researchers and philosophers (not sure why we should care about the latter’s opinions on LLMs).

Philosophers may not be represent an authory on the mechanics of LLMs, but in a discussion of the nature consciousness (which is really what the stochastic parrot stuff is about), their opinion is as valid as anyone elses, and they have one of the richer histories of conceptualizing it, long before more rigorous empirical disciplines could dream of doing so.

I wouldnt be surprised if this was suicide by cop. But its still indicative of a structural problem that such a thing is possible.

I think the crux of spec ops was less about morally judging the player or even the protagonist actions. In my opinion the driving theme of that story was encouraging critical analysis of the media we participate in, in this case, video games. It’s not so much that the player had no choice but to do those bad things, the important part is the way the context of the surrounding narrative framed those choices. And then extrapolating that to other games of a similar ilk and frankly media as a whole.

It’s kind of a cult classic. I remember it getting a lot of praise on neo gas and that’s also why I played it. But in the larger arena of video game culture it’s kind of just a footnote.