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The rise of AI NPCs has felt like a looming threat for years, as if developers couldn't wait to dump human writers and offload NPC conversations to generative AI models. At CES 2025, NVIDIA made it plainly clear the technology was right around the corner. PUBG developer Krafton, for instance, plans to use NVIDIA's ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) to power AI companions, which will assist and banter with you during matches. Krafton isn't just stopping there it's also using ACE in its life simulation title InZOI to make characters smarter and generate objects. While the use of generative AI in games seems almost inevitable, as the medium has always toyed with new methods for making enemies and NPCs seem smarter and more realistic, seeing several NVIDIA ACE demos back-to-back made me genuinely sick to my stomach. This wasn't just slightly smarter enemy AI ACE can craft entire conversations out of thin air, simulate voices and try to give NPCs a sense of personality. It's also doing that work locally on your PC, powered by NVIDIA's RTX GPUs. But while all of that that might sound cool on paper, I hated almost every second I saw the AI NPCs in action. TiGames' ZooPunk is a prime example: It relies on NVIDIA ACE to generate dialog, a virtual voice and lip syncing for an NPC named Buck. But as you can see in the video above, Buck sounds like a stilted robot with a slight country accent. If he's supposed to have some sort of relationship with the main character, you couldn't tell from the performance. I think my visceral aversion to NVIDIA's ACE-powered AI comes down to this: There's simply nothing compelling about it. No joy, no warmth, no humanity. Every ACE AI character feels like a developer cutting corners in the worst way possible, as if you're seeing their contempt for the audience manifested a boring NPC. I'd much rather scroll through some on-screen text, at least I wouldn't have to have conversations with uncanny robot voices. During NVIDIA's Editor's Day at CES, a gathering for media to learn more about the new RTX 5000-series GPUs and their related technology, I was also underwhelmed by a demo of PUBG's AI Ally. Its responses were akin to what you'd hear from a pre-recorded phone tree. The Ally also failed to find a gun when the player asked, which could have been a deadly mistake in a crowded map. At one point, the PUBG companion also spent around 15 seconds attacking enemies while the demo player was shouting for it to get into a car. What good is an AI helper if it plays like a noob? Poke around NVIDIA's YouTube channel and you'll find other disappointing ACE examples, like the basic speaking animations in the MMO World of Jade Dynasty (above) and Alien: Rogue Incursion. I'm sure many devs would love to skip the chore of developing decent lip syncing technology, or adopting someone else's, but for these games leaning on AI just looks awful. To be clear, I don't think NVIDIA's AI efforts are all pointless. I've loved seeing DLSS get steadily better over the years, and I'm intrigued to see how DLSS 4's multi-frame generation could improve 4K and ray-tracing performance for demanding games. The company's neural shader technology also seems compelling, in particular its ability to apply a realistic sheen to material like silk, or evoke the slight transparency you'd see from skin. These aren't enormous visual leaps, to be clear, but they could help deliver a better sense of immersion. Now I'm sure some AI boosters will say that the technology will get better from here, and at some undefinable point in the future, it could approach the quality of human ingenuity. Maybe. But I'm personally tired of being sold on AI fantasies, when we know the key to great writing and performances is to give human talent the time and resources to refine their craft. And on a certain level, I think I'll always feel like the director Hayao Miyazaki, who described an early example of an AI CG creature as, "an affront to life itself." AI, like any new technology, is a tool that could be deployed in many ways. For things like graphics and gameplay (like the intelligent enemies in F.E.A.R. and The Last of Us), it makes sense. But when it comes to communicating with NPCs, writing their dialog and crafting their performances, I've grown to appreciate human effort more than anything else. Replacing that with lifeless AI doesn't seem like a step forward in any way.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidias-ai-npcs-are-a-nightmare-140313701.html?src=rss
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If you know anyone in the job market right now, then youve probably heard stories about just how tough it can be to even land an interview. Part of the problem, according to LinkedIn, is that too many people are applying for jobs they arent actually qualified for, which makes it harder for good candidates to stand out. The company is hoping its new AI-powered Job Match feature can help address some of that disconnect. The feature, which is beginning to roll out today, uses AI to provide detailed summaries alongside job listings that let users know how qualified they actually are for a given role. LinkedIn product manager Rohan Rajiv says that the AI-powered feature goes beyond the kind of simple keyword matching that job hunters may already rely on. Instead, it attempts to understand the breadth of your experience and how it aligns with the qualifications outlined in the job description. The goal, Rajiv tells Engadget, is to help surface the jobs a person is most qualified for and discourage people from applying to roles they arent. When you're qualified, we'll be able to help you, but also, when you're not qualified, we can hopefully find you other places where you are qualified, Rajv told Engadget. While Job Match will be available to all LinkedIn users, there are some added benefits for subscribers to LinkedIn Premium, including more granular information about their job match level. Eventually, Rajiv says, LinkedIn will also be able to surface more qualified applicants on the recruiter side as well, to make it less likely for good candidates to be overlooked. Whether any of this will actually ease the pain of would-be job seekers is less clear. The tech industry lost tens of thousands of jobs to layoffs in 2024. So did the video game industry. Media and entertainment hasnt fared much better, either. All that would seemingly create even more competition for the same job openings a dynamic AI seems ill-equipped to fully address. I think there's a portion of this that will always be labor market dynamics, but I would argue that there's a significant portion of this that is just pure lack of transparency, Rajiv says. He notes that early tests of the feature have suggested that a non-trivial chunk of the problem is more solvable than we think. On their part, recruiters seem to be endorsing LinkedIns latest advice regarding applying for fewer jobs. The companys blog post features testimonials from recruiters practically begging unqualified applicants to stop flooding their inboxes.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/linkedin-wants-you-to-apply-for-fewer-jobs-140049139.html?src=rss
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The United States, Japan and South Korea have issued a warning against North Korean threat actors, who are actively and aggressively targeting the cryptocurrency industry. In their joint advisory, the countries said threat actor groups affiliated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) continue to stage numerous cybercrime campaigns to steal cryptocurrency. Those bad actors including the Lazarus hacking group, which the US believes has been deploying cyber attacks all over the world since 2009 target "exchanges, digital asset custodians and individual users." And apparently, they stole $659 million in crypto assets in 2024 alone. North Korean hackers have been using "well-disguised social engineering attacks" to infiltrate their targets' systems, the countries said. They also warned that the actors could get access to systems owned by the private sector by posing as freelance IT workers. Back in 2022, the US issued guidelines on how to identify potential workers from North Korea, such as how they'd typically log in from multiple IP addresses, transfer money to accounts based in the People's Republic of China, ask for crypto payments, have inconsistencies with their background information and be unreachable at times during their supposed business hours. Once the bad actors are in, they then usually deploy malware, such as keyloggers and remote access tools, to be able to steal login credentials and, ultimately, virtual currency they can control and sell. As for where the stolen funds go: The UN issued a report in 2022, revealing its investigators' discovery that North Korea uses money stolen by affiliated threat actors for its missile programs. "Our three governments strive together to prevent thefts, including from private industry, by the DPRK and to recover stolen funds with the ultimate goal of denying the DPRK illicit revenue for its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs," the US, Japan and South Korea said.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/north-korea-stole-659-million-in-crypto-assets-last-year-the-us-says-133029741.html?src=rss
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