Headphone and earplug sales are booming, but individual efforts to turn down the volume may alter our brains and surrounds in unexpected waysEverywhere you look, it seems, people are resorting to accessories to turn down the volume of life: over-ear headphones on public transport, long-haul flights and in open-plan offices; coloured earplugs nestled discreetly in the concha of concertgoers, bartenders and, if you're a snorer, perhaps the person you share a bed with.Silence is now big business: globally, the noise-cancelling headphones market generated $13.1bn in 2021, a figure that is expected to more than triple to $45.4bn by 2031, according to Allied Market Research data. Continue reading...
Fifty years since the death of the martial arts film superstar, we look at how he inspired generations of games developers - and helped take the beat-'em-up mainstreamHe had this disorder that filled him with too much energy," recalled Robert of his older brother, Bruce Lee, the martial arts movie superstar nicknamed Never Sits Still by his friends and family. Speaking with writer Matthew Polly for his definitive 2018 biography, Robert continued: Bruce was like a wild horse that had been tied up."This quote doubles as a perfect description for the dazzling way in which Lee - who died 50 years ago at 32 from cerebral oedema - fought on-screen. A demonic whirlwind of flying kicks, vengeful, air-popping nunchucks, feral animal noises (something Lee invented to unsettle his opponents) and double-fisted punches that hit enemies with the elegance of a championship fencer, Lee cemented martial arts in the global mainstream. And despite his short life, he smashed through the barrier that previously held back so many Asian actors in Hollywood. Continue reading...
Misleading Twitter handles displaying paid-for icon being used to carry out phishing attacksConsumers who complain of poor customer service on X are being targeted by scammers after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter changed its account verification process.Bank customers and airline passengers are among those at risk of phishing scams when they complain to companies via X. Fraudsters, masquerading as customer service agents, respond under fake X handles and trick victims into disclosing their bank details to get a promised refund. Continue reading...
Research suggests UK homes are uniquely unprepared to cope with rising global temperatures - but there are greener solutions to uncomfortable heat than air conditioningI can honestly say it's the best thing I've ever spent my money on," says 30-year-old Stephen about the unassuming waist-high plastic pillar that sits in the bedroom of his converted bungalow in Nottinghamshire. The retail worker has always found the room uncomfortably hot in summer, and his attempts to cool down using freestanding fans, electric air coolers and reading up on rudimentary fluid dynamics never seemed to cut it.When peak temperatures began creeping towards the 40C (104F) mark a few years ago, he splashed out on a portable air conditioner and has never looked back. If it were to break, I would immediately buy another without a second thought," he says. I don't think I could cope without it in summer now." Continue reading...
With the end of affirmative action, generative AI could democratize' admissions by giving students who don't have tutors or counselors a leg upChatter about artificial intelligence mostly falls into three basic categories: anxious uncertainty (will it take our jobs?); existential dread (will it kill us all?); and simple pragmatism (can AI write my lesson plan?). In this hazy, liminal, pre-disruption moment, there is little consensus as to whether generative AI is a tool or a threat, and few rules for using it properly. For students, this uncertainty feels especially profound. Bans on AI and claims that using it constitutes cheating are now giving way to concerns that AI use is inevitable and probably should be taught in school. Now, as a new college admissions season kicks into gear, many prospective applicants are wondering: can AI write my personal essay? Should it?Ever since the company OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November, students have been testing the limits of chatbots - generative AI tools powered by language-based algorithms - which can complete essay assignments within minutes. The results tend to be grammatically impeccable but intellectually bland, rife with cliche and misinformation. Yet teachers and school administrators still struggle to separate the more authentic wheat from the automated chaff. Some institutions are investing in AI detection tools, but these are proving spotty at best. In recent tests, popular AI text detectors wrongly flagged articles by non-native English speakers, and some suggested that AI wrote the US constitution. In July OpenAI quietly pulled AI Classifier, its experimental AI detection tool, citing its low rate of accuracy". Continue reading...
LinkedIn is not a place to be honest. It's a place to sell your products, your services and most of all yourselfEver notice how fabulous everyone is on LinkedIn?Honored to have shared the stage with such great thought leaders!" posts one keynote speaker, implying that she's also a great thought leader because why else would she be sharing the stage with other great thought leaders? Continue reading...
