Generative AI and Gaming

Author

Bobby Brazen
November 17, 2022

Here's your daily briefing:

  • Interesting thread on how generative AI will affect the world of gaming:

This chart is particularly 🤯. We've thought for a few months that this period really feels like the vertical part of the growth curve, turns out we were onto something:

And here's another, complementary thread on the topic, as well as a piece from A16z:

The Generative AI Revolution in Games

Generative AI is the biggest thing to happen to the game industry since 3D. If you're in games, and not experimenting with it then you're already behind.

https://a16z.com/2022/11/17/the-generative-ai-revolution-in-games/

  • Speaking of A16z, they also wrote about the counter-intuitive fact that automating (seemingly) more complex tasks like creativity and art are proving to be easier for generative AI than things like programming, which seems on the surface to be "simpler" or more straight-forward:

Art Isn't Dead, It's Just Machine-Generated | Andreessen Horowitz

Thanks to generative AI, it appears to be far easier to automate rather difficult creative tasks than to automate relatively simple programming tasks.

https://a16z.com/2022/11/16/creativity-as-an-app/

The short version of the argument (which we tackle in more detail below) is that although a product like GitHub Copilot, in its current form, can make coding somewhat more efficient, it doesn’t obviate the need for capable software developers with programming knowledge. One big reason is that, when it comes to building a program, correctness really matters. If AI generates a program, it still requires a human to verify it is correct — an effort at nearly the same level as creating it to begin with.

On the other hand, anyone who can type can use a model like Stable Diffusion to produce high-quality, one-of-a-kind images in minutes, at many orders of magnitude less cost. Creative work products often do not have strict correctness constraints, and the outputs of the models are stunningly complete. It’s hard not to see a full phase shift in industries that rely on creative visuals because, for many uses, the visuals that AI is able to produce now are already sufficient, and we’re still in the very early innings of the technology.

  • Hugging Face's tagline is "We're on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science," and their new Tasks page couldn't be a better embodiment of that mission. Click on any "task" and you're given a summary of it with examples, use cases, models, datasets, etc.

Tasks - Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

https://huggingface.co/tasks

  • As if Elon Musk's battle against the Twitter bots wasn't tricky enough already, Typefully has integrated an AI-powered "smart writing partner" into their platform:

  • Jim Clyde Monge wrote a Medium piece about how you can make your own avatar using Midjourney v4:

How To Turn Yourself Into Anything With MidJourney’s V4 Model

Putting the latest MidJourney’s V4 model to test. A fun experiment with image-to-image feature.

https://medium.com/mlearning-ai/how-to-turn-yourself-into-anything-with-midjourneys-v4-model-22848f39ce8e

  • Thinkers360 interviewed some thought leaders about their predictions for AI in 2023:

Thinkers360 Predictions Series – 2023 Predictions for Artificial Intelligence

Thinkers360 2023 Predictions are member-sourced from our opt-in B2B thought leader and influencer community with 100M+ followers on social media combined. The 2023 Predictions are part of a series to provide actionable insights for business and technology executives. Thought Leaders & Influencers: To join the world’s largest opt-in B2B thought leader community and influencer marketplace, participate…

https://www.thinkers360.com/thinkers360-predictions-series-2023-predictions-for-artificial-intelligence/

  • New piece from Jim McDonnell about how the near future of AI is "action-driven":

The Near Future of AI is Action-Driven

…and it will look a lot like AGI. LLMs can become extremely powerful by leveraging external cognitive assets and choosing actions.

https://jmcdonnell.substack.com/p/the-near-future-of-ai-is-action-driven

But the best is yet to come. The really exciting applications will be action-driven, where the model acts like an agent choosing actions. And although academics can argue all day about the true definition of AGI, an action-driven LLM is going to look a lot like AGI.

  • Check out this list from Sam Lessin of "ten" AI companies to build (and if you're under 18, cover your eyes when reading #1 🙈) :

Also, check out this recent related thread from Sam on why you shouldn't rush to invest in "generative AI startups just yet:

  • This is a thought-provoking paper on the "meta" idea that we should shift from a focus on learning from data to learning what data we ought to learn from:

  • Cool lil demo of a "universal" chatbot that allows you to ask questions of any website on the internet:

That's it for today! Check out some prompts/images from the Midjourney Discord below.

"Render of Pepefrog fighting Pikachu in the middle of the sea, 8k --v4"

"patchwork collage portrait of a beautiful woman, highly detailed, pop art, high contrast, cinematic --v 4"

"a bull with the europe flag on the body, with golden horns on the horns a african lion, and in the background a big wave and a big flame hunting the bull"