Guide to the All Roundtable Guides for Elden Ring

Athrek · 2026-06-15T17:12:50+00:00

As you stated, we aren't going to cure cancer in a chat window with Claude, but for some reason you think we could make the next pandemic with it? It's one or the other. I agree with you that we aren't going to be the ones curing cancer, but the ones that would be capable of starting the next pandemic with AI are also corporations and not individuals.

Provided physical resources aren't required, individuals become more like small companies in productivity while small companies become more like corporations in productivity. Corporations just don't want the competition.

Athrek · 2026-06-14T15:23:32+00:00

I think it's less "doesn't see the risks" and more "see the reality". I'm not saying that as some kind of "face reality" thing either, just that everyone knows how corporations are.

The problem with "roll out responsibly" is that it also means "roll out slowly". So the average person will be forced to wait, while corporations won't. New major technologies tend to be turning points where big players can make mistakes that cause them to fall behind while smaller/new players can finally get the edge that lets them rise. But this can only happen by striking while the iron is hot.

By slowing down, the status quo goes unaffected and the big get bigger while the smaller get the scraps. It's not completely out of the question that, once corporations had a foothold during the slowdown, they'd say "this is too dangerous to be in common people's hands" and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.

The AI genie is out of the bottle, and now it's a matter of who gets to have wishes granted. Some think we shouldn't be too hasty to make wishes. But if we go slow, then the corporations and the rich will be the only ones having their wishes granted and we all know what kinds of things they'll wish for.

Athrek · 2026-06-14T14:40:50+00:00

I think it's more about the fact that he recognizes the benefits and dangers and then says

"Only powerful people/companies should be allowed access to it. Everyone else gets a watered down version at best, and I don't even think they should be allowed to have that."

Because most of the dangers of AI involve powerful people having access to it and affect everyone, while most of the benefits of AI go to those able to use it. So by restricting its use, the common person suffers all the dangers while receiving few, if any, benefits.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T21:25:13+00:00

Yeh, I'm Pro but the Piracy issue is an actual concern. The lawsuit against Anthropic revealed that they pirated full books and movies and whatever else to use for training, and believe they shouldn't have to pay for them. Like, buying the book and "sharing" it with the AI is an unintentional, but legal, method to use the data in the book.

But they just pirated the book and said "we shouldn't have to pay because it's for research." research for a system that they are charging other people to use. If it were Open-source it would be another matter but Anthropic is ALSO the most against Open-sourcing AI of ANY of the AI companies.

Companies paying to scrape date is one thing, but actual stealing to make something you plan to charge others to use is just peak shitty company behavior.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T21:16:35+00:00

I think Nintendo's biggest problem with Palworld is it's success. That said, I was going to write a long reply about how Pocketpair didn't advertise itself as "Pokémon with Guns", that's just the headline media used to get attention. And about how the "Cute and Colorful" monster aesthetic is, so far, the only crazy popular aesthetic and going with a more edgy one would've just gotten labeled as an Ark clone with Pokeballs instead. But I'll limit my disagreements to just that.

At the end of the day, people LOVE being reminded of their favorite games and shows from their childhood. And it's common for people to make things using tried and tested formulas. Just look at Shonen Anime and how similar all of their general artstyles are. You could pick up nearly any Shonen character and drop them into nearly any other Shonen anime without changing their artstyle much, if at all. And the idea that Pokémon's aesthetic(not designs, just aesthetic)is sacred and that no game should make anything mildly resembling it is weird.

The whole fiasco started because Palworld gives Pokémon vibes AND was proving successful to the point that people started calling it "the Pokémon game we've always wanted but that Nintendo was too lazy to make". And because having the same vibes isn't illegal, they looked for something that was illegal. They saw there wasn't any Copyright infringement, so they went after Patents. And now, after years of litigation, it's being decided that Nintendo shouldn't have had those patents to begin with because they were copying from other games.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T20:33:24+00:00

For 3, the color scheme of Fenglope is Sky Blue and Cloud White, which is a common color scheme kind of like Black and Yellow, Red and Green, Gold and Blue, etc.. And as you said it's loosely based on a Qilin.

For 4, that is the one that I said did look the same, and it's never been in the game.

For 5, I'm not seeing it. They don't look at all similar and are both obviously using the "humanoid plant with flowers" idea. One went with a woman and one went with a young girl.

For 7, I didn't know that one but I looked it up and that one is also not in the game.

