YesBox

> [I give a small introduction to myself and my own work, that I’m omitting here, as you’re on my website]

kkukshtel: You should keep that info, with links, even if its links to your site. Dont burden the reader.

Edit: I read the first half of the article then skimmed the rest (I dont use LLMs outside of occasional searches).

I've been a gamedev for five years. I have a hunch LLMs will not take over game development because of the necessity to control many, many small details to shape a great experience for the player, and because some parts of development cannot be described with words.

Small details: My hunch is when it comes time to polish and fine tune all the moving parts, this process will remain much faster to do by hand. It will be faster to update a specific field or line of code and test/iterate than to prompt your way through that process (the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time)

Describing without words: An artist with a vision can only bring that vision to life with body movements. It is not possible to communicate all the details that go into a great piece of art with words. The colors, lines, shapes, positioning, specific emotions, history... is beyond spoken language.

Thanks for the shout out!

For those of you who grew up with the city builder classics, I just announced Jerry Martin (SimCity, The Sims) and Paul Zimmermann (Space Haven, Wildfrost) are the two composers I am working with.

I've heard a quick way to determine if the UV index is dangerous is if your shadow is shorter than you. Though location matters too.

I moved from Vermont to Texas and had to purchase an umbrella with UV protection to walk around during the day. The highest the UV index hits in the Vermont's summer is 6. In Texas, it's 11+ !!! 15 minutes and you're toast

I'm openly (very) curious to hear the reasoning behind that statement, not having lived in SF.

From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.

America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.

So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.

<Not an AI researcher -- Just thinking out loud>

Perhaps it's getting more difficult to move the 'goal posts'?

- Train LLMs on texts -> OMG AI can write!

- Train LLMs on code -> OMG AI can code!

- Train LLMs on images -> OMG AI can generate images!

- Train LLMs on video -> OMG AI can generate videos!

- Train LLMs on math -> give free access to 100,000 researchers/scientists/mathematicians -> invest resources into Lean -> OMG AI can solve math problems!

I say 'goal posts' because that's a common argument, but the perspective that seems to not be considered is that the LLMs are doing the same thing over and over again in different domains while be fine-tuned by labeling and human review.

The emergent behavior argument is a separate consideration, but I can imagine an AI being given a list of words (a harness) that guides how it operates--not the other way around--and the difficult problem is narrowing down and filtering all the associations with the words/harness to properly align it.

And perhaps the recursive looping being discussed creates incredibly difficult (impossible) to predict behavior? If the AI could modify it's own harness, is that AGI? If we fully understood what happens in high dimensional space, and could predict the output of any combination of input tokens, then is it not AGI?

Or perhaps I just tell myself this to stop worrying about a future involving ASI (:

I doubt AI will be good enough to _scale_ many things because human language isn't sufficient to explain it (especially when not understanding what is being built). Humans invented more concise languages (math, C++) to pair with their intellectual acuity. [1]

In one extreme, we have art, which cannot be accurately reproduced or explained in any language (unless a concise language was used to create it, like math or CS art).

At the other end: 1 + 1 = 2 and PI = 3.14...

[1] It seems any language that has a binary outcome (correct/wrong) helps the AI tremendously, however when e.g. creating software, that software is not functioning in isolation. The software is an attempt to codify a fuzzy human system or need, and that information only flows in one direction: human to machine.

When I was in high school, I took a physics class. I think I scraped by but one thing the teacher said that has stuck with me ever since was "when you want to test a hypothesis, set the variables to extreme numbers". Very useful framework IMO!

If we pursued the "Most Qualified" in its truest form, then ~95%[1] of the jobs in this country would be handed over to foreigners. In isolation, this would be great for US companies. In reality, 95% of the local population would riot.

If we pursued "only hire Americans", then our growth as a country would be stunted, and we'd lose our global competitive edge.

Somewhere between is a balanced medium.

Side observation: I've noticed tech leaders/CEOs/PG have been choosing (or succumbing) to what the algorithm wants them to say or how phrase. I stopped following all of them because I can feel my emotions being manipulated whenever I read what they have to say.

[1] The USA is less than 5% of the worlds population.

Just throwing out an idea: I recently stumbled upon an old-school website where someone is uploading a photo of their day (almost) every single day since 1998.

Came across screen captures of the original Everquest (SO COOL) and other games, photos of anime/cosplay events, city shots, family, friends, etc. Really fun for them, and fun for people who like me who still enjoy surfing the web.

edit: Screencap of an Everquest screencap for funsies: https://imgur.com/a/HUqc6p5

My first job was working at Wendy's (c. 2006/2007). I recall the kitchen being busy enough that you had to constantly navigate around your coworkers. I worked with a bunch of Brazilians (all super nice people) and a handful of kids around my age.

IIRC lunch rush had (my memory is fuzzy..):

2 drive through positions, 2-3 people on cash registers, dining room cleaner, fry guy (sometimes 2?), 2-3 burger assemblers, one person on drinks, griller, dish washer, and the assistant manager and manager helping out everywhere. Prep team might still be working too.

I remember really enjoying the food a kid (in moderation). And everyone having a mini tantrum when someone ordered fries with no salt :D

Was also shocked to see one of my Brazilian coworkers working at the crack of dawn on my way to school, cause he typically had closing shifts.

