e438 — We will always have Paris – Games At Work dot Biz

arial view of Paris — Photo by Rodrigo Kugnharski on Unsplash

Published 30 October 2023

Michael, Michael and Andy get together for a lively discussion on VR, AI, another virtual museum and end on a high note with “a touch of Dutch” applied via generative AI.

Starting off the episode with VR, the co-hosts explore a couple of articles dealing with the new Quest 3 headset and ways of working with it. The TechCrunch article gives examples of experiencing mixed really by taking an Instagram or YouTube video around with you as you do your household chores like washing dishes or tidying up. Another article describes the experience of working in a space with other virtual people. The Inverse article brings up the point that some games are so photo realistic, that bypassers may mistake them for tv shows or movies. This launches a conversation on the pros and cons of photorealism in user experiences, and what brings the most joy and delight.

As the co-hosts turn their thoughts toward AI, they start off by considering an article that describes how artists may use a technique called “data poisoning” to make it more difficult for generative AI models to ingest the artist’s work. The tool is called Nightshade, and it works by changing the art in subtle invisible ways so that if it is ingested into a training data set, it can cause the trained model to have chaotic results.

In another article, the idea of training data is extended with the idea of recursive training on synthetic data. Models that are trained on generated data create skewed output that is increasingly incorrect. This leads to the the coining of the phrase “code hemophilia”. At least Google doesn’t seem to find an instance of this phrase, so maybe coining is appropriate!

As the team turns to things historical, Andy shares another virtual museum – the Internet Artifacts from Neal.fun. Wrapping up the episode, the co-hosts talk about the concept of the 15 minute city and the lovely example from the Netherlands to take a picture of a street and using AI, create a Dutch street plan.

What street(s) have you reimagined in the Dutch style? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!