The Harvard scientist on his search for alien technology, academic jealousy and why we must fund space explorationAbraham Loeb, known as Avi, is a professor of astrophysics at Harvard University and he has done the unthinkable. He has repeatedly been willing to contemplate the existence of nonhuman technology and how it may explain certain perplexing astronomical observations that mainstream science struggles with. Loeb, 61, is the author of Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth, a follow-up to his New York Times bestseller Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. On the day we spoke, the US government was preparing to hold a House of Representatives oversight and accountability committee hearing on UFOs with retired air force officer and former intelligence official David Grusch, who turned whistleblower in June, claiming that the US government had retrieved pieces of crashed alien spacecraft.When it comes to UFOs, why is it always a government cover-up? Why don't astronomers see UFOs - aren't they the people looking at the sky the most?
Group Flannery Associates, backed by prominent investors, quietly buy 55,000 acres of farmland in northern CaliforniaAfter weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates - backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors - has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Its goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy.The project was spearheaded by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former trader for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, and is backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors including Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Linkedin; Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the philanthropic group Emerson Collective and wife of Steve Jobs; Marc Andreessen, an investor and software developer; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payment processor Stripe; and the entrepreneurs Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, the Times reported. Continue reading...
The Colorado-based photographer on the importance of capturing the little thingsIt was only last year, but Kelley Dallas is already a little nostalgic for her daughter's time with her violin. Emmy, pictured here practising on her bedroom floor in the mid-morning light, had begun playing aged six, three years earlier.The Colorado-based photographer has developed a careful eye for these shafts of light now, their ability to highlight a subject becoming something of a signature style for her. My eye has developed to seek these slices out, but they create extremes that an iPhone automatically tries to balance out," Dallas says. I didn't want that, so I manually brought down the exposure to correctly capture the shaft of light and to let the rest fall into shadow." Continue reading...
by Kari Paul in Oakland and Dani Anguiano in Los Ange on (#6E66G)
By posting his mugshot, Trump joins Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene in transforming site now known as XMore than two years after Donald Trump was banned from Twitter over concerns that his words would incite violence, Elon Musk welcomed the former president's return in a move that showed how rapidly the site has transformed under his ownership.Musk purchased the platform, now known as X, last year with the intention of restoring free speech". He had described Twitter's decision to bar Trump in the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the Capitol a mistake", and within weeks of his takeover promptly ended the ban. Continue reading...
Big events place a strain on networks but when 6G arrives, many of today's problems will evaporateThis bank holiday weekend is one of the last big dates in the UK summer festival calendar, with Reading and Leeds, All Points East and Creamfields North expected to draw huge crowds.With large attendance numbers at festivals come overloaded mobile phone networks, resulting in friends losing touch with one another and parents being unable to contact their teenagers on their first big weekend away at Reading and Leeds, long a bacchanalian rite of passage for post-results GCSE and A-level students. Continue reading...
Some concerns about artificial intelligence are very speculative, but there are genuine risks, says the man aiming to demystify the technology in the Royal Institution Christmas lecturesIt has been touted as an existential risk on a par with pandemics. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, at least one pioneer is not losing sleep over such worries.Prof Michael Wooldridge, who will be delivering this year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures, said he was more concerned AI could become the boss from hell, monitoring employees' every email, offering continual feedback and even - potentially - deciding who gets fired. Continue reading...
Chicago Tribune and Australian newspapers the Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald also appear to have disallowed web crawler from maker of Chat GPTNews outlets including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have blocked a tool from OpenAI, limiting the company's ability to continue accessing their content.OpenAI is behind one of the best known artificial intelligence chatbots, ChatGPT. Its web crawler - known as GPTBot - may scan webpages to help improve its AI models. Continue reading...
Global summit on AI safety planned for autumn, as UK tries to cement image as being home of transformative technologies'Rishi Sunak's global summit on the safety of artificial intelligence this autumn will be hosted at Bletchley Park, the home of top-secret codebreakers during the second world war.The first major gathering on the technology will bring together governments, leading AI firms and experts to discuss how its risks can be mitigated through internationally coordinated action. Continue reading...
