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Ether126 days ago(+2)

I read through the solo version. I really liked the layout and the idea of "going down through a rabbit hole, but stick to your headline".

I was really disappointed about the encouragement to use an AI chatbot. 

GenAI (such as the one used in those chatbots) is despicable in every single way. It's putting pressure on our finite natural resources and electricity grid. It's stealing the jobs of artists, writers, and real-life journalists everywhere. It's feeding its users falsehoods-- not "lies" because an AI doesn't and cannot think. It can only give you the likeliest answer to a given prompt, which it calculates from stolen data its makers never had the right to use. It makes its users stupider, it keeps them from thinking for themselves. And it creates nothing but slop.

AI is the polar opposite of journalism, of fact-checking, of having an inquiring mind.

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Beth and Angel Make Games125 days ago(+2)

Thanks so much for the comments! I worried that my little jab at AI could be seen as encouraging the use of it (I mean, it DOES encourage it's use, but in a way that's supposed to point out how flawed i is), and your comment makes me feel like I fell more on the "go use AI, it's great" side than the "AI is trash and you can easily prove it wrong and win, plus you'll be learning that AI is constantly wrong. In fact, a lot of what we hear is wrong so you should always verify what you learn." In fact, the idea in my head was of you as this experienced journalist stuck with an "AI reporter" who is so trash at their job that you're desperate to get them fired, but your higher-ups will only do it if you can prove they're more trouble than they're worth. But didn't have the space for as much story as I wanted, and with the loss of that, I can see how it'd come across as encouraging even MORE use of AI by people.

When the jam is over, I'll replace that with just, like... using results from the 9th page of internet searches or something 😅 That'd still (likely) capture the "you can't believe what you read online" thing without encouraging the use of AI.

I definitely agree that AI is utter garbage, and thanks for pointing that out about this game :D

- ✨Beth

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Ether125 days ago(+1)

You're welcome! I'm sorry that my comment ended up being mostly about that, it was just so jarring to me. Like, "no, don't use it, not even to mock it!". 

Frankly, at this time the results on the 9th page might be more accurate than the ones on the 1st... we sure are living through interesting times!

Congrats on making your fun little game within the circumstances as I know they were Not Fun, and thank you for showing so much grace in front of my immediate, skin-deep reaction re: genAI! 

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Beth and Angel Make Games123 days ago(+2)

I honestly think that having such a strong reaction to something is one of the most strong signs of like "Okay, don't do this thing in my game" lol. If you were just like "meh, I might not include that" it wouldn't be anywhere near as powerful :D

Avri had commented about liking the Wikipedia gameplay idea, so I might just focus more on that. And you're right that page 1 of search results are like...

[AI response]
[A few sponsored pages]
[Maybe one or two SEO-heavy pages]

Also, I wanted to ask which would be more genuine and honest: to remove the version with AI in it entirely, or to add a note to it that we don't condone AI usage and upload the new version? I worry that removing it would be like hiding from having created it in the first place, but keeping it there (even with a warning) still encourages its use.

- ✨Beth

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Ether123 days ago(+2)

Yeah, and like... I care about you enough to want you to know what I think, even when it's less pleasant than usual!

Re: genuine and honest, I don't really see why you feel the need to be genuine and honest. Like, it's OK to change your mind on what's written in your work, you don't need to make sure everyone else who comes after the change is aware there was a change. It's not like if you had committed harm and that part of the repair work was to always tell people "I messed up in that way" or something. 

I assume you want to leave the jam version up, so... I think what I would do is add a note in the jam version, like "post-jam note: I realized later that I do not want to condone the use of genAI in my works, due to the environmental, ethical, and other concerns regarding its current state. I'm still leaving this bit here for archiving purposes, since this is the jam version, after all. In the current version of the game, this bit has been replaced with looking into Wikipedia instead." and then in the new version, you don't mention the previous genAI bit at all, and you just write your Wikipedia gameplay instead. 

Although I, personally, would probably archive the jam version and just put up the updated one instead, maybe with a name like "Inquiring Minds v1.1" so that people know it's not the jam version.

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Beth and Angel Make Games123 days ago(+2)

Yeah! It's definitely a form of care to tell people things they might not wanna hear. That's how change is made, after all. Whether it's "hey, red really isn't your color in clothes..." or "whoops you're accidentally encouraging the use of a harmful technology that's rapidly taking over our world" 🤣

That's cool, then yeah I'll just get rid of the original and replace it. I would only be keeping it for the sake of posterity, and I can always add the note to the page anyway. I just hate the idea of someone being like "you made this thing and then you HID IT and you're acting like you never did it!" Like some gotcha lol. That's half of the reason I so quickly share that I'm trans and don't hide my deadname (online at least): so those things can't be weaponized against me. 

I honestly think the Wikipedia version is more fun anyway, since Angel and I are huge fans of discovering random info via diving into new stuff. Oh, or maybe YouTube. YouTube videos can be just as bad at giving people false info, show how bad an algorithm can be, and (as someone who uses YouTube for hours a day) could lead to finding new people to subscribe to!

Yeah, I'm gonna try that when the jam ends, that's exciting! Thanks for the inspiration ✨

- ✨Beth

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