two new posts for today & 25th

content/post/2023/09/ai-allegedly-beats-humans-in-creativity.md

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+---
+title: "AI Allegedly Beats Humans in Creativity"
+date: 2023-09-21T09:00:00+02:00
+categories:
+  - learning
+tags:
+  - creativity
+  - AI
+---
+
+The MIT Technology Review headline on artificial intelligence reads: _AI just beat a human test for creativity. What does that even mean?_ I'll tell you what it means. It means we're in dire need of a better universally accepted definition of creativity. All those scare makers are just there to ride on the popularity of the terms "AI" and "Language Learning Model". AI does what AI does: it generates stuff. That's not creative at all---it's just _a single part_ of creativity. 
+
+Shallow articles that have nothing to say aside, I was all the more disappointed when reading Mika Koivisto and Simone Grassini's[^au] paper called _[Best humans still outperform artificial intelligence in a creative divergent thinking task](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-40858-3)_, where the abstract mentioned that on average, AI chatbots outperformed human participants (going even further: _while human responses included poor-quality ideas, the chatbots generally produced more creative responses._)
+
+[^au]: Interestingly, both authors do not have any other paper published on their name with the word "creativ*" in it.
+
+The term "creative" or "creativity" should _not_ have been used in the above paper: the title itself indicates that it's all about divergent thinking. _Of course_ AI is better at generating a more diverse set of so-to-speak original ideas: its gargantuan dataset is based on the ideas of millions of other humans! We could never possibly have that much experience, meaning we can never possibly come up with that many diverse answers---and that's okay. In an interview with software developers, while probing how they perceive creativity and creative problem solving, one participant said: "creativity is the brew of different inputs". Chatbots have had a lot more input than we'll ever be capable of processing. 
+
+If you dig deeper, you'll uncover even more evidence proving the misuse of the term creativity. Those "tests for creativity"? Those are either Torrance's Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) or the Alternate Uses Task (UAT), both one-dimensional divergent thinking tasks developed in the seventies that have little to do with modern creative problem solving. Of course coming up with as many different alternative solutions as possible is still relevant today, but like I mentioned before, it's only _one_ dimension of creativity. It begets all the others: collaboration, critical thinking, a creative mindset, tooling, etc (see [what is creativity in software engineering?](/post/2021/01/what-is-creativity-in-software-engineering/)). 
+
+Chatbots, AI, Language Learning Models, code-generation tools---or whatever you want to call them---should be treated as just another way of getting input. Input that still needs to pass the different critical thinking phases: if you proudly claim never to blindly copy-paste Stack Overflow answers, then why are you blindly (and still proudly?) accepting Copilot's proposal to generate that piece of code? Perhaps it's not the best fit here. Perhaps the proposed code reminds you of another problem that you once discussed with a colleague, concluding that the best way to proceed here is to reject the proposal and implement a variant of the one you were reminded of. Without the proposal, you probably didn't remember. But without critically evaluating the proposal, that part of the code wouldn't have been as reusable and clear as it is now. 
+
+Granted, Koivisto and Grassini do make amends in the last sentence of their conclusion:
+
+> It should be noted that creativity is a multifaceted phenomenon, and we have focused here only on performance in the most used task (AUT) measuring divergent thinking.
+
+That warning should have been placed in the beginning, in the middle, _and_ in the end, as people are quick to generalize and some pages contain the word creativity more than 30 times. 
+
+In the academic field of cognitive psychology, a once generally accepted definition of creativity (something original, qualitative, and relevant) long evolved into a more multidimensional socio-cultural phenomenon. Unfortunately, in the field of computing (education), we found that this evolution hasn't seeped trough yet. That means many very recent published works are still relying on obsolete ideas of the concept of creativity! Long live the speeds at which interdisciplinary research travels.
+
+In the above paper, the authors more or less refer to the aged definition:
+
+> The standard definition of creativity describes it as the ability to produce ideas that are, to some extend, original and useful.
+
+Hence something hot in computing (AI) is wrongly correlated against another hot topic outside of computing (creativity) using old---and incomplete!---definitions and even more obsolete tests. 
+
+AI does not beat humans in creativity. AI beats humans in generating new subsets of something based on millions of records---records that human artists once painstakingly crafted, by the way, but the ethical aspects of all this is a whole different problem I'll leave for another rant. Creativity is more than generating ideas. Please stop equating divergent thinking with creativity. Thank you. End of message.

