I wonder why today, of all days, I'm feeling this level of melancholy?
Yesterday at the “every-other-week” D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) game (played via Zoom [1] these days), I couldn't bring up the virtual map the DM (Dungeon Master) uses because my web browser didn't support WebGL [2], despite my updating the entire operating system, including the web browser, just 10 minutes earlier.
Sigh. What the XXXX happend to being just 20 minutes out of date?
Even worse, it ran the last time we played a month ago.
Admid suggestions from the rest of the group about what to do (even with the suggestion to not use the map at all and just go for “theater of the mind”), I just gave up and bailed out of the game. I just couldn't cope with the fact that despite my attempts at keeping up to date with all this technological XXXX being forced down our throats, it still wasn't XXXXXXX good enough.
I think this is the culmination of my feelings toward the latest round of AI (Artificial Intelligence). I saw this video [3] with Dr. Matt Welsh who joked that at his company, not using ChatGPT should be a firable offence, and I felt offended at the joke. Are we so XXXXXXX beholden to our tools that we give up mastery of them? Of course, as the owner of a software company, he loves the idea of ChatGPT to write his software—it keeps his costs down. XXXX people who spent time investing in writing software.
As I commented [4] a month ago:
I wrote about this about fifteen years ago [5], about the fear of becoming beholden to technology without understanding. IT (Information Technology) currently doesn’t incentivize deep learning, or even mastery of anything, both because the perceived need to move fast, and the ever changing technology landscape. Who has time to learn anything any more? Why even bother if it’s all going to change anyway? Especially when we have a program that can do all that pesky learning for us?
Edit to add: Maybe this post [6] describes it better?
“LLM (Large Language Model)s make Programming Language Learning Curves Shallower | Lobsters [7]”
Why bother indeed?
And to bring this back around to D&D—Deck of DM Things [8] has made series of videos about using AI to run a game:
- The Future of D&D: ChatGPT as a Dungeon Master [9]
- Experiment: Can AI RUN a Full D&D Session? [10]
- Experiment: Can ChatGPT Run 5e Combat? [11]
Even though he wasn't fully successful with the experient, as YouTuber Philip DeFranco [12] is fond of saying, “this is the worst that AI will ever be.”
This has been in the back of my mind for some time now. I left The Enterprise [13] partly because of the testing, and a fear I had was that not that AI would write the tests for us (which I wouldn't mind) but that I would have to write tests for the code AI wrote. It was bad enough having to endure endless computer updates and reboots when the XXXXXXX computer mandated it—but to be truly enslaved to the machine?
Who controls who?
And it all came crashing through when I couldn't load a XXXXXXX map on a XXXXXXX web page.
I don't like the direction the industry is going, with all the constant changes just for its own sake (yes, I know, changes for security is a real thing, but that's not carte blanche to change how the rest of the software works). And often times, it's the computer in change. “Oh! Update me now!” “Oh! Reboot me now!” “Oh! Feed me now, Seymour!”
XXXX that XXXX!
Oh great! The network connection is down. Could be Roko's Basilisk [14] giving me a warning, or just a momentary glitch. Who knows?
Sigh.
I feel like I'm yelling at the clouds to get off my lawn as I adjust my onion on my belt. But on a lighter note, ChatGPT in French is “cat, I farted.” [15] That is truly wonderful.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCl-GeT4jw
[4] https://lobste.rs/s/67brng/llms_make_programming_language_learning#c_80jvn4
[7] https://lobste.rs/s/67brng/llms_make_programming_language_learning#c_80jvn4
[8] https://www.youtube.com/@deck_of_DM_Things/videos
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWSUTqzJkA4
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cq-LuJnaRg
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcCeoGsJfO0
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_DeFranco
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwXA0ocSZhI
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