NOTE: I just downloaded the game and on my first attempted launch, it complained that the port it wanted was not open. My only option was to close the game. I ran netstat and did not see the port listed, so I tried again. THAT time, it complained about my older video card :-/ The warning is clunky and there’s a typo, too (within -> withing). It says (if I transcribed accurately):

You are using an: NVIDIA GEOFORCE GTX 1080. This video card is currently not recognized withing the recommended specs. We only support a limited amount of NVIDIA GTX graphics cards, all NVIDIA RTX graphics cards or all AMD RX graphics cards since the local AI requires a lot of performance.

So please note that the game might not work properly. Refer to the Steam guide for more information.

When I closed that warning, the game loaded.

The bits that hit me most:

It wasn’t just author profiles that the magazine repeatedly replaced. Each time an author was switched out, the posts they supposedly penned would be reattributed to the new persona, with no editor’s note explaining the change in byline.

authors at TheStreet with highly specific biographies detailing seemingly flesh-and-blood humans with specific areas of expertise — but … these fake writers are periodically wiped from existence and their articles reattributed to new names, with no disclosure about the use of AI.

We caught CNET and Bankrate, both owned by Red Ventures, publishing barely-disclosed AI content that was filled with factual mistakes and even plagiarism;

Wanna be the bigwig on your block? Have I got a product for YOU! Solar Panels! Make your house shine with newfangled tech that’ll be the envy of all your neighbors! Go solar, baby! Stick it to the electric company and make THEM pay for a change. Solar! You’ll be beaming.

ok, I suck at faking ai chat

“Godfather of AI” Geoff Hinton, in recent public talks, explains that one of the greatest risks is not that chatbots will become super-intelligent, but that they will generate text that is super-persuasive without being intelligent, in the manner of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. In a world where evidence and logic are not respected in public debate, Hinton imagines that systems operating without evidence or logic could become our overlords by becoming superhumanly persuasive, imitating and supplanting the worst kinds of political leader.

Why is “superhumanly persuasive” always being done for stupid stuff and not, I don’t know, getting people to drive fuel efficient cars instead of giant pickups and suvs?

After decades of sci-fi/fantasy entertainment to prime us, the primal part of the human brain that reacts to in-group and out-group members suddenly changes in every human and we start reflexively and unintentionally classifying all earth life as friends and space/environmental threats as enemies.

Humanity immediately gets serious about climate change, CO2 reduction, and the like, but we also get way too zealous about deploying space lasers.