• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Musk is starting an AI game studio

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Yes, that's a valid point.

People called EV a pipe dream. Musk got that shit going.

Tesla became so dominant in their category that Germany kicked them out of EV promotion to protect their domestic brands.

So he built a Tesla manufacturing plant in Germany. But ironically, environmentalists (!) sabotaged everything because of the location where he built it.

What was happening?

Environmentalists and Musk should have the same goal, right? EVs are good for the climate, that's what they told us.

But there simply wasn't enough political overlap (Musk supports conservatives). And people just did what their bubble told them to do.

It's laughably stupid if you ask me.
He almost lost his ass keeping Tesla afloat and turned it into the world’s most valuable car company.

SpaceX built a rocket that can get astronauts to orbit without depending on Russia. And did it better +years faster than Boeing who were the overwhelming favorite for that contract.

Starlink brought internet to remote areas and fhe Ukrainian military relies on it for their battlefield communications.

The list goes on. Who gives a shit if he’s kind of an asshole or he has the “wrong” politics? The guy is a massive net benefit to humanity.

Just imagine if he can bring the right minds and the right tech together and solve the problem of games taking many years and hundreds of millions to make.
 

thefool

Member
He almost lost his ass keeping Tesla afloat and turned it into the world’s most valuable car company.

SpaceX built a rocket that can get astronauts to orbit without depending on Russia. And did it better +years faster than Boeing who were the overwhelming favorite for that contract.

Starlink brought internet to remote areas and fhe Ukrainian military relies on it for their battlefield communications.

The list goes on. Who gives a shit if he’s kind of an asshole or he has the “wrong” politics? The guy is a massive net benefit to humanity.

Just imagine if he can bring the right minds and the right tech together and solve the problem of games taking many years and hundreds of millions to make.

Elon deniers are the most batshit insane people on this planet right now.
You need to negate reality to downplay his achievements. Flat-earthers are reasonable in comparison, you can always say you never went to space to confirm.
 
Last edited:

midnightAI

Member
That's not the impression I get from this. I think by games AI he means building AI into NPCs and enemies.

Well we dont know what he means other than 'starting an AI game studio' as a branch of xAI

That to me means a game studio that is going to leverage all AI whether thats NPC/enemy AI, art, models, maps, music, even code (to some degree) and more. Heck, for all we know he could want to stream the game with AI running all the backend (kinda like that weird Minecraft AI thing)

His tweet can also come off as condescending (if you take it literally and to an extereme) as it could be taken as he's kinda putting two fingers up to all current dev studios (and developers) and saying all current games are shit and I know better than all devs out there and know how to make games great... again
 

Breakfast_At_Noon

Neo Member
Ai aside, my biggest issue with this is that Elon is an avid fan of Diablo 4, so his taste in what makes a game good is rather questionable.
Hopefully he plays POE soon and it snaps him out of it.
 

midnightAI

Member
When will people understand that AI must and will have a major role in game development? It's not sustainable that a game takes 6+ years and hundreds of milions of dollars to produce.
For me it depends on what the AI is being used for. If its just tools to speed along development such as scenery brushes in engine to place the correct foliage types based on the scenery (such as plants that normally grow near rivers appearing near rivers) then I',m all for that (Horizon uses this), if its used to generate music, create the majority of the main art (I dont mind simple textures being created by AI and used to create the tile etc) then that is when I have an issue with it. Games are art, and for AI to just create all of that art then it takes the personal touch out of it (yes, some games feel like that anyway anyway), you can tell when a bunch of developers have created a game that they have poured their soul into, theres something very special about those games and I think that mass use of AI will lose that, they'll feel very sterile.

It's similar to the electric car argument for me, yes, they are quieter, more eco friendly (thats debateable), and in many cases even faster, they are higher tech but they have no heart, no soul, and its mainly due to the combustion engine that gives it that, there's something about the rawness of a combustion engine, especially high power ones. I watch a lot of drag racing on youtube (I'm from the UK, we dont have so much here, not where I live anyway) and can you imagine those or monster trucks with electric engines? I'd much rather watch someone build a car than watch robots do it, sometimes the human touch is needed.

