This blog post is an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation, "'What makes a great story?': Multidisciplinary and international perspectives on digital stories created by youth formerly in foster care in Canada" (York University, 11 Apr. The debate about whether or not to work with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies because they are "good," or "bad" is overly simplistic and lacks a critical lens. As history conveys, one can infer that artists and technologists are going to try working with AI despite, or because of these challenges. AI systems like "Dall:E" that translate words and sentences into images, have solidified concerns about representation, specifically of gender and race raised early in the advent of AI-based data visualization (Nicholas, 2022). Nevertheless, I believe that it is necessary for women and non-binary people -- especially racialized women -- to begin to explore these technologies as a way of claiming this space and defining the ethical implications of AI.

The 2013 video game "The Last of Us" was a hit with critics and players thanks to a powerful narrative. Ten years later, that story is headed to television on HBO in what the industry hopes is a harbinger for artfully adapting video games to TV and film. "The Last of Us," created by video game developer Naughty Dog and published by Sony Entertainment, follows hardened survivor Joel and his young protege Ellie as they navigate a post-pandemic world fighting people and mutated creatures. The zombie thriller, which premieres on Sunday, stars "Game of Thrones" veterans Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The PlayStation game won numerous awards, including "Game of the Year" at the 17th Annual Design Innovate Communicate Entertain summit (DICE), which honors video game industry professionals.

Gregory Portent has no regrets about running one of the greatest international ponzi schemes in history. "I've been committing these crimes for the right reasons," he declares. As God's Ponzi opens, Gregory is on the run from authorities and fiercely determined to ensure that his enemies get exactly what they deserve. If only he can get the right guidance and advice from his AI-powered partner, JLL. Told from Gregory's point of view, author Robert Buschel deftly explores the seeds of a world class schemer through reflections on his childhood.

The result is a Metroid game that feels like it is designed by gridwork and less about creating a convincing world. Again, background details like wildlife roaming the planet help alleviate this somewhat, but in a Metroid game, the foreground should be a priority over the background. The first and second Metroid games were mostly designed with pitch-black backgrounds, yet I could still describe what the Brinstar and Norfair regions were like because the developers placed the details of those regions at the forefront. Norfair was filled with lava, and its music was a raging, syncopated march. And although it's been years since I've played "Metroid Prime," I could still tell you what the snow-capped Phendrana Drifts look like.

Disney's cuddly toys of the future could be smart enough to pick out the perfect bedtime story, thanks to a clever new artificial intelligence engine that's been trained to judge short works of fiction. Using neural networks designed to mimic the learning processes of human brains, the AI was trained using sample stories to recognise particular traits and patterns that would appeal to a broad range of readers. The team from Disney Research and the University of Massachusetts Boston says it's the first large-scale study of its kind on getting bots to evaluate the quality of texts, and could eventually lead to AI systems that are able to tell a good story as well as spot one in a crowd of literary tales. "Our neural networks had some success in predicting the popularity of stories," says one of the team, Boyang Albert Li from Disney Research. "You can't yet use them to pick out winners for your local writing competition, but they can be used to guide future research."

For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we've been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we're starting an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective. Seeded onto a pinkish and poisoned world of scouring winds, I stumbled from my broken spaceship, unsure of my footing or anything else. I saw strange plants moving, the stalagmite spikes of ore deposits like plutonium fangs, the wreckage of my crash, dust. When I moved, I heard nothing but the crunch of my heavy boots and the occasional chime from my spacesuit -- followed, always, by the weirdly autotuned computer voice in my ear saying, "Environmental protection falling ..." And hers was the only human voice left to speak in the whole of this impossible universe.