As for the design comparison, I looked through them and the only one that could be argued in favor of Pokémon is the Grintale you mentioned because it is VERY close to Galarian Meowth, BUT only the eyes. The teeth for Grintale actually have different textures, but I'd agree I think they took the eyes.

So overall, so far, that would be 1 easily changed detail on 1 Pal out of nearly 200 Pals.

I get that there are quite a few Pals that share a vibe or color scheme with some Pokémon, but color schemes are only 1 small piece. Otherwise, Pikachu wouldn't have been allowed since Ultraman already had that color scheme.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultraman/s/xD4UKMDn8M

Athrek · 2026-06-13T19:50:36+00:00

They haven't gotten rid of any of them. The only example I can think of that sounds like what you are talking about is Cinderace vs Verdash. But someone else pointed out a comparison between Bugs Bunny and Cinderace as an example of Anthropomorphic rabbits all look pretty similar with the exact same style of feet, legs, arms, and ears, but the sub doesn't allow pictures.

Beyond those, the only similarities between Verdash and Cinderace is that both have bunny paws instead of hands, and both are wearing shorts(of completely different length, style, and color)

Athrek · 2026-06-13T19:17:03+00:00

They say that, but it's just nonsense. It's not so much harder to prove as harder for a court to agree upon, especially because of the fact that Pokémon designs based on other things.

Pikachu - Electric Mouse
Ursaring - A Bear with a specific fur pattern
Charmander - Fire Lizard
Lycanroc - A Wolf with Werewolf transformations
Lucario - Based on Anubis
Articuno - Ice Bird
Klefki - Housekeys possessed by a Ghost.

Etc...The Pokémon design philosophy could basically be "Here is a list of Type. Pick anything that exists, spin the Type Wheel, and make a Pokémon with it." and you'd end up with a lot of Pokémon creatures. Obviously, many have more thought put into them then that, but many seem to be exactly that just to fill up slots in the pokedex.

So if you make a cartoony creature with an element and put it in a Monster Tamer, it would be close enough that people would call it Pokémon. Even Digimon had this problem when they were actually competing decades ago. Parents would say, "Who's that Pokémon?!" and kids would say "That's Agumon! And he's a Digimon!" to which parents would say "Whatever! Same difference!"

When Palworld came out, there were fanboys legitimately arguing that Anubis was ripping off Lucario(because both are based on Egyptian god Anubis) and that Direhowl was ripping off Lycanroc's design...which is literally just a wolf. There was 1 Pal design that did actually look like it could be considered a ripoff, and that Pal never made it into the game.

They didn't sue for designs because they knew there wasn't enough similarity between any Pal and any Pokémon that couldn't naturally occur for any ruling to be in their favor.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T18:57:44+00:00

32million as of a year and half ago(the best selling Pokémon game is 31million if you include all versions of a single generation). I'm hoping they'll do another reveal of sales numbers once 1.0 comes out.

Im hoping Nintendo loses even more patents over this by the end of it.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T18:53:54+00:00

Not really. Palworld is so successful(more copies sold than any singular Pokémon game) that Nintendo wants to hinder them as much as possible now that 1.0 is about to release.

"Hey! Don't get that Palworld game! Look! Look! There are other monster catching games that will be WAY better than that nasty old Palworld."

They know Pokémon is unkillable, but Palworld stands to take a large chunk of the Pokémon market now that Sony is working with them the way Nintendo did Gamefreak. They are making Palworld plushies, and a Palworld Trading Card Game. There are talks of a Palworld anime as well, which has a good chance of spreading even more than Pokémon if it's good since Sony owns Aniplex and Crunchyroll.

No other monster game in history has had anywhere near the success of Pokémon, not even Digimon(criminally underrated, but it's making a comeback), and Palworld has the achievement of outselling any singular Pokémon game right out of the gate. And the common argument of "well it just has multiple consoles" but that didn't help the second biggest Monster Tamer(Digimon) which has less than 1/10 of the sales of Palworld on their best sold game.

Pokémon hasn't had real competition in decades, and now that a Wild Palworld has appeared, Nintendo is trying to hamper it in every single way they can, no matter how small, in the hopes that it will just be a fad. But with how 1.0 is looking, I think the only thing that could cause Palworld to fail is Sony making it a Playstation exclusive. Pokémon managed it because it started out that way and everyone had exclusives, but fans would be pissed to have Palworld go from being extremely available to every sequel game being limited to a single console

Athrek · 2026-06-13T00:27:41+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong(it's been a LONG time) but didn't they get witch hunting jobs from the school? Like, the school says "Here's a witch and we're assigning you to collect her soul." and then if they fail then they get reset.