Edit: and just a note, AI is used right now in the development of the larger games, they use AI tools to do things like I have mentioned above, my worry with Musk is he wants to be at the very forefront of tech and wants to replace humans with technology (he probably gets on better with those)
 
Last edited:

RagnarokIV

Battlebus imprisoning me \m/ >.< \m/
lol PC Gamer have their article up about this. It begins with...
X owner Elon Musk has taken a brief break from posting racism, transphobia, and conspiracy theory nonsense to say that gaming has become too "woke" because the industry is dominated by massive corporations, and so he is going to use his own massive corporation to start a new game studio powered by AI "to make games great again!"

Comments are not allowed.
 
Last edited:

nowhat

Gold Member
If its just tools to speed along development such as scenery brushes in engine to place the correct foliage types based on the scenery (such as plants that normally grow near rivers appearing near rivers) then I',m all for that (Horizon uses this)
The "procedural placement" system used in Decima is not AI. It's "just" an algorithm that, given the same input parameters, results in the same output for everyone (that's what "locally stable" means). That is not to say it wouldn't be technologically impressive, it certainly is and runs on the GPU (probably a necessity because of the weak-ass Jaguar cores on a PS4) with only minimal overhead, but AI it is not.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
You've literally created your own Elon supervillain original headcanon and it's pretty amazing

Like literally nothing you claim here is actually true but it's pretty cool stuff that people have made up
Nope, actual supervillain! For way more reasons than I mentioned!

I'm gonna post the same thing but cite sources this time.

"Yeah the whole neoreactionary with white nationalist sympathies thing might be an issue though...

You gotta remember guys like Peter Thiel and Musk that grew up in South Africa, they're not "conservatives" in the American sense, they had parents that ran mining businesses that were pretty close to slave operations (context: you could be arrested for quitting your job) and lived in societies built entirely on white supremacy. Musk's maternal grandparents were literal Nazi party members from Canada. He's a bad dude who cosplayed a good dude effectively for long enough to achieve the kind of financial success where he could go mask off."
 
Nope, actual supervillain! For way more reasons than I mentioned!

I'm gonna post the same thing but cite sources this time.

"Yeah the whole neoreactionary with white nationalist sympathies thing might be an issue though...

You gotta remember guys like Peter Thiel and Musk that grew up in South Africa, they're not "conservatives" in the American sense, they had parents that ran mining businesses that were pretty close to slave operations (context: you could be arrested for quitting your job) and lived in societies built entirely on white supremacy. Musk's maternal grandparents were literal Nazi party members from Canada. He's a bad dude who cosplayed a good dude effectively for long enough to achieve the kind of financial success where he could go mask off."
I'll let Perplexity AI handle this

please evaluate the accuracy of these claims: "Yeah the whole neoreactionary with white nationalist sympathies thing might be an issue though...You gotta remember guys like Peter Thiel and Musk that grew up in South Africa, they're not "conservatives" in the American sense, they had parents that ran mining businesses that were pretty close to slave operations (context: you could be arrested for quitting your job) and lived in societies built entirely on white supremacy. Musk's maternal grandparents were literal Nazi party members from Canada. He's a bad dude who cosplayed a good dude effectively for long enough to achieve the kind of financial success where he could go mask off."


Answer
This claim contains some accurate information but also includes inaccuracies and unsubstantiated assertions. Let's evaluate the key points:
  1. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk's South African background: Accurate. Both Thiel and Musk spent part of their childhood in South Africa during the apartheid era
    2
    3
    .
  2. Mining businesses close to slave operations: Partially accurate. Thiel's father was involved in uranium mining in South Africa and Namibia
    3
    . However, the claim about arrest for quitting jobs is not substantiated by the given search results.
  3. Societies built on white supremacy: Accurate. South Africa during apartheid was indeed built on a system of white supremacy
    2
    3
    .
  4. Musk's maternal grandparents being Nazi party members from Canada: Inaccurate. The search results mention that Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was part of the technocracy movement and the Social Credit Party of Saskatchewan, which had some antisemitic members
    2
    . However, there is no mention of Nazi party membership or German origin.
  5. Characterization of Musk as a "bad dude who cosplayed a good dude": This is a subjective opinion not supported by factual information in the search results.
  6. Neoreactionary and white nationalist sympathies: The search results do not provide specific evidence to support or refute this claim about Thiel or Musk.
In conclusion, while some aspects of the claim are accurate regarding the South African background and the apartheid context, other parts are either inaccurate or not substantiated by the provided information.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Probably gonna be jank galore initially and not necessarily a « good » game but many other studios are already looking into AI games already. Inevitable stuff.