I shrugged off my dodgy knee and the grey in my beard. But if my beloved animated graphics are no longer fashionable, does this make me obsolete too?At the risk of sounding like a show-off, I'm really good at gifs. Not the pre-packaged kind: there's no man-blinking-in-polite-disbelief in my repertoire, no woman-in-a-turquoise-top-doing-a-spit-take, and certainly no Ron Burgundy saying: That escalated quickly." We're talking bespoke, artisanal gifs, hand-selected for each occasion. Sometimes, I even make my own, noting down a bon mot or a wry facial expression from a TV show and saving it for a special occasion. Super Hans from Peep Show saying: The secret ingredient is crime"? It's not a multipurpose gif, like Homer Simpson backing slowly into a hedge, but that only makes its rare deployment more effective.There's only one problem with this, and if you're gen Y or younger you're probably already doing a TikTok to explain it to me: gifs aren't cool any more. Middle-aged people use gifs now. Twitter and WhatsApp have gif search bars that help even the most technophobic users find a little girl having a sugar rush at a baseball game, or Steve Carell yelling: No!" They're universal, therefore lame. I don't make the rules, as Natasha Lyonne says in a gif from a show I haven't seen. I wish I did.Joel Snape is a writer and fitness expert Continue reading...
by Hollie Richardson, Nell Frizzell and Priya Bharadi on (#6E4AA)
In this week's newsletter: Steve Coogan's presenter turned podcaster re-enters the studio for a third season of From the Oasthouse. Plus: five of the best cross-generational podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe Eras: Kylie Minogue
Charity Full Fact finds more than 1,200 false posts on topics from deadly snakes to serial killers at largeMembers of local Facebook groups have been exposed to hundreds of hoax posts, including false reports of missing children or deadly snakes on the loose, a study shows.The fact-checking charity Full Fact found more than 1,200 false posts on the social media site's community groups across the world, and warned that these were probably just the tip of the iceberg". Continue reading...
US-based semiconductor association claims Chinese tech firm has acquired at least two plants and is constructing three othersHuawei has been accused by a leading association of semiconductor manufacturers of building a collection of secret chip-making facilities across China to help the technology company bypass US sanctions, according to a report.The Chinese tech firm moved into chip production last year and was receiving an estimated $30bn (23.7bn) in state funding from the government, the Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association was quoted as saying by Bloomberg, adding that Huawei had acquired at least two existing plants and was building three others. Continue reading...
If inventor Franky Zapata can make it work, the Airscooter will be the personal flying machine' every misanthrope dreams ofName: The Airscooter.Age: Brand new. Continue reading...
Move by the billionaire owner of the social media site may be an attempt to drive up subscription of the app's premium serviceSocial media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is poised to rework how news links appear on the platform, the latest change spearheaded by its owner, Elon Musk, to impact news publishers on the site.The news was first reported by Fortune on Monday and confirmed in a post from Musk later in the day: This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics [sic]," he wrote. The platform will no longer display headlines and other text from news links and show only the main image, limiting a user's ability to see the contents before clicking. Continue reading...
Twitter killer' social media platform experienced initial boom in sign-ups when it launched in JulyMeta has launched a web version of its Twitter killer" social media platform Threads that can be used without an app, as it attempts to revive itself after a recent drop in usage.The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp launched the microblogging site in July, widely understood as an alternative for users disillusioned with Elon Musk-owned Twitter, which has since rebranded as X. Continue reading...
From trips into the vast universe of Starfield, or the Islamic golden age, to a cuddly cat caper, these 10 games will be the big players in the coming monthsA truly enormous science-fiction role-playing game, the product of more than a decade's imaginings at Elder Scrolls developer Bethesda. It promises more than a thousand planets to visit, a space-station city of awe-inspiring proportions - and space fights that feel exciting.
Researchers focused on turtles and tortoises from sites of nuclear testsTortoise and turtle shells can be used to study nuclear contamination, scientists have found.Just as tree rings can provide snapshots of the Earth's climate, and ice cores can give us information on past temperature, researchers found that the layers of shells can be used as a time stamp of periods with nuclear fallout. Continue reading...
Remember when dating apps were just for love and sex? Now they're all about networkingName: Dating app job hunters.Age: A few years old. Continue reading...
