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More than 500 million people every month trust Gemini and ChatGPT to keep them in the know about everything from pasta, to sex or homework. But if AI tells you to cook your pasta in petrol, you probably shouldn’t take its advice on birth control or algebra, either.
At the World Economic Forum in January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was pointedly reassuring: “I can’t look in your brain to understand why you’re thinking what you’re thinking. But I can ask you to explain your reasoning and decide if that sounds reasonable to me or not. … I think our AI systems will also be able to do the same thing. They’ll be able to explain to us the steps from A to B, and we can decide whether we think those are good steps.”
Knowledge requires justification
It’s no surprise that Altman wants us to believe that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can produce transparent explanations for everything they say: Without a good justification, nothing humans believe or suspect to be true ever amounts to knowledge. Why not? Well, think about when you feel comfortable saying you positively know something. Most likely, it’s when you feel absolutely confident in your belief because it is well supported — by evidence, arguments or the testimony of trusted authorities.
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LLMs are meant to be trusted authorities; reliable purveyors of information. But unless they can explain their reasoning, we can’t know whether their assertions meet our standards for justification. For example, suppose you tell me today’s Tennessee haze is caused by wildfires in western Canada. I might take you at your word. But suppose yesterday you swore to me in all seriousness that snake fights are a routine part of a dissertation defense. Then I know you’re not entirely reliable. So I may ask why you think the smog is due to Canadian wildfires. For my belief to be justified, it’s important that I know your report is reliable.
The trouble is that today’s AI systems can’t earn our trust by sharing the reasoning behind what they say, because there is no such reasoning. LLMs aren’t even remotely designed to reason. Instead, models are trained on vast amounts of human writing to detect, then predict or extend, complex patterns in language. When a user inputs a text prompt, the response is simply the algorithm’s projection of how the pattern will most likely continue. These outputs (increasingly) convincingly mimic what a knowledgeable human might say. But the underlying process has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the output is justified, let alone true. As Hicks, Humphries and Slater put it in “ChatGPT is Bullshit,” LLMs “are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth.”
So, if AI-generated content isn’t the artificial equivalent of human knowledge, what is it? Hicks, Humphries and Slater are right to call it bullshit. Still, a lot of what LLMs spit out is true. When these “bullshitting” machines produce factually accurate outputs, they produce what philosophers call Gettier cases (after philosopher Edmund Gettier). These cases are interesting because of the strange way they combine true beliefs with ignorance about those beliefs’ justification.
AI outputs can be like a mirage
Consider this example, from the writings of 8th century Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmottara: Imagine that we are seeking water on a hot day. We suddenly see water, or so we think. In fact, we are not seeing water but a mirage, but when we reach the spot, we are lucky and find water right there under a rock. Can we say that we had genuine knowledge of water?
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People widely agree that whatever knowledge is, the travelers in this example don’t have it. Instead, they lucked into finding water precisely where they had no good reason to believe they would find it.
The thing is, whenever we think we know something we learned from an LLM, we put ourselves in the same position as Dharmottara’s travelers. If the LLM was trained on a quality data set, then quite likely, its assertions will be true. Those assertions can be likened to the mirage. And evidence and arguments that could justify its assertions also probably exist somewhere in its data set — just as the water welling up under the rock turned out to be real. But the justificatory evidence and arguments that probably exist played no role in the LLM’s output — just as the existence of the water played no role in creating the illusion that supported the travelers’ belief they’d find it there.
Altman’s reassurances are, therefore, deeply misleading. If you ask an LLM to justify its outputs, what will it do? It’s not going to give you a real justification. It’s going to give you a Gettier justification: A natural language pattern that convincingly mimics a justification. A chimera of a justification. As Hicks et al, would put it, a bullshit justification. Which is, as we all know, no justification at all.
Right now AI systems regularly mess up, or “hallucinate” in ways that keep the mask slipping. But as the illusion of justification becomes more convincing, one of two things will happen.
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For those who understand that true AI content is one big Gettier case, an LLM’s patently false claim to be explaining its own reasoning will undermine its credibility. We’ll know that AI is being deliberately designed and trained to be systematically deceptive.
And those of us who are not aware that AI spits out Gettier justifications — fake justifications? Well, we’ll just be deceived. To the extent we rely on LLMs we’ll be living in a sort of quasi-matrix, unable to sort fact from fiction and unaware we should be concerned there might be a difference.
Each output must be justified
When weighing the significance of this predicament, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s nothing wrong with LLMs working the way they do. They’re incredible, powerful tools. And people who understand that AI systems spit out Gettier cases instead of (artificial) knowledge already use LLMs in a way that takes that into account. Programmers use LLMs to draft code, then use their own coding expertise to modify it according to their own standards and purposes. Professors use LLMs to draft paper prompts and then revise them according to their own pedagogical aims. Any speechwriter worthy of the name during this election cycle is going to fact check the heck out of any draft AI composes before they let their candidate walk onstage with it. And so on.
