Teach My Little Sister How to Drive relies on Google Gemini and ChatGPT to power its dynamic NPC, which follows your instructions, reacts, and disobeys, but the developers are looking into ways of allowing local AI models to step in for players “with sufficiently capable PCs.”

They're using two cloud-based models for a task that is usually handled by if-then-else statements? I think I know who programmed this NPC...

When will people learn that cloud (aka someone else's computer you rent) is not a good deal for this sort of task? A person smart enough to write a game should really have the fore-thought to estimate the costs up-front of using an external service as part of it.

On the other hand, I'm happy if people token-max the FREE tiers of "AI", to drive these a-hole companies out of business faster. It's just unsustainable and the big cloud companies are burning money way faster than they can realistically charge for it, so the more free 'burners' going, the better, in a twisted way. Bankrupt those MFers, no mercy.

The game is also popular in Asia, where there isn’t such a stigma around generative AI, which people in the West tend to hate because it’s a theft engine that sucks up the planet’s energy like Shinra.

I did not realize that this game was backing the little sister character with a live cloud-based LLM. I just assumed it was something that would be a pre-trained local thing, or just have a finite set of responses.

That seems horrifically unsustainable.

Sounds like a perfect microcosm of the whole stupid thing. It's basically the "SliceLine" business model, from Silicon Valley. (Where they were buying Dominos' pizzas and putting them in their own boxes and reselling them for less than a Domino's pizza.) You can't make a profit, can't even not lose money with every customer. But you can burn venture capital to offer your product at a loss and then use your increasing revenue to attract more investor money, while promising a new version of the service that actually will be profitable, right around the corner, real soon now- and hope to get bought out before your bullshit all falls apart.

Then the bank was foolish to approve the loan.

Well, they’re an idiot then. Smh

Well now I want to play this just so I can burn up more of this guys money and then never buy the thing since it seems extremely limited.

I've seen a YouTuber or two playing this game. It looked like shit. And knowing that it needed too large language models just to play so poorly. Confirms that it's shit.

NPCs in games may be one of the very few actual good uses for AI. But not using the cloud obviously.