Other gaming events may have hit hurdles, but gamescom in Cologne is expecting record number of exhibitorsLike Glastonbury and Primavera for music lovers, huge video game conventions have traditionally been a beloved gathering place for gamers, and a focal point of the year for gaming news.At events such as E3 in Los Angeles and gamescom in Germany, hundreds of thousands of fans would turn up to play forthcoming games in cavernous halls full of light and sound. But where music festivals have roared back since the Covid pandemic, video game conventions have struggled to regain their former essential place in the calendar. Continue reading...
This is Tobe Hooper's putrid amoral universe in film perfectly replicated as an interactive terror ridePC, PS4/5, Xbox; Sumo Digital/Gun InteractiveIt's been 50 years since Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre lit up cinema screens with its propulsive mix of desolation, buzzing tension and extreme violence. Saw-wielding maniac Leatherface is still up there with Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger as one of the most iconic depictions of murderous evil that cinema has ever produced - so it's strange we've had to wait this long for a game to truly get to grips with this seminal work of rural horror.Like 2017's Friday the 13th, which recently had its servers shut down for good, and the still hugely successful Dead By Daylight, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TCM) is an asymmetric online multiplayer game, in which players take part as either victims or killers. In those titles only one player gets to be the bad guy, but in TCM, three participants play together as the film's evil Sawyer family, working together to hunt down and slay their four desperate captives, who are all trying to escape. Among the victims, Connie can instantly pick locks and Leland can stun enemies, while on the family side the hitchhiker can set traps and new character Sissy can poison things. Players gain XP for upgrades after each round, whether their side wins or not. Continue reading...
An explosion of data use has led to massive infrastructure costs. Is the era of cheap all-you-can-watch content about to end? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereThe writers and actors strikes in Hollywood have largely focused on streamers like Netflix paying more for the work the artists contribute to the services. On the tech side of things, meanwhile, a similar fight is brewing.Far from the Hollywood picket lines, telecommunications executives are looking at booming broadband use largely driven by video. Streaming video is one of - if not the main reason - for the explosion in data use across networks in the past 10 years, and platforms like Netflix are some of the main culprits. Continue reading...
Even as some firms are mandating workers come into the office, work from home has permanently changed the work landscapeThe work from home backlash is in full swing. In what seemed like an oxymoron brought to life, the video conferencing company Zoom has asked employees to return to the office. Amazon is reportedly tracking employees to make sure they are at their desks.The two companies are just the latest to sour on work from home (WFH), but does this mean the impending end of WFH as we know it? Continue reading...
CMA opens new investigation into $69bn acquisition as tech firm offers to sell cloud gaming rights to UbisoftMicrosoft has made changes to its proposed takeover of the video game maker Activision Blizzard as it tries to win over the UK competition regulator that blocked the $69bn (54bn) deal.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Tuesday said it would investigate the new proposals, under which Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights outside Europe for existing Activision desktop computer and console games, or for new games released by the developer during the next 15 years. Continue reading...
Charles Martinet was the original voice of the Italian plumber, but is now stepping back' from voicing characters for the Japanese game giantThe voice of Mario is stepping back" from the role after 27 years as the Nintendo character, the Japanese game company has announced.Charles Martinet, 67, was the original voice of the Italian plumber, starting with the 1996 instalment Super Mario 64. He also provided other voices in the game series including Mario's twin brother Luigi and the villainous Wario and Waluigi. Continue reading...
Almost one in three people aged 18-34 have been messaged by staff after giving personal details to a businessAlmost one in three people aged 18-34 have received unwanted romantic contact after giving their personal information to a business, a UK poll has shown.The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has called for recipients of such texts to come forward to help the regulator gather evidence of the impact of this phenomenon.The ICO has an online form for people who want to report an experience of unwanted contact. Continue reading...
Platform's users voice concern as it removes pictures and links on posts made before December 2014Elon Musk, the owner of the app formerly known as Twitter, has said the social media site may fail", after a glitch caused pictures posted before December 2014 to be deleted.In a post on the site, renamed X, Musk said: The sad truth is that there are no great social networks' right now." Continue reading...
Hustler DIY kit car was crafted by former Rolls-Royce engineer and school woodwork teacher in 1980sIt has had one careful owner, has never failed an MOT and there is no way the body work is going to rust.But whoever buys John Brazier's car at auction in Bath next month will have to get used to some pretty odd looks when they take it out for a spin. Continue reading...