But most people turn to AI precisely where we lack expertise. Think of teens researching algebra… or prophylactics. Or seniors seeking dietary — or investment — advice. If LLMs are going to mediate the public’s access to those kinds of crucial information, then at the very least we need to know whether and when we can trust them. And trust would require knowing the very thing LLMs can’t tell us: If and how each output is justified.
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Fortunately, you probably know that olive oil works much better than gasoline for cooking spaghetti. But what dangerous recipes for reality have you swallowed whole, without ever tasting the justification?
Hunter Kallay is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Tennessee.
Kristina Gehrman, PhD, is an associate professor of philosophy at University of Tennessee.
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The team behind the upcoming Minecraft movie shared a new clip during Minecraft Live that expands on the brief crafting moment we saw in the polarizing first teaser. The scene comes in the middle of a discussion between Mojang creative director Torfi Frans Olafsson and A Minecraft Movie director Jared Hess, at 4:51. The segment also gives us our first look at the movie’s interpretation of a Minecraft bee, which I’m not quite sure how to feel about yet. That you can find toward the end of the video.
A Minecraft Movie is slated for release in April 2025 and stars Jack Black as Steve, alongside Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen. Plans for it were first announced a decade ago, and potential release dates were set and scrapped on multiple occasions in the time since. At long last, it’s actually now happening — for better or worse.
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GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
I made it to Japan this week for my first Tokyo Game Show. Yes, in 27 years of regular coverage of games, I have never been to the show until now. Here’s some of my impressions of the event, which should draw around 200,000 people or so — many of them cosplayers on the weekend.
First, it is pretty massive. There are 985 companies at the show, compared to 787 in 2023. They’re occupying 3,252 booths, compared to 2,682 booths last year. There are 44 countries attending, the same as a year ago. And there are 2,850 titles on display, compared to 2,291 a year ago. On almost every measure, the numbers are up; we’ll see how final attendance looks later on.
Palworld booth at Tokyo Game Show 2024.
There are some interesting figures on platforms and genres. While Nintendo is not at the show, there are 295 Nintendo Switch games, up from 234 last year. Meanwhile, Pocket Pair, the maker of Palworld, was there with a large booth and a lot of cosplayers. Nintendo sued Pocket Pair for making what everyone jokingly called “Pokemon with guns.”
Palworld’s booth worker.
There are 156 PS4 and 238 PS5 games, up from 144 and 158 a year ago. In fact, Sony was there showing off the quality of the PlayStation 5 Pro. You can see Gran Turismo running on it in this video.
Join us for GamesBeat Next!
GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here.
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Xbox has 172 X/S games, up from 103 last year, and 86 Xbox One games, up from 78. Microsoft showed off a bunch of its new games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a special broadcast at the Tokyo Game Show.
Xbox also announced that Starcraft I and II (from the Blizzard division of the newly acquired Activision Blizzard business) will be coming to Game Pass on November 5, and players heard the Japanese voiceover in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for the first time.
From Konami, the Xbox audience saw the latest visual update on Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater with updated graphics, and Japanese studios Denki Works and Critical Reflex debuted a world premiere with their classically inspired Tanuki Pon’s Summer and much, much more. Gilles Langourieux, CEO of Virtuos, an Asia-focused external development company with 3,800 people, noted that his team of external developers helped with the Snake Eater title for more than two years. He told me that he feels like the gaming market is getting better. (We hope so. Our theme at GamesBeat Next 2024 coming on October 28-29 in San Francisco is back to growth).
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Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux at TGS 2024.
There are 625 Steam games, up from 437; 496 PC, up from 363, 188 iOS, up from 161, and 190 Android, up from 163. There are only three PSVR2 titles, down from 12 last year; 6 Valve Index, down from 19 last year; 32 Meta Quest 2, down from 27 last year; and 6 HTC Vive, down from 19 last year.
That definitely feels like VR is on the decline in terms of its share of the market, while Steam, Sony and Nintendo and even Xbox are in a very healthy state.
In terms of genres, there are 500 action games, up from 353 last year; 347 RPGs, down from 379 last year; 397 adventure games, up from 340 last year; 208 simulation games, down from 257 last year; 74 shooting games, down from 93 last year; 155 puzzle games, up from 100 last year; 96 ARPGs, up from 60 last year; 187 action adventure, up from 115 last year; 51 sports, up from 29 last year; 28 racing, down from 29 last year; and 47 action shooting, up from 44 last year.
I would note that I haven’t seen nearly as many layoffs among the Japanese or Asian game companies as I have seen in the West. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, said in an interview with me in Tokyo that the Japanese game industry may have had a more conservative approach during the pandemic, not hiring so many people as the Western companies did. As a result, they didn’t have to break with the tradition of lifetime employment and cut a lot of jobs as the post-pandemic times led to a drop in gaming demand.
Ken Kutaragi gives a keynote at Tokyo Game Show 2024.
A number of executives noted in interviews that the Chinese game companies have come on strong. Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, gave a keynote talk at the Tokyo Game Show where he foresaw a shift from computer entertainment (which he saw growing out of toys and then video games) to AI-infused media with supercomputing technology. He foresees an age of “real-time computing” that will be 100 times bigger than the game industry we have today. That’s very optimistic.
