I'm back for the WRUP. I missed last week because things are so busy. This weekend is also busy, especially Sunday. Not only is it father's day but I'm also mixing and pouring 90 bags of concrete for a job by myself. Anyway, it's not busy for a couple of hours yet so I decided to sit down and get a WRUP on the board. So let's see what's up today. Spoilers, it's a bit of a rant.
The AI grift just keeps getting worse and worse. It seems like every company has to have some tie into AI or they're "irrelevant". This is nonsense of course. AI is a mostly broken and I don't really think it's going to get better. The tech isn't there for one, but you only really have to look at the language being pushed by companies like Google and Apple and IBM and so on to see that it's going nowhere. Nobody talks about what AI can do they talk about what they hope it's going to do. They make predictions and promises based on literally nothing. LLM's and generative AI's in general halluicnate as many "facts" as they actually present. Not to say that it's completely useless. AI can help a ton with coding and I've learned pretty recently that there are ChatGPT bots that act as patients for therapists in training and it seems to work. But none of this is ever going to get to a General AI and "change the world as we know it". The power it takes to run a generative model is astronomical and the current tech could never support a full general AI. But, companies really want to keep making themselves worse every day by throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at AI so they can keep pretending it's going to be something more than it is right now while it hopefully eventually makes their bottom line go up. So far none of it is profitable, by the way.
So where am I going with this? Well it looks like AMD is just another one of these companies willing to worsen themselves in order to get a little crumble of the AI cookie. AMD has a new patent filing in for an MCM (multi chiplet module) GPU. This in itself isn't anything particularly new or interesting. Though an MCM GPU could be a cool addition to the gaming sector. We have seen that it's certainly helped leap CPU tech forward. However these MCM GPU's are not to be branded for the gaming sector. Nor are they branded for the server side of things to crunch numbers. No, instead they're set to be used as AI accelerators. WCCF Tech has info here if you're interested in reading more. The article even states at one point "Currently, AMD doesn't have a proper multi-GPU die solution for the consumer segment." So there we have it. DOA for us gamers and I may even go as far as saying it won't get better. I would actually venture a guess that AMD will walk back on gaming tech in general and focus more on AI. This seems to be where every company is going and so far ever company that has done so has been made worse by it. AI is a grift that is breaking the industry wherever it's presented and it will continue to do so.
What are we playing?
AJ: I recently picked up a physical copy of Double Dragon Gaiden for the Switch and I also just downloaded SteamWorld Build on PS5, so I will likely be playing those this weekend.
Greywolfe: i very almost beat kao, but it crashed and ate SOME of my progress in such a way that i can't actually complete it. so, i'm going to replay that in the background while foregrounding something else. the thing i'm foregrounding is an old favourite of mine [that i've beaten twice before over the span of the last twenty years]: baldur's gate: dark alliance. it's just a very cozy, very laid back arpg in the diablo mold that isn't /quite/ as frustrating as diablo to play: nothing is /very/ randomized and all the best items are glued to vendors, so you just need to get gold to get the best wares. it also has difficulty settings and i'm playing on easy, because i just want a comfortable game to play that isn't going to beat me over the head with a pan.
Scrooloose: I've been enjoying Ghost of Tsushima quite a lot. I've been trying to record some game play but the audio will not sync with the video no matter what settings I give it. So, nope. New warbond is out in Helldivers 2 as well and it sounds like they made the game fun again, so I may jump back in.