While the far right claims artificial intelligence has become too woke', experts argue it's not a sentient being with its own viewpointsWhen Elon Musk introduced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, the billionaire entrepreneur took a question from the rightwing media activist Alex Lorusso. ChatGPT had begun editorializing the truth" by giving weird answers like that there are more than two genders", Lorusso posited. Was that a driver behind Musk's decision to launch xAI, he wondered.I do think there is significant danger in training AI to be politically correct, or in other words training AI to not say what it actually thinks is true," Musk replied. His own company's AI on the other hand, would be maximally true" he had said earlier in the presentation. Continue reading...
No, gaming isn't a niche, violence-inducing pastime, it's the defining entertainment medium of our time. We should treat it as suchOver the past few years, it feels as if there has been a subtle shift in the way that we view video games. That classic trope of games being a socially isolating experience, primarily within the purview of angry, pallid teenage boys, seems increasingly tired and outdated - because it is. Video games are no longer a niche, nerdy pastime. Much the opposite: they are one of, or perhaps the defining entertainment medium of the 21st century. One estimate puts the total number of people across the globe who play video games at 3.09 billion, with data from the US suggesting that two-thirds of American adults play them, with a fairly even split between men and women.But, even though we've moved past the most strongly negative characterisations of video games and become more accustomed to them, they're still viewed with a certain level of suspicion. And we're still presented with a seemingly endless cycle of scare stories in the news about their detrimental effects. I'm a firm believer in the huge potential of video games as a force for good in our lives, and I've written before about the benefits they can have - their ability to connect us and to allow us to explore and understand our emotions and attitudes. Nevertheless, the broad-level discussion about their impact seems to be at an impasse: games are becoming ever more popular, while commenters are often stuck in a simplistic back and forth about whether they are good or bad for us.Pete Etchells is a professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University. He is the author of Lost in a Good Game and Unlocked Continue reading...
The World Robot Conference 2023 has opened in China, aimed at promoting scientific and technological progress. The event is a forum for participants to network and seek resources for further innovation. There's also the opportunity for ice-cream served by a robot Continue reading...
More Consumer Champions readers share their frustrating experiences of the email glitchLast weekend's Guardian Money article about Virgin Media customers being left without access to vital emails for several weeks prompted a sizeable response from other readers saying me, too".The sense of frustration was writ large across the letters sent in to us. Continue reading...
China is the world's biggest gaming market, where a culture of creativity has flourished - so please do not conflate companies and players with a repressive regime that cracks down on individual expressionOne of the most popular video games in the world today is Chinese. Not that everyone would be aware of the fact, or would care, but that game is Genshin Impact and it was created by Shanghai-based miHoYo. Its style and characters are greatly influenced by anime, and many players might have thought Genshin was Japanese-developed; it is telling that miHoYo is inspired by that country's culture. Despite being the world's biggest video games market, China still remains relatively minor as an international cultural force in games.Video games are one of the few creative media not dominated by the US. In consoles, two of the platform holders are from Japan, while developers in the UK and Europe are powerhouses of creativity. But the world's biggest games company is Chinese giant Tencent, which is often the target of racism and online criticism. While massive corporations don't need huge sympathy, as a Briton of Chinese heritage, it does pain me when Chinese games companies are falsely conflated with the Chinese government. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhich person has had the greatest impact on the course of the 21st century so far? Alf Henriksen, Odense, DenmarkSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...
The elderly, the poor and the unbanked are among the marginalised groups being excluded from our cashless societyWhatever the word is for the opposite of heartwarming, it certainly applies to the story of Ruth and Peter Jaffe. The elderly couple from Ealing, west London, made headlines last week after being charged 110 by Ryanair for printing out their tickets at Stansted airport.Even allowing for the exorbitant cost of inkjet printer ink, 55 quid for each sheet of paper is a shockingly creative example of punitive pricing. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6DZRV)
The lowdown on handsets, networks and parental controls, if your child is ready for a first mobile or an upgrade is requiredIf you have decided it is time for your child to have their first mobile phone, or they are due an upgrade, the choice can be bewildering.There are various things to consider, from the handset and the mobile service to go with it, to parental controls and how well the phone fits in with the devices you already use. Continue reading...
