this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, we should prepare for the coming of AI. However, we overestimated the rate of AI development. Iirc 80% of investors lost money from investing in AI companies because the technology is not up to scratch yet. I mean, how many people asked something from ChatGPT and gave you wrong answers frequently?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

As a general intelligence tool yeah it's not good. But for gemerating art or replicating voices, it's much more usable, especially when you can spend some time tweaking it a bit or making small changes to the output to get close enough to what you want. If that process is cheaper than hiring real people for the job (or if it's faster) that's going to be a huge motivator for producers to cut jobs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The only protection we could possibly have HAS to be implemented by the government, look how Germany handles their workforce. They have a worker's council, you can't just lay off people or fire tons of people nope. Workers are protected. Here in the USA, people are just servants, building pyramids, and then tossed to the street.

My idea: if a company employs over 50 employees, it should be ILLEGAL to outsource any job overseas, or replace them with AI. Example, voice actors. Should not be legal. Small studios / indie, should be perfectly legal since these are individuals that struggle to get started.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Your idea is one of the specific reasons many companies try to label everyone as an "independent contractor". Especially people like voice actors are not "employees", and thus do not count as such for your idea.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Yeah, and unions would change that. Negotiating to ensure that people are hired as full-time employees with benefits, not as independent contractors or consultants with no rights, and finally be treated as human beings.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Unions can organize without the government having any protections. It's very difficult to organize that way. It's difficult to organize even with the most union-friendly government imaginable. But either way, it can be done.

Unions in the US have been shot by police at before. Hard to have less government protection than that.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have sympathy for voice actors, the situation is obviously complex for them. But, and I've said this numerous times to numerous people, AI voice work is probably going to end up being cheaper and much more voluminous. That's exactly what developers need for procedurally generated games where they want to see "all" of the characters voiced.

I'm not saying anyone should try to use AI to voice main characters in standard video games. However, this isn't about standard video games.

The fact is, mass voice work in procedurally generated games is something that can only ever be accomplished with AI.

The whole Rogue-like genre is constantly evolving. And yeah, a lot of the development is bad. If you're in that scene, you probably know what I'm talking about - lots of dead end projects, lots of pointless feature sets, lots of pointless busywork being disguised as game mechanics, slot machine nonsense, etc, ad nauseam. Nonetheless, AI generated voice work is obviously going to be used there at some point.

I have a hard time believing that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs to AI voice work. The voice work generated through AI is not comparable to what people can do. Again, that isn't the issue. The economy is in the dumps, and AI is the only way to afford voice work for games that are designed around procedurally generated voice work.

You can be upset at losing your job. But, throwing a wrench at a wrench because you think the wrench is screwing you, is just stupid. Corporations might screw you. But, the technology itself is just technology.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Congrats, you completely missed the point. Maybe read the actual article, before going on a rant that's only tangentially related?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

No, I know what the article is. I'm talking about the conversation of AI voice work in general as tangential to the topic.

Maybe don't be so presumptive or act like an indecent asshole to people just because they aren't parroting the same shit you are?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Disppointed there are no insert

Greedy Corpo:

"Aah yes, 👐 A.I. 👐 we have dismissed those claims"

Jokes aside, at least in regards to Mass Effect both voice actors bring something to the game for me

Although, I admit female shepard is consistently better throughout the triology, male shepard has his charm as Mark Meer improved on his performance throughout the trilogy. The human element can do much to elevate a weaker performance and in its own way leave a stronger impact, at least for me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The Elcor are really where the series shines for depth of acting.

Emotional; this was my favorite game series for a long time. Excited; hopefully the upcoming one will live up to the series' name.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

To be fair the greatness of experiencing Elcor Hamlet was intended to be seen through his actions not emotions.

[Regretfully and with much sorrow] One cannot truly experience it in its 14 hour splendour

[Restrained Optimism and sadness] It will be a different game considering the people behind it and the aftermath of the trilogy. [Wistful Contentment] Having the next Mass Effect have some grounded world building and, if need be, mix elements to a compromise of old and new

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Elated; Elcor Hamlet was the first version I truly understood.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

[Indubiously] Forta would be filled with pride knowing that. [Bewildered] Imagining having to script all of Hamlet with all that pretext

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

While I like Mark Meer for his voice work in other Bioware games (Jade Empire for sure, also I don't dislike maleshep at all) and his work on stuff like the irrelevant show, Jennifer Hale is just fantastic to the point where renegade femshep is to me the cannon version of Shepard

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

That is fair, I prefer renegade femshep as well. Jennifer Hale, for me, does her renegade lines with more menace and she carries authority better.