Sorry for the confusion, the earthquake was just in my dream. When I woke up there was not one

Statistical anomaly detected: this morning I woke up from an earth quake in my dream. It was powerful enough to really sway the buildings and room I was in. Im in Texas though, but >= 7.0 earthquakes only happen a handful of times a year.

e: first time I dreamed of an earthquake

Except. . . (accept)... SaaS solves the problem of needing one piece of software to communicate between multiple (many) users and/or other pieces of software.

Can't picture a functioning world where every piece of software is custom and requires factorial amount of AI comparisons and reviews to patch the API to communicate. In fact, it's impossible! There's not enough compute to handle a factorial explosion.

I really doubt SaaS going anywhere.

As an aside, there are large portions of the US where coastal folks dont want to live. These places are 2-4x cheaper (compared to costal game industry hubs) and could be cost competitive.. but it's probably not going to happen.

Video game industry analysts are predicting the same is going to happen to their (my) industry. Contract out more and more work to SEA/China/Poland et.al. It's extra painful because games are relatively cheap to localize (fantasy is universal, it's just translating text and words), so studios based in cheaper parts of the world already have an advantage and they have access to the west markets. Global competition can be brutal.

Most people want the convenience of things just working at the tap or click of a button. LLMs are not going to change that.

Hmm. Am I right to be concerned? One of the benefits of hiring people to do work is that it eliminates single points of failure. The last few decades have had technology automate a lot of rote processes. People have discussed crystal vs fluid dynamics and the balancing act/trade offs. Too much rigidity (automation) == slower to adapt in a dynamic environment.

I guess my question is, what is a safe AI "process percentile" for a company that lets it recover if the AI goes down or goes haywire? No one knows (?), but it's worth thinking about.

I am also curious just how much direction the AI will need given the environment is dynamic. Humans generally align to the company's goals because they are rewarded (paid) to, and need to to survive. Relationships are built on unspoken and spoken communication. Unspoken could be cultural, hierarchical, environmental pressures, etc. As an extension of that, companies build relationships with other companies by sending (essentially) diplomats and ambassadors to each other (the article mentioned using AI for sales). -- All this to say: if you have to constantly explain the job to someone, they are not fit for the job.

We'll see, I guess.

I use C++ every day and this feels like an entirely different language and philosophy. I know this is the reality of C++, but I never go searching for it so when it pops up randomly my jaw drops a little.

> what is the competitive advantage in maintaining your own engine?

It's still a product-distinguishing decision you can make at the indie scale. What I mean is, you can create an engine that allows you to get the performance + aesthetic that otherwise would not be possible. i.e. Specialize in a profitable niche.

And if hardware costs keep ballooning, performance will become more important.

IIRC, when the company was formed, everyone got an equal split. They may have issued more shares when some other key people joined. But, when someone quit or was fired, they had to forfeit all shares (got paid out based on the companies revenue over the last year).

Eventually a bunch of people left and I think only two founders remained (Carmack and Carmack).

Since the stakes were reabsorbed, it makes sense why he ended up with 41%.

:)

I've found a few cycles of <<repeated box breathing + a long breath hold>> works quite well.

Box breathing is 4 seconds inhale, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds exhale, 4 seconds hold. IIRC you are supposed to take in as much air as you can on the inhale, and let it all out on the exhale.

After you do a few cycles of BB, take in as much air as you can, then hold your breath for as long as you can.

You'll feel the results immediately

You are not alone. I like to read Harry Potter fan fiction [1] and I have started checking the publication date when Im searching for something new to read. I started doing this passively and realized it after the fact.

Have you ever met someone who could say all and do the right things but never made you feel anything, or your gut was sensing an ulterior motive? It's a magic trick we are all bewitched by at some point in our lives. I suppose I filter by published year because I dont want think about if I am being tricked or not.

[1] There are some very talented writers[A] out there who (I assume) cannot do the world building part.

[A] Recent Favorite: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134255/chapters/2292768

My bet is working through an abstraction layer (LLMs) will make crafting a fun game more difficult. The art of designing a (great) game is in the details. English is not sufficient to communicate the individual strokes of a brush on canvas.

Also, thank you for sharing your experience. I recently joined that subreddit just to see what people are creating and I too have been unimpressed.

> It reminds me of the campaign in the 90s against video game manufacturers for "corrupting the youth".

The government did intervene though. They threatened to regulate the industry if the industry didn't regulate itself. So some/all the big industry players got together and created their own independent age rating agency that they all agreed to use.

Whoever was suing won in the outcomes department.

Forgive me for not wanting to write up the history of the game's development. It boils down to product market fit, innovation, and fantasy fulfillment/fun.

See for yourself: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/

I just counted 35 online profiles with nitro. Same ~300 people online currently

They're players, not devs.

Discord subscriptions seem to be working. People like to customize their profile (ie express themselves), even though profiles are not something frequently interacted with (that's the surprising part!)

I have a server (for my game) with about 1000 people. Out of the 300 people logged in, 50 of them have custom profiles.

So, it seems like a good idea for Meta.

Some people, if not most, will at some point look back (and forward) in their life and wonder if they made anything out of it. And what they are really asking is "how much of an impact on others have I made?"

YMMV

You'd have a point if Cloud ^tm didnt take off into a multi billion dollar industry.