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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 1 September 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The paper is so bad...

the agent's policy π ... the environment ε

What is up with AI papers using fancy symbols to notate abstract concepts when there isn't a single other instance of the concept to be referred to

They offer a bunch of tables with numbers in a metric that isn't explained, showing that they are exactly the same for "random" and "agent" policy, in other words, inputs don't actually matter! And they say they want to use these metrics for training future versions. Good luck.

For the sample size they are using 60% seems like a statistically significant rate, and they only tested at most 3 seconds after real gameplay footage.

Sidenote: Auto-regressive models for much shorter periods are really useful for when audio is cutting out. Those use really simple math, they aren't burning any rainforests

I'm willing to retract my statement that these guys don't have any ulterior motives.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

There are serious problems with how easy it is to adopt the aesthetic of serious academic work without adopting the substance. Just throw a bunch of meaningless graphs and equations and pretend some of the things you're talking about are represented by Greek letters and it's close enough for even journalists who should really know better (to say nothing of VCs who hold the purse strings) to take you seriously and adopt the "it doesn't make sense because I'm missing something* attitude.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The paper starts with a weirdly bad definition of "computer game" too. It almost makes me think that (gasp) the paper was written by non-gamers.

Computer games are manually crafted software systems centered around the following game loop: (1) gather user inputs, (2) update the game state, and (3) render it to screen pixels. This game loop, running at high frame rates, creates the illusion of an interactive virtual world for the player.

No rendering: Myst

No frame rate: Zork

No pixels: Asteroids

No virtual world: Wordle

No screen: Soundvoyager, Audio Defense (well these examples have a vestigial screen, but they supposedly don't really need it)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Excel is a game.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

things that are games:

the control circuitry for a $1 solar-powered calculator
my car
X11

things that aren’t games:

pinball, unless it has an electronic score display
Quake-style dedicated servers
rogue (nethack)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

More computer games:

web browsers
stock market trackers
election watch

More computer non-games:

hangman on a paper teletype
ARGs
anything on the Vectrex