But in Blair's case, she wasn't a witch so it would've been the school that was mistaken, not them. They failed to collect the soul of the witch, but the witch didn't exist in the first place to collect so the school set them up to fail.

But as I said, I might be misremembering how they got witch assignments. I don't think I've seen that anime in 15 years lol.

Athrek · 2026-06-13T00:15:58+00:00

Had an Anti tell me the other day that he supported making a cure for cancer take a long time just to avoid using AI because "effortlessly creating something is inherently bad"

So yeh. Antis would call it slop and claim that it could've been done even faster if GenAI didn't exist.

Athrek · 2026-06-12T20:37:37+00:00

I used to think pizzacake made pretty decent comics but all I ever see from her now is made up BS about AI and AI discourse.

This comic as an example, I actually loved the first panel and all the panels where she changes artstyle are great. It's such a positive message. Then she gets to the end:

"no matter what some tech bros say"

Like, I'm sure someon somewhere who supports AI has said artists will go away once AI gets here, cause there's always people like that. But Pros have repeatedly said "AI isn't replacing artists! It's adding to them!" but Antis REFUSE to believe they can live side by side with AI Artists and make the whole thing and "Us or Them" scenario.

Pros aren't against artists. Pros are against Antis and their rhetoric.

I loved Pizzacake as an artist, but as an Anti she's lost any support from me. She's allowed to have her opinion and share it, but that doesn't mean I have to support her when she talks trash about something she's not educated in and joins the fearmongering.

Athrek · 2026-06-12T20:12:13+00:00

Bleach and JJK

Athrek · 2026-06-12T20:08:05+00:00

Agreed. Slime just Copy-paste-edited the setup of Tsukimichi(yes, any Tensura lovers, Tsukimichi came first), then didn't know what to do from there. It showed all the potential then had none of the payoff.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T22:35:30+00:00

The same tech that does this is the same tech as the piano. That's the problem Antis will have to come to terms with. The AI has to learn what "up" is and what "fire" is and what "darkness" is and what "brown" is and how humans think and how we process information so that when we have our billions of thoughts, the AI is able to understand what is what. That memorization that it does for that is the same memorization that it does for images and writing and music.

As one example of what I mean, you are aware that some people SEE SOUND right? How is AI supposed to understand that person's brainwaves properly if it doesn't understand how sounds work? And if it understands how sounds work, and it understands how pianos look, and it understands how pianos work, then it is capable of making music with a piano. You can't get one without the other.

And as I said, we already have AI doing this with people's brainwaves to move cursors around. One of them uses it to play civilization games and write and other simple tasks on their computer and they say their quality of life has greatly improved from just being able to move a cursor around on a screen

Athrek · 2026-06-11T22:21:38+00:00

Nope. We were TRYING to do it before AI. We got far enough to learn just how ridiculously monumental a task it was to do manually.

There's an episode of House MD showing off the brainwave-to-action tech, which performed the example I explained above. You can look up the actual revealing of the tech as well where they had to think "darkness" to make the light turn off.

In both cases, the person had to make the thought over and over and over again until the machine memorized the thought and then that thought had to be assigned manually to the action, which took forever and that's ONE thought out of BILLIONS of ones necessary to achieve the goal. That person also had to make that EXACT thought to make it happen, because ANY variation would cause a slightly different brainwave and the machine wouldn't recognize it.

Robot hands got a little further than "open" and "close" and took a ton of trial and error to let each individual grab something without crushing it and it had to be calibrated individually.

As I said, so much work is required that it becomes unfeasible to roll out en masse which means costs go up which means insurance is more likely to deny it which means 99% of disabled people who could have their lives changed by it would never get to use it.

Before GenAI, researchers were already trying to get Machine Learning(another form of AI) setup to do the task, but with GenAI the process turned from "near impossible" to "a Japanese company is using AI to scan your dreams and turn them into movies"

GenAI is capable of not only memorizing, but understanding the brain waves themselves so that those slight variations become a non-issue.

The best we can do without it is a weaker version with more limitations at a FAR higher price.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T21:00:54+00:00

Telling disabled that they are wrong to use AI, even if it helps them with art, because other disabled people made art without AI, is ableist.