content/post/2023/09/overlooked-reasons-to-still-buy-physical-media.md

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+---
+title: "Overlooked Reasons To Still Buy Physical Media"
+date: 2023-09-25T09:00:00+02:00
+categories:
+  - retro
+tags:
+  - collecting
+---
+
+With Microsoft's reportedly _digital only_ plans for Xbox's future [now leaked](https://www.eurogamer.net/its-a-good-thing-microsoft-now-says-its-adorably-all-digital-future-plans-are-outdated), Xbox boss Phil Spencer had to be quick to dismiss the information as _outdated_, as physical collectors and preservationists were already staring to panic on social media. Regular readers will undoubtedly know I'm mostly a physical kind of guy as well---see [is collecting physical games worth it part III](/post/2022/10/is-collecting-physical-games-worth-it-part-iii/)---although no panic attacks were induced here, as I don't care about Xbox. 
+
+The Xbox plan leak wasn't the first to try and push cloud-based gaming: hello, Stadia---hey, where are you going? Okay, [bye, Stadia](https://killedbygoogle.com/)! Yet it reminded me yet again why buying and playing physical games has, for me, many advantages over a digital purchase. Unconventional advantages that I see rarely mentioned, beyond the obvious preservationist perspective, which, if you factor in DLC, patches, and sometimes even required online connections, is more of an illusion than anything else. Most of these reasons to still buy physical games can also be applied to DVDs so I generalized the title to _media_. Here's why I still like buying tangible things. 
+
+Physical games are **more expensive**. I think that's a feature, not a bug. I finished 18 of the 36 digital Switch games I own (`50%`), while I finished 22 of the 28 physical games (`79%`). That ratio rapidly propels itself towards the lower tenths if I inspect my digital-only Steam library. If I have to pay more for a game, I don't buy it on a whim: I buy it if I want to really, really, really play it. Which digital purchases you made lately were nothing but impulse buys because of Black Whateverday?
+
+Physical games can be **more difficult to get**. I'm not just talking about the unfortunate limited supply of publishers like Limited Run Games (LRG) that confuse preservation with commercialism, but about the added hassle of biking to a brick & mortar store, hoping it'll be in stock (and in sale, which it never is). Most of you probably buy through online resellers or hunt for a discount on eBay---which is fine as well---but I prefer first sweating and then clenching something in hand to return home. That also means, to a lesser extend, that buying physical media can still be considered a somewhat social event.
+
+Physical games **require motor actions** to boot up. That's a fancy word for saying you need to pull out the previous disc or cartridge and insert the one you want to play now, possibly followed by a curse and searching for the correct box to put that other thing in. I _love_ the physical action of a cart insert, whether it's a spring-loaded _click_ like the Switch or a good old whack for older consoles. It helps makes my mind ready for the play session. I sometimes put the cart back in the case after the session just to repeat this ritual the next time.
+
+Physical games **retain their value**. Sometimes, a game disappoints. In that case, I'd like to have the option to sell it. I'm not a collector in the sense that my collection can only grow and never shrink---but even then, genuine cartridge-based physical games only go up in price. Not that I'd recommend viewing the hobby as an investment: you're better off buying and storing sealed Magic the Gathering booster boxes.
+
+Physical games **are mine** once I bought them. I generally dislike subscription-based media where one week your favorite thing is available and the next, _poof_, it's gone. This doesn't apply to digitally bought games, but if I sell my Wii/Switch/whatever, what to do with my account that's linked with these purchases? It's a bit more complicated than just having them, you know, in your hand.
+
+Physical games make **lending** possible, precisely because of the above point: they're tangible, and they're mine. I like lending games, as it helps either enthusing others or making my mind up whether or not I want to play it. I wish the Nintendo DS's Download Play was still a thing. 
+
+Physical games are usually **released later** than their digital counterpart. Yet again, I think that's a feature, not a bug. By then, the consensus of the critics is known, the initial bugs have been patched, and perhaps, my initial enthusiasm for the game has waned. Besides, nowadays, I find it impossible to keep up with releases and play stuff as it gets released. 
+
+Physical games are usually **not bundled**. While I applaud Humble Bumble and the like for their charity work, I actually don't like having three crappy or less interesting games come with that one game I actually want. Can you permanently remove games from your Steam library?
+
+Physical games help **provide an overview** on the shelf. Yes, accumulating stuff can get both tiresome and result in clutter, but if you just buy what you want to play instead of collect, for me, it's easier to keep track of what I have. Probably also because I buy less often (see the more expensive argument). 
+
+Physical games help **reduce required disk space**. This is only true for cartridge-based media that don't need an install and instantly load, like the Nintendo Switch. I know microSD cards are dirt cheap nowadays, but it's not fun to regularly move data around. I made the mistake of buying _Animal Crossing: New Horizons_ digitally because we couldn't wait. Now it's eating up `6 GB`+ of my smallish HDD space, and that's only base game data. 
+
+Reasons I've seen overused that I think have evolved from something genuine to something hollow:
+
+- preservation---companies like Strictly Limited and LRG might claim they're doing it to preserve games, but we know they just like the heaps of money that's flowing in. Remember the DOOM fiasco, that required an online account, or the Scott Pilgrim fiasco, that had important DLC left out intentionally, or the Shredder's Revenge DLC physical re-release to screw over faithful buyers of the original cart? Right. 
+- Instruction manuals---new physical media usually comes without, and while LRG initially put in a lot of effort to publish high-quality booklets like in Axiom Verge 1+2, my DUSK manual is a flimsy piece of paper folded in half. Right.