirds of the robotics folks are lonely dudes who can’t help but wonder what’d happen if you gave another couple petabytes of memory and access to love song lyrics.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to KatherineMW says:

      Asimov’s views on the three laws seemed to evolve over the time, too. He made them more like instincts than actual programing as the years went on. By the time he smashed his universes together with Foundation and Earth, the previously servile robots had mostly withdrawn from human society, but still quietly ran things. So, they started with option 2, but evolved eventually to option 1. Plus, the Spacers were always jerkoffs, illustrating the uncomfortable aspects of option 2 almost from the beginning.Report

  3. Maribou says:

    Lots and lots of Game of Thrones Ascent. Which isn’t really a game so much as a “click the button, get GOT flavor bits” with some ingenious structural aspects and fun crafting paths. But, you know, it doesn’t feel like a GAME.

    One of these days I might play a real game again.Report