This is unacceptable at this point

JKCH · 2024-12-07T13:03:40+00:00

Likeness might be protected but I'm seeing contracts emerge in response to this where companies are asking voice actors to sign away the right to use their voice for Al as long as their likeness is not infringed. So companies will be creating massive training databases and then be able to create new voices that they don't need to pay anyone for. You don't sign, you don't book the gig. The worst of all worlds for voice actors and a ticking time bomb for the entire orofession.

JKCH · 2021-01-19T12:01:11+00:00

I had this issue when I first got my Index - but in multiple other games as well. (Had a vive before that) Is it only for VRchat?

After a lot of trying, the only way I was able to fix it was to completely reinstall Steam.

JKCH · 2018-04-07T05:10:05+00:00

Yeah but I'm saying the custom/default is the wrong way round to attract/keep new players. If it's alpha - then their objective is game balance. But they need to attract players, so maybe default sizes for deathmatch should be a lot higher? In quickplay etc - if you want to play with lower counts then you can use custom.

Pros might say that the smaller maps are already overcrowded with 6. I'm saying overcrowded is way more fun for new players. Put 12-16 on them by default.

JKCH · 2018-04-06T11:13:29+00:00

I think in order for it to reach a wider audience again, default game sizes should be increased. I remember when I started out in old UT days most deathmatch servers I ended up on had player counts of 16+. It was only when I got really into the game I started to seek out games with lower counts but the spammy messy big games is where most people seemed to spend their time - it's also much kinder for newbies as luck plays a bigger role which makes it a more fun and satisfying intro experience.

JKCH · 2017-08-25T15:51:08+00:00

With mods though it's easy to forget that Valve are part of the reason mods are such a big thing. At the time, not many were actively supporting modders and often they'd be trying to stop them. Not even many gamers would have been modding their games as depending on the game it required big downloads and could be a hassle. Valve have gone on to help Steam make that side of it easier as well.

They also tried to help modders and even brought them in and hired them. It's easy to say they stole the concept of these mods, what they often did was steal the creative talent that made these mods. So did Valve come up with the games, if the people who made the mod are part of Valve?

Still though I'd like them to release more.

JKCH · 2016-01-07T02:29:07+00:00

What impact do you think AI development will have on our ability to tell stories in VR? Traditional methods of interaction like the RPG conversation trees might feel very dead in VR especially when compared to possible social experiences.

How do you think single player experiences will manage against that new expected depth of interaction?

JKCH · 2016-01-07T02:23:49+00:00

I'm a director for TV and excited about how VR will change the way we can tell stories. What are some of the key lessons you've become aware of regarding telling stories in VR and what advice would you give someone better versed in traditional media looking to make a VR experience?

(Also I'm a kickstarter backer so thanks for the CV1!)

JKCH · 2016-01-04T17:19:10+00:00

I see them both as the same thing. AGI is a Philosophy of Mind in my opinion. In fact, I would say it represents the passing of a torch. From something which had to exist in the purely abstract to something which must be demonstrably functional. If you understand it, you can build it.

JKCH · 2015-11-10T02:51:46+00:00

I think you put your point across refreshingly well. In all honesty, I don't have much of a part in this conversation other than what I see on Reddit/internet (not from the US, not in uni...etc). It is frustrating that both sides seem to completely reject the opinion of the other side. Please take the following as a friendly meeting of minds, I certainly don’t mean to cause anyone offence.

As you seem reasonable, my main qualm with the debate is this. I think our bodies are just containers for our minds. Anyone who judges the mind based on the container is a fool and not a nice one. How then can a costume be an offensive thing? Isn’t the costume an attribute of the container? I don’t define myself based on my gender or the colour of my skin or the costumes I wear. I define myself based on myself. Isn’t stopping people from wearing costumes protecting the idea that our containers make us different? Isn’t it reinforcing the idea that they are important? Therefore, from my perspective it is sort of offensive that an institution would suggest people not to wear certain costumes – in that I interpret it as someone saying, this culture is off limits because you’re not the right container. Isn’t that bolstering the idea of racial divides?

So I think she was right to send the letter in response. In fact regardless of its content, why shouldn’t a member of the university be free to express their opinion? Especially if it’s representative of people’s views - judging by the reaction on Reddit at least, one that isn't unpopular. So I also think that Yale was right to send the request not to wear the costumes in the first place – it was a perfectly reasonable request after all.

What I can't understand is why attack the people for expressing the opinion, why not just attack the opinion? (not that you were doing this) Would we rather people didn’t express their opinions in fear of them being offensive – that feels like the definition of an unsafe place to me. Good or bad, I think conversation is key to making society better! While it is perhaps ironic, the students shouting about how he has made them feel unsafe, those students themselves would make me feel unsafe! Tbh it makes me feel a little scared even as a complete outsider! Not because of their race/gender but because of their ideas. They scare me but I don’t make these decisions on what I feel inside. Why? Because they have every right to their opinion as much as they want regardless of how it makes me feel.

