It's a shaggy dog story.

In his trousers, maybe.

That and being part of the Epstein Hellraiser cult.

you and your ilk

Americans?

That virus is called the American education system.

"Clean centrists" almost always means "fascist"

That we're way too kind even when all logic says we shouldn't be.

"Indestructable..."

Feel free to keep taking the stairs, elevators will get there someday.

I mean I've tried DLSS5 on a bunch of games in my library. On most of them, it tanks my framerates and sometimes looks like absolute ass. But in two of my games (Cyberpunk 2077 and Stellar Blade) it looks and runs incredibly, and it's hard not to see the potential.

As far as everything else you've said I 100% agree. It's just not there yet, I think one day it will be though. I'm lucky I got my 5070 right before the prices started getting jacked up, so I'm privileged to be able to experiment with what's already out. And believe me when I say the results vary - at the moment. Even as a fan of the tech and I can confidently say it's not ready. And yes, studios that cram it as a staple feature in place of good optimization and, quite simply, a good game, then they're gonna fail because they released slop. But that's not the destiny of every game that uses it. I'm telling you, one day this tech is gonna be in mass produced hand-held devices. At the current rate of Nvidia GPU prices, they're not gonna be the ones mass producing it and winning. Only a matter of time till China comes out with a 32gb Vram, Blackwell tech x4 GPU for like $200, meanwhile the 16gb equivalents today will cost under $100. Because Nvidia (while I admit they do produce cool tech) are greedy capitalist bastards. All the AI slop companies are greedy capitalist bastards. And I continue to blame the capitalist bastardary more than I do the shortcuts AI unlocks. If the economy wasn't so shit and things in general were more affordable, and one of these GPUs were affordable after a few months of saving like things were 20 years ago, we'd be much happier with this. However we're overall unhappy with it because it's not being developed for affordable entertainment, but instead being used for surveillance powered by datacenters that destroy our environment so a handful of lizards can make billions, while we're literally struggling to afford groceries. I want to burn down those remote, gated billionaire communities and replace THEM with datacenters for OUR general use.

characters look worse, like AI slop filters were added over their faces and bodies

In many cases that's true, but not in all cases. Makes sense considering that no games have had this technology to be used in their art direction, no wonder it looks like ass. If your only citation for this take is that one Resident Evil screenshot that made headlines then I suggest you look at the world deeper than just headlines and clickbait engagement farming articles.

creative vision of the people making the game is bastardized behind these “enhancements” altering the look and feel of the game.

I guess all these mods that revamp textures or do ENB shaders or lighting adjustments are "bastardizing" the creative vision too. I would argue that even running a game on low-medium settings for the sake of framerate is bastardizing the creative vision, as artists worked very hard to produce high quality assets meant to be seen in it's highest fidelity. Do you consider running games on lower graphics settings a bastardization? Didn't think so.

higher bar for entry for performance requirements and still getting poor performance if you do bite the bullet for a more expensive setup

Again, same with every new generation of graphics tech. It's always a higher entry for performance, it's always in the hands of the few first, and poor performance is also, again, not the fault of AI but bad optimization.

a lot of these games aren’t that good, don’t get me wrong a few are, but having to buy extra equipment and push your PC to get marginally better graphics to play an “okay” game isn’t gonna make people jump for joy.

There have always been games that are shit but pushed for graphics, in damn near every console generation since PS2. It's a unique selling point to have shiny graphics. The good games that last on good gameplay and good optimization for good performance are lauded, and for good reason. AI won't change that, if anything make even cooler stuff like HL2 did with it's latest tech. You know what does make shitty games? Situations such as "Studio with best selling game lays off 40% of its developers." And before you say "But they're doing that because AI," again AAA studios have always been doing that since way before, in other industries too, since Thomas Edison. All the EA and Ubisoft controversy? Way before AI. The problem is capitalism, and execs at the top making a buck at the expense of good quality products with planned obsolescence and cheaping out their workers. This is a problem in every industry, AI or not. But these stupid companies that are investing entirely into AI at the expense of good art, writing, and gameplay (whether it uses AI or not) will always fail because it's slop. It's the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory "Machines stole my toothpaste job" stuff, old man yelling at cloud behaviour. It's the exact same logic that blames immigrants for stealing our jobs, without even looking at the bosses who are firing workers and replacing them with exploited immigrants. Is the problem immigration or over exploitation? I view things more towards the latter.

I love AI for what it could be, but we're not ready for it under capitalism. Cognitive offload is only a concern for people who don't respect learning and understanding to begin with, which under capitalism most people don't, being stupid and thoughtless gets you rich these days. I say get them out in the open, let them fail, they deserve it. Smart people don't fall for it. Capitalism is using AI to destroy itself for short-term gains and it's happening right before our eyes - "Capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them with," and all that.