As models like Sora and Runway Gen 2 (which was allegedly trained on YouTube videos) continue to erode their livelihoods, US game developers represented by SAG-AFTRA - the same union that took the entertainment industry's writers out on strike last year - have elected to strike. Their key demand is that workers are not replaced by generative AI tools. How will this effect video game production, particularly with so many recent layoffs in the industry?. It's too early to tell, but it's no coincidence in my view that Microsoft fought so hard to buy out Blizzard while having a 49% stake in OpenAI. Given the struggling state of Australia's own $AUD 4.21 billion games dev industry, it's telling that there's a lot of government focus on industry adopting AI, but much less on assisting workers to ride out the disruption that generative AI is causing. Personally I want more games like Armello, from League of Geeks. It's total W in the chat.
It was only yesterday that I was opining about Google's ineffectiveness in a sea of LLM-generated text. It's almost like OpenAI was listening, because overnight they dropped SearchGPT, which promises "new search features designed to combine the strength of our AI models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources". Because of course it makes sense to first fill the web with garbage, then sell us the tools to sift through it. Someone's gotta pay for that $USD 5 billion a year burn rate, right?
As reported earlier this week in The Sizz, Space Karen is building a "gigafactory" - that's "large compute cluster" for those not fluent in techbro-ese - in Memphis, Tennessee, drawing the critical ire of those questioning whether the facility's purported benefits will outweigh its draw on the city's power and water facilities. These downside risks of data centres are further explored in Professor Kate Crawford's book Atlas of AI", in which she traces the massive ecological demands of creating Bullshit Generators, sorry, I meant large language models. And researchers are creating tools to better measure how much carbon models produce during training. Closer to home, Samuel Yang from the ABC has a great write-up today on what's happening in the Australian energy market given the increased demand, with one suggestion being to co-locate data centres closer to renewable power generation - e.g. in the regions. However, this piece leaves a key question unanswered - what effect is increasing data centre demand for power having on our domestic energy bills? Stop asking hard questions, peasants! On that note, if you've received a steep increase in electricity pricing, like many Sizzlers have, don't forget to check out the government's Energy Made Easy site to make sure you're on the best plan ^H^H^ getting shivved the least.
It was brought to my attention by @skwashd that yesterday's edition of The Sizz contained an egregiously insufficient amount of cursing content. My sincere apologies. My dearest gentle readers, let me remedy this deficiency at once, and present, for your linguistic pleasure, an etymology of see you next Tuesday. Be sure not to be too much of a gown today 😉
Coaxial cable, Sydney-Melbourne, lead/copper/cardboard, General Electric Company, Australia, 1960-1970. Circular form of lead tubing and contained within is a series of layers of copper wires seperated and shielded by layers of cardboard and cardboard fibres. One end is cut through vertically while the other is progressively cut to reveal the series of layers used in construction. (Powerhouse Museum)
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.