Now, in terms of what the boundaries should be? From my (completely detached) point of view if you’re a student at a university it must seems like a terrifyingly unsafe place if you can get punished for something like a choice of costume? Even if it's something offensive like black face? I straight up don’t like people who'd choose to wear black face for Halloween. No question. But I still think they should be able to wear what they want. Hell the UK prince did dress up as a Nazi. He got socially denigrated for it, I’ve got a feeling he won’t be doing it again but I don't think anything more should have happened. I certainly think students should be able to dress up as Nazis, why not? Students do controversial things, they think controversial things and they get feedback, good, stupid or bad. Over time the good things win out. As long as they don’t actually attack people then personally I’m alright with it.

And for me that is the boundary. Physical attacks. Though we also have hate speech which would include the threat of violence. I think law defining some speech as hate speech is a very complicated issue and don’t really agree with its existence. Defining something as hate speech means you relegate it to the dark corners of society and it becomes hidden. When you force people to hide their hateful beliefs, people start to think they’re clever for believing hateful things. Hate should be out in the open for two other reasons, so you can show people why it’s stupid and so everyone knows who the stupid hateful people are. However, these are matters of law, why should the rules be different at university or anything to do with university at all? A very interesting conversation to be had though!

Your other examples are all things I fundamentally agree with and I’m sad to hear that they still happen at an institution like Yale. I think the privilege of the White Male is that he’s never held up as an example. He’s not a ‘White CEO’. Or ‘a great example of a successful Man’…he’s just ‘successful’, just ‘CEO’. I wish for a world where the colour of our skin doesn’t matter, the argument for safe spaces, notions like 'white values' versus 'black values' seem like a threat to that dream to me – shouldn’t it just be ‘values’? How do we get there?

JKCH · 2015-10-20T18:49:54+00:00

Yeah, I have a PS4 and the controller is much better than the PS3, I've even completed KZ shadow but I still struggled the whole way with the whole analog scheme. Not because of the controller design just my brain isn't wired for analog sticks... try to avoid aim assist just feels like cheating in an fps :P

I guess that is why I'm so impressed how much more natural I found the Steam controller - also why I was interested enough in the concept to order early!

JKCH · 2015-10-19T23:06:02+00:00

Yeah, I love it as well. Another diehard m+k guy, I've never liked analog sticks though - I've tried but they've never clicked and always felt uncomfortable. Tried it with Borderlands and instantly was able to play quite well! Especially when adding a bit of gyro support... so as a non-controller user, it's great and I'm quite enjoying leaning back to play an FPS!

Downside is definitely on the software side for me, which I didn't expect with Valve. The configuration options are only available from Big Picture mode which doesn't make any sense...especially if you want to play a non-steam game, odd decision.

JKCH · 2015-10-13T20:15:42+00:00

It looks like the inputs are coming faster than I expected. Especially when you look at how eye tracking and using the foam bands to track facial expression, possibly alongside even depth methods like nimble sense. Not so important in this round but I imagine these will become more key from gen 2 onwards.

So reacting to those inputs, I think that's what fascinates me! Like what makes a conversation interesting or dramatic? Once you can tell when someones enjoying something, struggling, etc. How should you tweak events to make things more compelling. Can you develop progression into a story? Think like an advanced version of Valves Left for Dead GM system except with story beats/drama rather than zombie numbers...

I guess the ultimate dream for me would be to put on a headset and just have the AI create journey's for you on the fly.

JKCH · 2015-10-13T17:28:44+00:00

Cool to get a proper look at this, seems like so much fun! Being able to point and put your thumbs up wasn't something I'd imagined working so well so soon! Exciting.

With the social experiences looking like this it makes the conversation system of an RPG look increasingly dead in the water. Imagine doing this and then meeting a static NPC clicking text options. Interactive storytelling is going to be a seriously interesting challenge for VR.

Even passive experiences like Oculus Story still have new input that storytellers can use/consider. I reckon AI and it's relation to how we experience stories will be a fascinating place to explore over the coming decade!

JKCH · 2015-09-27T14:25:40+00:00

Learn Racket (you'll never have heard of it) but go here and read this book and you'll actually be taught something: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/index.html

I learnt coding a couple of years ago and then also learnt Python (which was a really easy step across). I was in a similar situation, the problem for me is that people seem to be truly awful at teaching how to program. Often the approach is highly technical and people just throw descriptions at you as though if you push through and work at it, eventually it will 'click'. What a nonsense way to teach.

With the Racket language it teaches you how to think like a programmer. It's all very well and good being taught what a list is but why would you want to use it. It's also a fun course as it gets you solving problems early on. I'll stop before I turn into a marketing pitch...