Male Shepard, I feel, does the vulnerable moments well, especially in 3... maybe it is a bias in the display of male lead vulnerability. I feel like Mark Meer does the more meme-worthy comedic moments better.

Generally I lean towards light hearted paragon MaleShep and badass renegade FemShep on voice preferance

Jade Empire, takes me back. Great game and had a nice morality system that effected how your character developed with skills and how the playable character interacted with the world and how it had a strong effect on type the ending that would play out.

Also thank you for the link, will have a look

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think reasonable people know it won't work like that and ultimately you can't make this stuff without humans.

The real answer is remembering that ALL of this stuff, even the farms full of AI running Nvidia cards are RUN BY HUMANS.

The "means of production" (I'm sure that won't piss brigaders off) is still controllable by the masses.

Like wake the fuck up. Either you sleep walk into a few decades long mess of boring LLM stuff and destroyed commercial art. Or you form unions at every level.

Right from the power company that cuts power to poor areas to power server farms or the developers at EA writing the pipelines for LLM training.

Every single group needs to say no or stop or whatever.

It's totally possible. Anyone that tells you differently is stealing from you and destroying your future.

https://cwa-union.org/ here's one to start..

Anyone one of you reading this that could get affected by this (can't think of anyone who isn't honestly) needs to stop and take 20 mins to find something to do about it, or you're just complicit by inaction. (And in my mind a shitty person)

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The biggest thing companies want to do with AI is infinite cheap content. They want generate a movie or other entertainment for a 10th or even 20th of the cost while burning a state's worth of energy. They're going to try and generate a successful movie from models that are trained on previously successful movies. And, they'll get it.

At least at first. Eventually, even we'll burn out from endless selection of predictable movies and other entertainment. And, I'm not talking just once a year. More like once a month. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, they'll learn that the attention economy is not infinite. There is a limit of people, time, and money. They're putting most of their eggs in the this basket and I hope it smashes to pieces.

AI isn't here to improve anything. It's here to open a path to infinite growth. Infinite entertainment, infinite weaponizing, infinite whatever. More predictable, infinite growth. Problem with that is that we're slowing as a race and sooner or later it will start shrinking. The more they try to take, the quicker this is going to happen.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

we’ll burn out from endless selection of predictable movies and other entertainment

We aren't already doing that? Even without AI, most of today's writers suck ass, and corporate meddling has stomped out risk taking. Writers have no chance to build experience with good shows with longevity. With no risk, there is no creativity.

All of the good series were ones from cable TV. Breaking Bad, Sopranos, old Star Trek, Mr. Robot, Babylon 5, House, Rick and Morty, Game of Thrones (even if it ended badly), Better Call Saul, The Expanse (which died immediately after it switched to Amazon), Gravity Falls. About the only streaming series I really enjoyed was Loki, and that only lasted two seasons. Anything else might have a good first season, but they chop out any sense of character development by making these season 6-8 episodes long. No episodic content. No character development. Just go go go towards the seasonal end goal. And then get cancelled, because they didn't get a chance to shake out the mediocre ideas and improve their direction. Can you imagine Star Trek:TNG being represented by only their first season, and then cancelled as a result of that?

All of the recent good movies were from directors that had a chance to take risks back in the 2000s, and are now given full creative control to do what they are good at. Dune was a great movie, but it simply adapted the source material, and was given enough budget and resources and creative control to Denis to produce what it needed to be. How many good directors will be left when the old guard retires?

All of the good games are from indie series now. Concord is being getting review-wrecked and shat on, while people focus more of their attention on an fucking asset-flip game about a squirrel with a gun. All of the good bigger studios are gone, fully absorbed into the Microsoft/ZeniMax/WB/EA empire. Only the first or second-time indie game developers are the ones producing good games.

Hell, at this point, maybe AI would do a better job than the shit that's out there. I doubt it, though. It's too half-baked right now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I am waiting for an AI model and corresponding tools to generate my own anime and manga. No more stupid open endings, no more infinite story they stop producing because who knows, no more "I was in the same room as a girl, OH NO! Someone might have seen me, I'm so embarrassed!".

I almost wish I could take existing anime, put it in a machine and make it better. That should actually become a thing, use AI to make your favorite TV shower more to your liking. Someone needs to create this. Bad ending? Fix that. Bad dialog? Fix that. Change gender on all characters? Fix that as well. Foul langage? Easy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sure. Let's protect the proper culture. Like Fast and Furious 10, or the 60th marvel superhero movie rehash :P

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Yeah modern "blockbuster" movies and "AAA" games might as well be AAi generated.

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