Loss of protective feature may bring it into conflict with safety guidelines on App Store and Google PlaySocial media company X, formerly known as Twitter, will remove a protective feature that lets users block other accounts, Elon Musk has said in another controversial move for the company he bought last year.The block function allows a user to restrict specific accounts from contacting them, seeing their posts or following them. Block is going to be deleted as a feature', except for DMs [direct messages]," Musk said in a post on the platform, saying later: It makes no sense." Continue reading...
Concern over shortage of reliable news after articles blocked on Facebook in response to tech lawMeta began blocking news from appearing across its platforms in Canada this month after prolonged negotiations with the government over Canada's new Online News Act.As Canada grapples with its worst ever wildfire season, thousands of Canadians are could now be affected by a shortage of news content across Meta's platforms. Continue reading...
Masayoshi Soken has quietly ripped up the rulebook for the latest edition of Square Enix's epic seriesIf we have to bring the old world crashing down in order to build us a new one," says Cid, Final Fantasy XVI's gravel-voiced deuteragonist in the first act of the game, what say you? Are you with me?"Cid delivers this dramatic line as a musical refrain that any Final Fantasy player will recognise ascends and descends ominously in the background. It's the most recent interpretation of the series' famous Prelude, originally played by a simple digital harp working its way up and down a scale. Legend has it that this number was a last-minute addition to the very first game in the series (more than 35 years ago) by composer Nobuo Uematsu. It took about 10 minutes to create, and has since been performed by orchestras all over the world, and used in the games bearing the indomitable Final Fantasy brand. Continue reading...
New missions, a fresh 3v3v3 mode and an update of the popular zombie killing side game, Activision is going full bore for what could be John Price's last standAs well timed as any real-life military operation, when autumn approaches, Activision reveals a new Call of Duty title. On Thursday night, the publisher announced Modern Warfare III, the latest (and last?) in its series of military shooters reimagining the trio of hugely successful Modern Warfare titles from the early 2010s. The game will launch on 10 November, on PC, PlayStation and Xbox with development led by Sledgehammer Games, which worked on the original Modern Warfare III with series originator, Infinity Ward.Acting as a direct sequel to last year's Modern Warfare II reboot, the game will see dramatically moustached hero John Price and his Task Force 141 taking on long-running antagonist Vladimir Makarov, very much the Moriarty of Russian ultra nationalism. The Campaign mode will feature new Open Combat Missions, which offer players various routes and options depending on their preferred play styles. Continue reading...
This meditative game from Transylvanian studio Stoneskip has you reliving the memories of a young woman about to leave her family homeSimpler Times is pretty much the opposite of 2021's hit game Unpacking: here, it is all about packing up. Taina is getting ready to leave her family home to go to university, and as she packs away her belongings, each cherished object takes her on a contemplative journey. She's having second thoughts," says game director Dragos Matkovski. She's having doubts about moving into this next chapter of her life. And the reason why you, as a player, revisit her memories is to find out that, actually, she's doing the right thing."Matkovski was born in Moldova but now lives in Transylvania in Romania, where his studio, Stoneskip, is based. The studio itself was born around this project," he says. The origin of the game was simply me experimenting with 3D art." In the midst of the Covid pandemic, Matkovski idly began recreating the room he was stuck in as a 3D model, then posted his progress online. The positive feedback he received persuaded him to turn his room into something people could play.Simpler Times will be out on PC in 2024 Continue reading...
Collaboration rather than command-and-control is key to creating culturally and ethically positive systemsOne of the first images of AI I encountered was a white, spectral, hostile, disembodied head. It was in the computer game Neuromancer, programmed by Troy Miles and based on William Gibson's cyberpunk novel. Other people may have first encountered HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey or Samantha from Spike Jonze's Her.Images from pop culture influence people's impressions of AI, but culture has an even more profound relationship to it. If there's one thing to take away from this article, it is the idea that AI systems are not objective machines, but instead based in human culture: our values, norms, preferences, and behaviours in society. These aspects of our culture are reflected in how systems are engineered. So instead of trying to decide whether AI systems are objectively good or bad for society, we need to design them to reflect the ethically positive culture we truly want. Continue reading...
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