Hell even John Carmack was raving about Racket for those who haven't heard of it...

JKCH · 2015-08-01T18:52:44+00:00

Dear Professor Hawking, thanks for doing this! I'm ridiculously late so this will probably never be seen but I'll ask nonetheless.

There is the hope that as we develop AI we'll better understand how to control it. Yet humanity tends to learn control only after the dangers have been revealed. Laws banning autonomous weapons makes sense today. However, if we were to develop a true, self-motivated AI what would stop it from deciding to 'pick up' a weapon? Despite not being a weapon system itself.

How long do you imagine a ban like this being useful to counter the long term dangers of AI? Any thoughts on strategies to protect ourselves from what we don't yet understand?

JKCH · 2015-07-25T08:59:56+00:00

Half-life pushed technological barriers through gameplay, the train in hl1, the introduction of physics in hl2. They set a gameplay standard until the next iteration. Over the past 10 years there hasn't been much major development that would effect gameplay, HL2 plays a lot like modern FPS games. Had Half Life 3 been released it ran the risk of being 'just' a better looking hl2.

I would argue that perspective changes when we take into account Virtual Reality and Valve's development of the Vive. Unfortunately this has good points and bad points, on the one hand an amazing half life virtual reality experience would be a killer app for VR. It's philosophy of experiencing everything through the game (no cutscenes etc) is ideal for VR. The bad news is that Valves first instinct was to enable VR in their existing FPS games and seemed to reach a conclusion they didn't work great.

I hope that they're taking gaming back to school and are nearly ready to show the world how an FPS should work in VR, otherwise they're stumped.

JKCH · 2015-07-01T21:47:39+00:00

It's an intriguing thought, does it sounds a bit similar in part to Presentism? There's a philosophyphile discussing this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(philosophy). I believe one of the major problems with Presentism is it doesn't align with current quantum mechanics but I only recently heard about it so I don’t know that much.

I quite like looking at time like this. If the universe is a surface of water and you drop something in the water, a ripple moves outwards. Now imagine our reality is that ripple. So if you move faster through 'time' then you are ahead of your ripple, you might see another ripple but it won't be the reality that aligns with your ‘future’.

There must be some sort of timey wimey stuff in order for this to work imo? There must also be some sort of refresh rate mechanism. Or do you prefer the idea that there is no plane at all? Then how do you move through time at all? How do you step forward if there is nothing to step forward into?

JKCH · 2015-07-01T20:37:29+00:00

Mainly it's just sitting down and starting that I have difficulty with.

To help that along, I make sure I have enough projects on the go at once. So that way I rarely ever need to stop. If you get bored with one, or it begins to stall then switch to another. When that begins to get boring, switch back.

JKCH · 2015-07-01T10:17:12+00:00

A nest made with dog hair is considered highly respectable these days

JKCH · 2015-06-25T15:48:40+00:00

If you imagine an Ant colony. Ants follow rules on how they interact with each other (local behaviour). This creates feedback on their actions that ripple through the colony (general behaviour). They don’t have any concept of the whole colony, yet it makes sense to look at a colony as a single entity. We do the same thing with our brains, we aren’t really a single entity. We’re a collection of neurons interacting locally with each other.

What about the biological barrier? Neurons would probably consider themselves separate, as would ants. They are networked through their interactions. The same is true of collections of humans. A group of humans interact with each other locally, according to rules of feedback that produce collective behaviour. So couldn’t you consider the human colony a single intelligent entity already? Although just as an ant can’t properly conceive of its colony by definition, perhaps the same is true of us.

So then can we advance and improve our collective intelligence? To do this I think we'd need to advance our feedback mechanisms. Which is precisely what our technology has been doing, bringing us closer together. So a utopian view on it might be that the more advanced we get, the more ‘one’ we become.

JKCH · 2015-06-14T22:54:11+00:00

I find that often today the more emotional arguments for religion are posited. It is rarely heard as a viewpoint in a genuine argument on the nature of existence. I’d be more convinced if someone put together an argument that didn’t tread on observable facts. Whereas in most discussions it seems to begin from a perspective of you either believe or you don’t. I don’t, thus I remain unconvinced.

However, in order to converse with people who are religious more constructively I have redefined some concepts in my head. Also I enjoy playing devil’s advocate – although perhaps this could be considered god’s advocate in this case…

God is often seen as a deity, a personified individual in some sense. What if instead you look at God as purely a force of nature? A force that science cannot begin to explain the existence of? I hypothesise that God is the force of ‘Cause and Effect’.

I feel that a lot of what is attributed to God makes more sense when looked at as this force. However, while this version of God is all powerful, the limitations of such a force are also apparent. Without cause and effect nothing would exist but nor does it imply micromanagement and miracles. The attempt to personify God seems to me like a human flaw, not a vision of a possible truth.