The irony is the purpose of AI to make games tailored made for your tastes, anything you want, any art style, any actor look a like, etc, censoring prompts seems like a pussyfooting move.
 
Last edited:

midnightAI

Member
The "procedural placement" system used in Decima is not AI. It's "just" an algorithm that, given the same input parameters, results in the same output for everyone (that's what "locally stable" means). That is not to say it wouldn't be technologically impressive, it certainly is and runs on the GPU (probably a necessity because of the weak-ass Jaguar cores on a PS4) with only minimal overhead, but AI it is not.
I'm talking about the development tools, not the engine itself

Also, procedural generation itself is a type of AI
 
Last edited:

nowhat

Gold Member
I'm talking about the development tools, not the engine itself
Me too (although it applies to the engine itself), watch the linked video if you want the details. There's one (!) guy (or at least was with Zero Dawn) who defines the biomes (what kinds of vegetation, animal life, even ambient sounds that can exist) on different parts of the map. The artists can then "paint" various layers on the map, and the engine/editor (the editor is in part just Decima running in real time) handles the rest. The trees and such may seem to appear at seemingly random (although as stated, the same for all) locations, but it's just an algorithm. There is no AI involved, I dare you to watch the talk and count how many times the term "AI" is mentioned.

Also, procedural generation itself is a type of AI
Now here we disagree very much. There's no training of a model involved, nor any kind of neural networks, nothing generative. Given the same input, Decima's procedural placement creates the same output. That is not how generative AI works, at least currently. Is how No Man's Sky creates the universe AI? Because that's an algorithm too, and same for all.
 
Last edited:

ShadowNate

Member
I'd be interested in what such a company would output, if anything just for the amusement factor (or the "be completely blown away by the result" small possibility).

But as a general feeling, this is not going to work out.
 

Dr.Morris79

Member
Musk spends most of his time finding ways to use his billions to put people out of work.
'People should get vast amounts of money for doing a job that doesn't add anything to a company, at all'

OpuP3su.png
 

midnightAI

Member
That is not how generative AI works, at least currently. Is how No Man's Sky creates the universe AI? Because that's an algorithm too, and same for all.
Well, yes, it's generative AI as you mentioned. It's still a type of AI (the clue is in the name) and I do not mind companies using that as I have mentioned.
 
Last edited:

midnightAI

Member
But it's not AI! It's a deterministic algorithm. Generative AI is non-deterministic.
You can still have a deterministic AI algorithm.

Anyway, you are losing track of my point, I don't want the art side of things to be lost, no AI music, no AI art (I actually don't mind it for certain things like basic textures or even concept art), no AI generated models (unless it's used for variations) etc. in any AA/AAA games (indie I don't mind at all). It's a personal thing of course and others may disagree.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
He almost lost his ass keeping Tesla afloat and turned it into the world’s most valuable car company.

SpaceX built a rocket that can get astronauts to orbit without depending on Russia. And did it better +years faster than Boeing who were the overwhelming favorite for that contract.

Starlink brought internet to remote areas and fhe Ukrainian military relies on it for their battlefield communications.

The list goes on. Who gives a shit if he’s kind of an asshole or he has the “wrong” politics? The guy is a massive net benefit to humanity.

Just imagine if he can bring the right minds and the right tech together and solve the problem of games taking many years and hundreds of millions to make.
Yeah I really don't get to hate for this guy either.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
I'll let Perplexity AI handle this
Did you actually read what it said? I'm right about all of it except a couple things it "wasn't sure" on.

Being too lazy to read the sources I cited is one thing, but being so fucking stupid you can't even read your own AI response is really next level braindead.
 
Last edited:

nowhat

Gold Member
You can still have a deterministic AI algorithm.

Anyway, you are losing track of my point, I don't want the art side of things to be lost, no AI music, no AI art (I actually don't mind it for certain things like basic textures or even concept art), no AI generated models (unless it's used for variations) etc. in any AA/AAA games (indie I don't mind at all). It's a personal thing of course and others may disagree.
I completely agree with the art side of things. Just that, this is the Internet dammit, I must be pedantic! But I guess we can disagree about the terminology and leave it at that :)
 

Aces High

Gold Member
Yeah I really don't get to hate for this guy either.
Elon Musk says in public what other people say behind closed doors.

