PostiveNoise

Sure. I worked in the game industry and sometimes AI can mean ‘pick a random number if X occurs’ or something equally simple, so I’m just used to the term used a few different ways.

Yeah, Eno actually has made a variety of albums and art installations using generative simple AI for musical decisions, although I don’t think he does any advanced programming himself. That’s why it’s really odd to see comments in an article that imply he is really uninformed about AI…he was pioneering generative music 20-30 years ago.

I’ve come to realize that there is a huge amount of misinformation about AI these days, and the issue is compounded by there being lots of clumsy, bad early AI works in various art fields, web journalism etc. I’m trying to cut back on discussing AI for these reasons, although as an AI enthusiast, it’s hard to keep quiet about it sometimes.

Either the article editing was horrible, or Eno is wildly uniformed about the world. Creation of AIs is NOT the same as social media. You can’t blame a hammer for some evil person using it to hit someone in the head, and there is more to ‘hammers’ than just assaulting people.

Totally right that there are already very impressive open source AI projects.

But Eno doesn’t control diddly, and it’s odd that you think he does. And I assume he is decently well off, but I doubt he is super rich by most people’s standards.

Similar to the early Blizzard approach in some ways. A focus on delivering a vibe done to a very high level of quality and visual coolness, while leaving risky innovation in game mechanics to others.

People do talk about this. At least, they do in the game industry. It’s well known that when an independent studio gets bought (usually by a publisher they have been working for), this often results in the studio closing down a number of years later unless they crank out hit-after-hit. Of course, sometimes that doesn’t happen and the studio gets more stability and more financial support, now that they are part of a larger company.

In regards to the people who sell their studio (founders), it’s important to keep in mind that for most of these people, selling their studio while the studio is fairly popular results in life-changing wealth. Maybe selling the studio and becoming rich by doing so was not their original goal, but it should be no surprise that studio founders can be very tempted to sell the studio (at the right price). Owning an independent studio can be a gigantic amount of stress, and a huge financial reward that also allows the founder to simply get rid of all the headaches and stress is nothing to sneeze at.

Everyone who works at an independent studio knows the risks involved (to their own job eventually, if the studio is sold), and they often have mixed thoughts on what the founders are doing, but they don’t all demonize the studio owners, since they would be tempted by the same potential rewards if they owned the studio.