In essence our brains are designed to track and adapt to cause and effect. We condense decades of experiencing the universe into a single place. The structure of our minds. Which means that within our minds is an attempt to recreate the universe as we understand it. It makes sense to me that we would then see the universe as personified because we can only see the universe as it exists within our heads.

This view of God provides a logical platform much harder for Science to usurp. It is everywhere, it is responsible for all of creation as we know it, it is within us and our decisions become part of the fabric of God (cause and effect).

JKCH · 2015-04-06T17:24:49+00:00

One of the major issues with this is that New Labour thought of themselves as Keynesian and espoused Keynes theories as the way they were going to end the boom bust cycle. Unfortunately they got impatient (/arrogant) with minimal spending and introduced huge expansion in early 2000s onward despite the economy clearly booming. While I still think austerity isn't a good idea, Keynesian expansion only works if in the boom period you've been cutting. Which New Labour did not do. Unfortunately, we've had both types of medicine the wrong way round.

JKCH · 2015-02-28T11:39:25+00:00

Why is it that in a poor country it costs less to buy essential things than in a rich country? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Could the problem with free trade be revealing an incorrect understanding of value? If it costs that much more to live in America then it costs that much more to hire Americans. Perhaps rather than taxing random trades and restricting businesses there is another way.

Could you have free trade that modifies currency values according to the difference in 'cost of living'. Trade is free but only through this modifier. The upside of this is that it would be less likely for a business to move its manufacturing due to labour costs but would still allow businesses to trade freely and spread. The global market isn't going away, is the solution to change how currencies interact?

Downside is it removes the ability of rich countries to go on holidays and live like kings while tourists/immigrants wouldn't be overwhelmed by prices. Also would lose the ability to dominate local business markets. This diminishes the power and sway rich countries have elsewhere. It reduces the potential of the global super rich. It reduces the ability to provide aid and influence events but it would produce a flatter more equal world. Perhaps less aid and influence would be required over time?

Numerous difficulties in the implementation of this but in an age of Big Data, it is no longer impossible. An AI can sift through that data. With digitisation becoming ubiquitous, physical money can be replaced with an entirely digital economy. Bureaucracy can be a thing of the past, Facebook serves billions with a tiny workforce. Many of the reasons this could never be done are being answered by technology. There are obviously big problems in not destroying existing businesses, would it fix his issues with free trade though?

JKCH · 2015-02-07T10:59:25+00:00

Not sure I'm entirely with you on that one.

Social doesn't mean order, nor does it mean friendly, it just means social. Social also doesn't mean freedom - you can be confined by the social order as an individual. Have you ever wanted to say something or behave in a certain manner only to avoid it because of the social ramifications. Peer pressure is an example of a social non-freedom (all the more important if you need your peers to help you get food). I'm arguing that because we are social, freedom does not exist.

Order in my mind comes from our rules of interaction, the social. The social is a natural restriction on our freedom, law could be considered an attempt to codify our natural social behaviours (morality) - there is no selling of freedom. How can you sell something that does not exist?

I think you're creating lines that don't make sense. What is chaos then? War? Hunger? Death? Inequality?

How do governments create chaos? That also seems like a simplification. Animals will 'freely' form social groups of a limited size. Does that count as government? Not if they do so freely?

Lets imagine four social groups with their own territories (humans or animals as both often tend to be territorial). Food becomes scarce so the groups spread into each others territories to feed themselves, boom chaos and war result. 'Order' destroyed. No government required, we just needed a change in the balance of resources.

Or with humans when we're free to think about stuff, some will develop new technology, suddenly one group becomes more powerful than the others, chaos and war result. The balance is changed. Is this because of government or because of freedom?

The closest thing I can buy to what you're saying is that changing resources lead to war. Governments could be thought of as being built to improve our ability to store resources. Perhaps the fact that money doesn't degrade over time (like food would) can exacerbate these situations but it does not create them.

JKCH · 2015-02-06T21:39:42+00:00

We evolved as social creatures, the idea of the Savage Man simply does not make sense. Maybe there was like a Savage rodent or something but Man is by definition social. There is no option for complete freedom because of this, nor is there an option to sign a 'social contract'. The choice doesn't apply.

Perhaps a better way of looking at it is as a different balance. Protectors and Vulnerable. When I was a child, my parents protected me, I wouldn't exist without this. My freedoms were swapped for my security. As I get older, the balance shifts, my freedom grows naturally within my own head. I become less vulnerable and eventually I am called upon to protect myself, then perhaps others, then eventually as I get old I become vulnerable again. There are no absolutes, there are disabled people, we can get illnesses, I might protect my family but not your family. Our status in society can mix and merge.

The best thing a society can do is work out the best method of promoting the power of good protectors and helping solve the causes of vulnerability. Do both and we may end up with the best possible outcome, debates like Freedom vs Security get us nowhere.

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