You can't demonize Google, in binary fashion, and remain intellectually honest. Economically the big tech relationship is clearly one-sided, but that ignores what the tech companies are actually providing. If we didn't find a need for their products, they wouldn't be streaming billions in revenue. Even before 2017, while deservedly subject to global anti-trust suits, they provided arguably the best and most popular search tool which empowered and connected its literal billions of users. In 2017 Google researchers published "Attention is all you need" for all eyes to read -- without a software patent. This came after a long trajectory of AI investment. This seminal work, more than any other single advance, birthed modern AI, an undeniably powerful and disruptive technology which is largely supplanting Google's search products. While I am supportive of big tech giving back in the form of higher taxation upon their profits, you can't deny the arguably insane research gifts they have bestowed upon all. But you still certainly can ask the question, "is this technology making the world a better place?" as you have suggested.
Freud had a lot to say about excrement and shame -- I think cultural fears are still very resonant here. With modern washers cloth diapers clean extremely well -- you can bury your nose into them afterwards with confidence and not notice the faintest evidence what the diaper was like prior to washing. If you feel you can't, I think that is culture speaking, not reality. You are definitely already well exposed to your family's intestinal bacteria strains so any phobia here is purely psychological. While I admit it was difficult for me to consider buying used cloth diapers, after raising two children I think I wouldn't have a problem doing it now. We found buyers for all of our children's used cloth diapers. They were in great condition. One thing to also keep in mind, typically children have difficulty with bedwetting at the late stages of diaper training, so our diapers at least, were washed dozens of times without being soiled by excrement prior to re-sale.
Conflicts are the least of our worries, and yes llms can handle that well. I’m taking about the things you can’t easily handle, the complexity that slowly overwhelms a codebase with no easy way out except a rewrite.
And a rewrite of a non-trivial application, even with the AI goodness, is still a big proposition and full of all kinds of risk. If you have a trivial application, you probably don’t have much protecting you from someone else vibing up a competing replacement either.
The downvotes on the above post are telling -- the GPL Bolsheviks are girding their loins. Myself, I am nostalgic for "information wants to be free" and find the Bolsheviks to embody a horseshoe alternative form of fascism who, somehow without cognizance of the irony, attempt to redefine the meaning of freedom.
It might simply be a matter of time. Claude Code recently transitioned to a native executable rather seamlessly -- eschewing its npm and Javascript dependencies. I imagine the Desktop may migrate similarly. One motivation might be a somewhat more effective protection against code analysis -- though LLM control of tools like Ghidra might make that point somewhat moot as well.
My dad is 82, and like many in his generation, suffers the curse of the industrious man- he will continue to perform physical feats for which he assumes capability until he injures himself (and possibly others). Driving is just one of these things.
So far, he has gotten operations on his hips, hands, shoulders, and back after overexerting himself while gardening, moving furniture, and... walking. When I ask him to consider the risks of driving, he brushes me off like I'm being ridiculous. It infuriates me. There's no arguing with him. And I'm absolutely gonna get a phone call one day that I'm not gonna like.
Regardless, we're talking about a distribution of abilities, and the number of people who can't drive safely is going to increase dramatically in the near future. The point of this article wasn't to judge all boomers.
It really depends on the style of game. There are gradations here. I think many designers are stuck in a static, controlling posture. Minecraft is an excellent and viral example of an alternative.
I dont think Minecraft is a fractal-like experience. The world may be infinite, but it repeats and each block that world is comprised of has set of rules that dont change. The living entities all follow their own rules. etc.
The costs of interactive AI have interesting effects as the author points out. Much like the lack of variety in music models, 3D asset generation via AI has a long way to go, particularly as studios have no incentive to share their data. But I think AI assistance could at least make some marginal improvements. Take a procedural game like No Man's Sky. There are billions of possible worlds in the game. But, presumably because of team size and/or agile philosophy, they drop these rigid, nearly identical, items and buildings throughout those billions of planets. AI could at least conveniently empower some added incremental complexity (via Claude Code etc.) to their existing asset generation, which lends more believability to these planets. If studios were willing to partner and share data, incredible world generation models, which could be used exclusively as asset generators rather than real time world renderers initially, could be built and dramatically empower designers.
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