Ken Kutaragi sees a great convergence of tech leading to real-time computing.
In the meantime, he noted the success of Chinese game company Game Science, which sold 20 million copies in its first month of sales for Black Myth Wukong. Alongside other hits like Genshin Impact, Zenless Zen Zero and Honkai Star Rail, it feels like the Chinese have come into their own.
Shu Yoshida of Sony and Geoff Keighley of The Game Awards with Dean Takahashi at TGS.
During the week, I made visits to Sony Electronics, Sega, SNK and more. And, for the first time in Tokyo, I co-hosted a dinner party with Xsolla for Japanese game companies, making a mark for GamesBeat in Japan for the first time in eight years. In the previous trip eight years ago, Matsubara, then at Sega, was also on a panel that I moderated along with the Canadian government as they pitched Japanese devs to set up show in Canada.
Mike Milanov, right, head of Qiddiya Gaming, promoting the Saudi gigaproject at TGS 2024.
That was one sign of the global movements in gaming, and we see even more of that today. SNK’s sister company, Manga Productions, acquired Toei, a maker of manga and anime shows, and it’s using that talent to train interns in Saudi Arabia. Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, has expanded the company from 200 to more than 600 since Saudi Arabia’s Misk Foundation acquired it.
Kenji Matsubara, CEO of SNK, with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat.
That enabled the company to bring back SNK’s fan favorite, Fatal Fury, for the first time in 26 years.
SNK is bringing back Fatal Fury for the first time in 26 years.
In fact, Mike Milanov, head of Qiddiya Gaming in Saudi Arabia, had a booth at the Tokyo Game Show with a cyberpunk theme to promote the esports and gaming district of Qiddiya, a modern city that the Saudi’s are building outside Riyadh as a “giga project.”
The Street Fighter esports stars draw a crowd at Qiddiya’s booth at the Tokyo Game Show 2024.
Qiddiya hosted a panel of Street Fighter esports stars at its booth — and it drew a massive crowd.
Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat at Sega HQ in Tokyo.
It’s a global gaming business. It’s good to remember that when the blues and business cycles hit any given part of the business. I’m glad to see a part of the world — long overdue for me to visit — where gaming is thriving.
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Meta is restricting links on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook that lead to Ken Klippenstein’s newsletter containing a JD Vance dossier that was allegedly nabbed in an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign. The company has apparently removed posts containing the link and is seemingly blocking links to PDFs of the dossier being hosted elsewhere.
Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold emailed Meta’s statement to The Verge:
“Our policies do not allow content from hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections. We will be blocking such materials from being shared on our apps under our Community Standards.”
A Meta page on privacy violations forbids users from sharing details “obtained from hacked sources,” as well as “material that purports to reveal nonpublic information relevant to an election shared as part of a foreign government influence operation.”
People on Threads have reported that Meta removed their posts containing the link. Meta also appears to be disabling links to the document hosted elsewhere, such as the below post with a Scribd link, or another one purporting to link to the PDF on a Google Drive.
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X has also been blocking links to the story, and other social media users reported being unable to share the document via their Google Drive accounts (although I was able to share it, at least between two of my personal accounts). Neither company responded to our requests for comment by press time. We’ve also asked Box, Apple, Dropbox, and Microsoft whether they’re restricting the document, but none replied before we published this story.
Scientists from across several Chinese institutions have unveiled a new ultra-compact nuclear battery that has the potential to replace the existing power sources used in everyday tech.
Powered by Americium, this new battery reportedly achieves an energy conversion efficiency up to 8,000 times greater than previous models, suggesting it could one day serve as a substitute for conventional lithium batteries.
These micronuclear power sources generate electricity by utilizing the radioactive decay of radioisotopes, producing power on a small scale typically measured in nanowatts or microwatts. Unlike chemical batteries, their lifespan depends on the half-life of the radioisotope used. Americium, specifically isotopes 241Am and 243Am, offers operational lifetimes extending over several decades, suggesting it could provide a long-term power solution.
Deep space exploration
Traditional micronuclear batteries have faced challenges with low energy efficiency due to severe self-adsorption during alpha decay. Addressing this issue, the Chinese research team has developed a novel architecture that incorporates 243Am into a luminescent lanthanide coordination polymer.
By combining this new design with a photovoltaic cell to convert autoluminescence into electricity, the radiophotovoltaic micronuclear battery achieves a power conversion efficiency of 0.889%, delivering 139 microwatts per curie. Although the power output remains tiny, the potential for a long-term, maintenance-free energy supply is considerable.
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The resilience of this battery is noteworthy, as radioactive decay remains consistent regardless of environmental factors such as temperature or pressure. This stability ensures a reliable power source in challenging conditions.
The technology is still in its early stages and requires further development before widespread adoption is feasible. However, the team suggests initial applications for the americium-based nuclear battery could target small, remote devices, particularly in deep space exploration, where replacing conventional batteries is impractical.
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The research findings were published in the journal Nature.
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