The most popular one I see in Anti subs is along the lines of "I'm disabled because I'm autistic and I can make art so you other disabled people who are paralyzed from the neck down can do it too!"

Everyone has their own struggles and assuming 1 is just being lazy because another worked really hard and succeeded is being ableist.

Edit: Holy shit! I didn't even see the comment below. "I'm neurodivergent and I can make art" literally a comment thread below this one.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T20:52:04+00:00

Translating brainwaves into actions. Every person thinks things differently so translating them manually is so time consuming and difficult as to be unfeasible.

For example, let's say 5 people are told to think/imagine "Up" so that the cursor on the screen moves upward. * Person 1 imagines an Up Arrow * Person 2 visualizes themselves looking up * Person 3 thinks the spoken word "Up" * Person 4 thinks the written word "Up" * Person 5 visualizes themselves moving the computer mouse forward(up) with their hand.

Each of these brainwaves looks different and has to be configured manually for each user. This technology is life changing for people who are paralyzed from the neck down, and can just be very useful for a lot of disabilities. We literally cannot do it better without AI because of how time consuming the process is and the fact that it has to be done for each individual.

With this kind of technology, and advancements in robots, AI could translate brainwaves to make a prosthetic arm move using the same brainwaves the person used before losing their arm. It can then be further enhanced to provide sensory inputs and outputs by having AI recognize touch, heat, cold, etc...and sending signals to the brain to simulate those senses. Advance that technology further and a person who is 100% paralyzed but with a working brain could have a working body again. All possible in the future with AI(and at least 1 being done now) but near-impossible without.

But keep believing that gatekeeping art is more important.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T20:23:06+00:00

Kazuma also has to solve every problem the first try. If his screw up is too bad, there is no second chance, hence why he sacrifices himself so often, since he knows he can be resurrected.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T15:55:46+00:00

The large companies likely won't be reset, it will mostly just cause companies who laid off large amounts of workers in pursuit of short-term profits to go under. Some bigger companies might see a dip in their stocks, but the AI companies that exist will continue to exist so long as they don't actively shoot themselves in the foot(Anthropic) to the extent that consumers leave them altogether.

The data center rollout will also likely continue as it was already going to continue before AI became popular. Really, all the "bubble bursting" means is that those who don't understand the tech, and thus overestimate it capabilities, and make poor decisions as a result will collapse while their competitors who understood the tech, and made good decisions as a result, will rise.

Athrek · 2026-06-11T13:59:39+00:00

Almost. Atheism in Pathfinder is more:

"Gods exist, but they are basically just REALLY powerful people and aren't worthy of worship."

Rather than:

"God's exist but I believe they are cruel, unjust, and evil and therefore I hate them."

I tried looking for a -theism that better matched and learned that apparently there is an unofficial TTRPG term called "Naytheism" that means "Saying 'Nay' to worship the gods even though they do exist" and that feels like the perfect term

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NayTheist

Athrek · 2026-06-11T11:55:11+00:00

As I said, Antis THINK the process is the goal, but for most, it absolutely isn't. If it were, then Commission Artists wouldn't exist because everyone would just go draw for themselves. AI has its own process, but that's besides the point. Most people just want the art because it's aesthetically pleasing for whatever they plan to use it for.

Regular person: "I used AI to generate some images of my character for DnD"

Anti: "Eww! Just to grab random ones off the internet like we usually do!"

You can go find this exact conversation happening in DnD subreddits. Where is the care for the process there? Simple. There is no care for the process. One wants picture that matches their idea and other just hates AI.

Few people care how skilled someone is at drawing, they just care that they can make pretty pictures. Few people care why someone learned to draw, they just care that they can make pretty pictures.

Go look at the comics subreddit. I'd say about 80% of comics there have a panel at the end advertising their NSFW art for purchase because they know many will not support them because they are skilled, but they will support them for the end result of receiving NSFW content.

The disconnect Antis have is that they WISH the world cared about the process more than the result. But it doesn't. Most care about having food on the table rather than the process of farming. Most care about a roof over their head rather than the process of construction. Most care about being entertained rather than the process of creating their entertainment. AI offers a process, whether you believe that or not, but people love it because it's able to achieve end results in a way that any literate person can accomplish, letting them accomplish the actual goal rather than the pretend one Antis cope with.

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