So...I won't go into details, but I'm seeing some crazy stuff online recently. Apparently, due to AI, every gaming system it seems is being jailbroken, and people are acquiring a lot of paid content for free if you know what I mean. No, I won't be showing it or discussing the details for obvious legal reasons. But uh...yeah. This isn't really good. It could blow up the entire current business model for gaming, and odds are, in the long term, the industry is going to strike back. I know some people are framing this as "gamers won", but uh...no, we haven't we really haven't.
To preserve their profits, this kind of largescale jailbreak is going to lead to drastic action by the industry. It's probably gonna end this console generation and force the next out, even if it isn't affordable to the masses yet. Based on videos I've seen discussing cracks on previous consoles, yeah, that's what drove a lot of businesses like nintendo and sony to create new consoles. They feared piracy eating into game sales, so they'd jump ship, trying to create the next generation of hardware that was supposed to be unhackable, until people find a way, and then things would continue from there.
Normally, it would take long enough for cracks to happen that by the time they did, the businesses will have made their money and they could comfortably jump ship. And, of course, emulation is tricky where it requires systems FAR more powerful than the original hardware to pull off. By the time it becomes common, the console has largely been defunct for a long time and it doesn't really cost the industry much money.
However, AI is kind of changing things. It's figuring things out in seconds that it would take humans a lifetime to, meaning that it's now effortlessly bypassing traditional security measures, AND decompiling games, allowing for them to be ported to other platforms natively. AI has long been criticized of taking IP from the little guy, but now it's doing so on a level that's destructive enough to cost MAJOR industries money. And what I fear most is the reprisals for this.
The closest analogue to what we're seeing is going to be similar to what happened in the early 2000s when file sharing allowed for people to just effortlessly download music that they used to have to buy on CDs and records, etc. And the industry reacted negatively, going so far as to sue individual users for downloading pirated content. We might see a return to that again.
Some fear that we will never get a console again. Like, with RAMpocalypse, there's real debate over whether we will ever really "own" our own hardware again. Future consoles might rely solely on game streaming to ensure that individuals never have access to files ever again. After all, if AI can crack that stuff effortlessly, then the existing industry might lose money. We might also see future operating systems be more locked down to discourage people from operating outside of the closed ecosystems that the industry wants for us. That's why people fear the end of physical media in the first place. "You will own nothing and be happy" is actually the direction the businesses want to go in, and that's why some are celebrating now. But again, this is gonna be just a short term victory so to speak. IN the long term the industry will likely win. They'll lobby the government to change the rules, or push for stricter enforcement of IP laws, or they'll change the business model for the worse.
And that's something that's also very related to topics I normally discuss on here. How do I really feel about IP laws? I mean, I recognize they're necessary to some degree, but think they're written WAAAY too far on the side of the industry. And given the nature of technology evolving, it seems like we're artificially keeping antiquated models going so people can keep making money. We live in a society of artificial scarcity. We dont all need to work, but our society starves people out unless they do. We then talk about creating jobs and that being a good thing. We then try to push for artificial scarcity so people spend money to give to businesses. IP laws are one way of doing this. What AI is doing now, is just the core conflict with technology vs IP and the capitalist business model all along all over again. The internet kinda reminds me of that story with Jesus and the loaves and fishes. He just straight up copied that crap and fed the 5000. But in our current economy, that's "piracy", because think of how many jobs that Jesus destroyed. Fishermen and bakers make their money by selling stuff to consumers. But if Jesus can feed people for free, there aren't as many consumers. If there arent as many consumers, the businesses can't make money, and then they go out of business. And then they'll starve, even if we have free food for all, because some guy can just copy it instantly and distribute it for free. Capitalism requires gatekeeping and artificial scarcity to function, and it seems intent on enforcing that scarcity. IP laws are just a way of doing this. Taking a product that someone could take and distribute to free to everyone, and putting it behind a paywall to preserve the industry, its jobs, and its profits. Because that system being compromised or destroyed kind of causes economic chaos and capitalism is based on the idea of you work, you trade with others, and you pay each other for goods and services. When technology can reduce the marginal cost of something to zero, that's an entire industry destroyed.
Now, to be fair, with an industry like gaming, or music, or entertainment, it takes work to create something. If people dont pay for it, then there's no incentive to do it. And that destroys future creativity and ensures that the market adjusts so that no new media is created. Now, of course, creative individuals will likely still create things, youd still have a vibrant indie gaming scene. BUT....the AAA game industry as we know it would go out of business. So again, I'm not entirely against IP laws. I just support them to the bare minimum extent to preserve the core industry existing, even if I don't think that they should go as far as they do now.
And it does seem like, evolving past the early days of the web, an equilibrium came to exist. Sure, eventually hackers and jailbreakers would eventually win, but by then, the industry will have made its money and moved on. AI is disrupting that balance. Again, it's dismantling complex security that take humans years to crack in seconds, and its able to rewrite apps natively to any platform so anyone can use them on any sufficiently powerful piece of hardware. That's kinda game over for the current form of the industry, unless they do something drastic. And that's where my fear comes in. They could do some crazy "war on piracy" where they start locking random people up and suing them into oblivion for downloading copyrighted material. They could change the business model where everything is done through weak hardware that can't run everything and game streaming, since native gaming inherently has security risks. Ideally, they'd just nerf the AI, but with AI being entirely unregulated and hurtling toward "superintelligence" as some say, odds are its effects are just going to get more disruptive to the current world economy (and possibly other things) because its reined in. I mean, AI in general SHOULD be regulated. There's talk that AI if left unchecked could basically nuke the world like every science fiction movie in my lifetime warned about. It could end up causing job destruction on such a massive scale that even my proposals (which rely on some semblance of the old world still functioning) arent enough to handle it. Seriously, AI could really upend the entire capitalist system if left unchecked. As I said, that whole you need to work and pay others for their work system? AI might obsolete ALL of that in such a rapid amount of time that we won't know what to hit us. Thankfully, AI will also be so fast it likely will have thought up all of the solutions to that before we can. And probably act on them. Or...it could just kill us all. I mean, that's a possibility too.
But yeah. Scary times we live in. Even if I kinda WOULD like the work and profit based system as it exists to disappear in favor of post scarcity, I obviously would like it to happen on a scale where we can...you know...adjust to it properly. This stuff is just happening WAAAY too fast. And again, I really do fear that this could cause the special interests and businesses to use the force of law to crack down in draconian ways to preserve the status quo. This is not the first such challenge to ever threaten capitalism in this way. Back in the 1930s we were already talking post scarcity and how we were hurtling toward a world where we wouldnt have to work any more. We responded to it by creating this hell of the modern economy with its obsession of consumption and job creation. I really fear what happens next. I kinda fear the reactionary forces that wanna preserve current business models more than I fear the changes to some degree. Because they'll just use the force of law to FORCE things to stay the same, or to keep the rules written in their favor, and then enforce their ideas with extreme prejudice.
But yeah. That's my reaction to this. It's just another front on this never ending war between technology obsoleting capitalism's institutions and capitalism trying to preserve them. The idea of something just being free and widely accessible to all is just unthinkable from the capitalist perspective, and they'll continue to find new ways to preserve artificial scarcity to force us to continue using the existing system and its institutions. Which is why I aint necessarily optimistic about this. Sure, "gamers have won" for now. But the industry will strike back and I fear what that's ultimately gonna look like.
