6 months after revealing plans to become 'aggressive in applying AI', Square Enix's president announces he's being careful in applying AI

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 108 points –
6 months after revealing plans to become 'aggressive in applying AI', Square Enix's president announces he's being careful in applying AI
pcgamer.com
15

First it was blockchain and NFTs. Now it is AI. It is almost like these execs are full of shit.

Imagine having a job where you can spew buzzword-y bullshit like this all day and never have to show anything for it.

If I promise something in a daily, I better have at least an experimental implementation for it a week later.

I think those were mostly from his predecessor, but yeah, the post seems well suited for weather vanes.

Just spew whatever bullshit is floating in the wind at the moment.

Imagine playing FF but it was written by redditors...
🤢

I grew up seeing all those Flash games on Newgrounds. Some were good, most were baaaaad!

So which one really is it

  • dropping it for backlash
  • too expensive to be done
  • actually implementing it but keeping it shush for PR

CEOs of companies that are adjacent to technology desperately want to ensure that their company isn't seen as "outdated", almost more than they want to actually not be outdated.

So when a technology comes that everyone in tech leadership is saying is the bestest, they want to make sure everyone knows they're totally with it, whatever the cool kids are talking about.

Hype train goes chugga chugga.

As the hype train slows, they still need to be onboard, but they set expectations based on what their people are actually telling them.

So this is the CEO yelling to do something, and then the news slowly percolating back from the tech people that they can, but only a handful of projects can do so in a way that makes sense, has impact, and doesn't disrupt a timeline or budget in a way that requires shareholder disclosure.

A lot of tech firms bought into the gold rush mindset. NVIDIA sold the shovels. Sooner or later, when they figure out the world isn't excitedly opening their wallets, the bubble will pop, and they'll move on to the next empty hype train.

This is it. The real product is hype, with a tiny tiny little kernel of actual utility, that is puffed up and remixed until the hype dies away, and we have to make do with whatever's left.*

The hype machine with generative shit went into fuckin overdrive because while yes there is a grift component, natch; unlike with blockchain, nfts, web3, etc, there is an actual visible thing that the technology can do that hasn't been done before.

People who are used to selling nothing but vapour lost their minds when they saw it, because rightfully so, they realised how much grift they were going to be able to make off of it.

* Usually this involves a bunch of platform engineers et al de-tooling codebases and infrastructure.

Option 4: It's modern SqEnix, their executives couldn't profit from selling popcorn at a movie theatre.

The Japan-only option D: Their Angry American sat him down and explained to him what AI is and how difficult it is to implement.

RemindMe whenever Nintendo first sues someone for making a Tifa lifemate AI and marrying it.

Hmm, why Nintendo? The rights belong to Square Enix. They're also less aggressive over suing fan/horny projects, I believe.