People are not used to that and many don't like that.

Usually, business leaders of his caliber receive media training and have PR teams that supervise any public communication.

He doesn't seen to give a fuck anymore—like at all. And I think that makes some people uneasy.

I've thought about this quite a lot, and honestly, I'd rather have a powerful person who says A and does A than someone who says A but does Z—which, sadly, is the norm in our society.

Musk keeps winning because people are so accustomed to being lied to that they don't know how to handle someone who openly tells you he's going to destroy you.
 
Yeah the whole neoreactionary with white nationalist sympathies thing might be an issue though...

You gotta remember guys like Peter Thiel and Musk that grew up in South Africa, they're not "conservatives" in the American sense, they has parents that ran mining businesses that were pretty close to slave operations and lived in societies built entirely on white supremacy. Musk's maternal grandparents were literal Nazi party members from Canada. He's a bad dude who cosplayed a good dude effectively for long enough to achieve the kind of financial success where he could go mask off.

Yeah, there are definitely aspects about his family that are highly questionable, and considering he inherited a lot from that family and grew up in it, he definitely picked up at least some of those viewpoints and tendencies, even if they aren't conscious about them. You're always a reflection of the environment you grew up within, in some capacity.

Like it would be nice to have a billionaire who's actually a normal person but I guess once you get hold of that much money, good virtues and morals and stayed out of politics. Like just be genuinely neutral and normal. Guess those things can't coexist.

Musk keeps winning because people are so accustomed to being lied to that they don't know how to handle someone who openly tells you he's going to destroy you.

These sort of people are prime candidates for the Darwin award.

Again, I don't hate Musk, and I don't love them. I'm generally indifferent towards them (or neutral if "indifferent" seems too harsh), but I DO hate how obsessed both those who love them and supposedly hate them are.

Like I can't go a day without cable news or news feeds online rampantly talking about the guy. The ones who claim they hate him but still do this, are too stupid to know they're feeding the ego and still regarding him as some deity.

A good thing too is that Musk has tons of money. I dont see him as the type of guy who wants to make a shit product and then bail after a couple years. He'll try to make a quality product right from day one and improve it over time.

A lot of other companies make junk and the studio disappears fast. Half the time it's so bad it seems they werent even that serious making a good game, but some studio heads got offered a bunch of money, they took the deal and churned out garbage years later.

If Musk with all his money can make some good games and stick around, it might weed out a lot more junk content makers or companies making status quo games. So it'll force the remaining game makers to perk up and improve.

No different than EV cars. EV cars have been around a long time. But Tesla really got the category going making it the priority. In the past, the car companies doing EV looked like they barely gave a shit about it like it's a shitty side project with shitty looking EV cars. Now, every car maker takes it seriously.

Making high-quality games is immensely different than making a functionally sound (but stylistically bland) EV, though. It's a highly creative-driven medium and for as much there are a lack of storytellers (real storytellers) in gaming as-is, Musk isn't a storyteller himself.

Having an entrepreneurial eye for business products isn't the same thing as being a creative visionary; in the tech world Musk is nothing compared to, say, Steve Jobs, who actually had a strong love for literature, art etc. I'm not saying that's necessarily a requirement to have a successful venture in a very creative field, but it would certainly help, and Musk isn't that type of person. They've shown no propensity for it.

That said, they have enough money to attract that type of talent....at least in theory. I wouldn't say the best of creatives out there are heavily political in terms of partisan politics at all, but Musk has been aligning himself very deeply in American partisan politics the past few years. That might be a turn-off to a lot of the best out there, in creative spaces for a medium like games. I say this because, for someone with as much control of their vertical pipeline as Musk would have, the tendency they enforce policy or cultural practices in a corporate sense that reflect their own political views, increases the more they drive partisan politics, not less.

It doesn't matter whether those partisan politics are to the left or to the right, the result has increased probability of being the same.
 
Last edited:
Did you actually read what it said? I'm right about all of it except a couple things it "wasn't sure" on.

Being too lazy to read the sources I cited is one thing, but being so fucking stupid you can't even read your own AI response is really next level braindead.
I still can't tell if you are next level trolling or not but have a happy Thanksgiving LMAO
 
Top Bottom