THEY WANT TO MAKE THE PLUMBER LOOK LIKE MY NEPHEW
I was sitting in my recliner the other day, minding my own business and trying to remember the name of that actor from the movie with the boat, when my grandson comes in and says, 'Grandpa, look at the DLSS 5 graphics on this 4090.' I don't know what a 4090 is, sounds like a tax form for a small business owner, but he shows me this screen and I tell you, I nearly spilled my prune juice. They’ve taken those nice, simple video game characters—the ones that looked like a pile of colorful bricks—and they’ve turned them into actual people. Why? Why would anyone want that? I don't go to the movies to see my neighbor Dave, and I certainly don't want to play a game where the hero has more pores than a kitchen sponge. This Nvidia company thinks they’re doing us a favor by 'upgrading' faces, but they’ve clearly lost their marbles. It’s unnatural.
Back in the 80s, we had imagination. If a character was a yellow circle with a mouth, we didn't complain that we couldn't see the individual hairs in his nose. We just accepted it! Now, this DLSS 5 uses 'Artificial Intelligence'—which is a fancy word for 'Computers are smarter than you and they’re going to steal your bank password'—to smooth out the edges until everything looks like a high-definition documentary about sweat. I don't want to see the sweat! I want to see a blue hedgehog running fast, not a realistic rodent that looks like it belongs in a nature film that would make your grandmother faint. It’s a disgrace to the craft of making things look fake.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CLARITY OF A VCR TRACKING KNOB?
Everything is 'real-time lighting' this and 'ray tracing' that. You know what had great lighting? The sun. And it didn't require a two-thousand-dollar piece of silicon to work. These kids today, they can’t even look at a screen unless it’s glowing with the intensity of a thousand suns and every reflection is perfectly calculated by a robot in a basement. When I was a kid, we had a TV that you had to hit on the side just to get the picture to stop rolling like a tumbleweed. And we liked it! It built character. You had to work for your entertainment. Now the computer does all the work, and the gamers just sit there with their mouths open, staring at a screen that looks more real than the backyard they haven't visited in three years.
And don't get me started on the 'real-time adjustment.' The article says the AI adjusts the game's look while you're playing. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. One minute you're jumping over a mushroom, and the next, the AI decides it wants to make the mushroom look like a gourmet portobello from the fancy grocery store that charges six dollars for a loaf of bread. I don't want my games to adjust. I want them to stay exactly where I put them, like my tools in the garage—assuming Martha hasn't moved them again to make room for her 'crafting' supplies. AI is just a way for companies to charge you more for something we never asked for in the first place.
A COMPUTING COST THAT COULD BUY A USED BUICK
They say this technology is the future, but the future looks a lot like a bill I can't afford. My grandson tells me these graphics cards use so much electricity they could power a small village in the Midwest. I believe him! My power bill is already high enough because I like to keep the porch light on for the neighborhood watch, and now Nvidia wants me to subsidize their 'photorealistic' fantasies? No thank you. We are living in an era where the pixels are more expensive than the actual objects they are trying to represent. I could buy a real sword and a suit of armor for the price of one of these computers, and then I’d be ready for the collapse of society, which is probably being accelerated by this very AI technology.
It’s all part of the plan to make us forget what’s real and what’s not. Pretty soon, you won't be able to tell if you're talking to your wife or a DLSS 5 projection of her. Although, some days, a version of Martha that I could turn off with a remote doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world. But that’s beside the point! The point is that we are losing our grip on reality because we’re too busy trying to make the fake stuff look like the real stuff. Just give me a game with a clear objective, three lives, and a soundtrack that doesn't sound like a blender full of gravel, and I'll be a happy man. Keep your AI and your 'photorealism' and give me back my 8-bit pride.
Conclusion
In the end, I told my grandson to take his 'D-L-S-S' and go find a hobby that involves a hammer or a lawnmower. If I wanted to see a photorealistic version of a man in a green hat, I would go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade and look at the fellow who sells the overpriced sausages. We don't need AI to tell us what a face looks like. We just need a graphics card that doesn't cost as much as a 1988 Ford Taurus and a little bit of respect for the pixels that built this country. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go call the cable company because my remote is acting like it's possessed by the spirit of a disgruntled VCR.