In 1985, brothers Dene and Simon Carter vowed to each other that they would one day start their own development studio together. The game they imagined was ambitious, as Simon outlined in a developer diary: a fantasy role-playing game, "populated with compelling and convincing characters with real personality, people who actually reacted to what you did … We wanted each and every person who played our game to have a unique experience, to have their own stories to tell." The idea of a living, reactive game world was an obsession for many game creators (and players) at the time, largely because it had never yet been done. In the 1980s, a virtual fantasy world like this was far beyond the realms of technological possibility. Thirteen years later, they got the opportunity to make the game of their dreams, at their own studio Big Blue Box.

As part of a broader look at the impact of generative AI, this study investigated the emotional responses of journalists to the release of ChatGPT at the time of its launch. By analyzing nearly 1 million Tweets from journalists at major U.S. news outlets, we tracked changes in emotional tone and sentiment before and after the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022. Using various computational and natural language processing techniques to measure emotional shifts in response to ChatGPT's release, we found an increase in positive emotion and a more favorable tone post-launch, suggesting initial optimism toward AI's potential. This research underscores the pivotal role of journalists as interpreters of technological innovation and disruption, highlighting how their emotional reactions may shape public narratives around emerging technologies. The study contributes to understanding the intersection of journalism, emotion, and AI, offering insights into the broader societal impact of generative AI tools.

Today is the opening day of Gamescom, the Cologne expo that is now the biggest event in the video game calendar. This year, I am not among the 300,000-odd crowd descending on Germany, but I did watch the two-hour livestreamed opening-night broadcast yesterday – so you don't have to. Here is all of the most interesting news, arranged by theme because I am deeply bored of writing straightforward lists of games and trailers. News that will annoy Xbox fanboys the most There was a new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Bethesda and MachineGames's new first-person adventure, in which longtime video game actor Troy Baker seems charmingly thrilled to be playing Indiana Jones. It'll be out on Xbox and PC on 9 December – but it was also announced that it will be coming to PlayStation 5 in spring 2025.

Demis Hassabis stands halfway up a spiral staircase, surveying the cathedral he built. The DNA sculpture, spanning three floors, is the centerpiece of DeepMind's recently opened London headquarters. It's an artistic representation of the code embedded in the nucleus of nearly every cell in the human body. "Although we work on making machines smart, we wanted to keep humanity at the center of what we're doing here," Hassabis, DeepMind's CEO and co-founder, tells TIME. This building, he says, is a "cathedral to knowledge." Each meeting room is named after a famous scientist or philosopher; we meet in the one dedicated to James Clerk Maxwell, the man who first theorized electromagnetic radiation. "I've always thought of DeepMind as an ode to intelligence," Hassabis says. Hassabis, 46, has always been obsessed with intelligence: what it is, the possibilities it unlocks, and how to acquire more of it.

ONE role academic journals have come to play that was not, as it were, part of their original job-description of disseminating scientific results (see article), is as indicators of a researcher's prowess, and thus determinants of academic careers. Publication in a top-notch title such as Nature or Science is an adornment to a scientist's CV that is unlikely to be overlooked by an appointment committee. Using such publications as endorsements is, though, necessarily a rule of thumb. A paper's true quality is better revealed by the number of times it is cited elsewhere (ideally, in papers other than those written by the original's authors). But citations take time to accumulate. Other, faster means of assessment would be welcome.

The Chan Zuckerberg Inititative, a philanthropic initiative from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, has acquired a startup, Meta, focused on using AI and machine learning to sift through recently published scientific studies. The terms of the acquisition were undisclosed. Announced in September, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a limited liability company focused on the ambitious goal to "cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of the century." At least $3 billion will be allocated toward that goal, all coming out of Chan and Zuckerberg's Facebook shares. "In science, peer-reviewed articles are the medium for the global conversation among researchers, and they represent the foundational reference point by which we judge what is known, where science is going, and what to work on next," Meta CEO Sam Molyneux, who cofounded the startup with his sister Amy, wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition. Each day, more than 4,000 scientific papers are published in biomedicine alone.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is getting some help from artificial intelligence. The philanthropic organization, founded by Facebook (fb) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015, will buy Meta, a startup focusing on artificial intelligence and related data analytic technology in the healthcare industry. The deal was disclosed in a Facebook post Monday by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative president of science Cornelia Bargmann and the organization's CTO Brian Pinkerton. Terms of the deal were not revealed. Meta specializes in using artificial intelligence technologies like natural language processing and machine learning to sift through millions of scientific and technology papers and identify which papers should presumably be most important to health-care professionals.

Peek behind the graphics of two new games and you ll find the same artificial intelligence that s at work in Pentagon-sponsored war simulations. In the Sims 2 (due out spring 2004, $50), a player manages the life of a simulated human being who interacts with other computer-generated people and things. The Sims 2 is an evolution of the original (the best-selling computer game ever): Characters display more acute awareness of their surroundings-turning their heads if someone enters a room, or losing their train of thought when distracted. You can roughly predict where each ball is going to spin, but from second to second it depends on how it reflects off a bumper.†Each time a Sims character acts, the game s program engine calculates how his mood is affected. If he s hungry when he cooks a meal, his overall happiness will rise more than if he s not.

Gaming has a lot in common with everyone's favourite heiress, at least in the public consciousness: it's pretty, but dumb. And now that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have released their latest games consoles, that statement becomes all the more pertinent - next-gen games look great, but they play like something that could have been made a decade ago. While visual fidelity has advanced exponentially over time, the technology that governs how games play, react and adapt - the artificial intelligence, or AI - remains relatively rudimentary. A handful of developers are striving to change this. The British designer Peter Molyneux, recently awarded an OBE, has spent his career trying to inject sentience and reactivity into games - and with his upcoming title, Fable 2, he thinks he's made significant progress.

For almost 20 years, Lionhead Studios was a beacon of the UK games industry. In a medium where big budgets tend to shrink ambitions, here was a group of experimenters, inventors, and craftspeople who always produced something curious, whether that was creative oddity The Movies or the hugely successful Fable series. Formed in Guildford in 1996, the studio was independent for a decade before Microsoft acquired it. Another decade later, on 31 April 2016, the lights were turned off for the final time. Lionhead made games with big choices, and it was ended by a cruel one. For much of its history, the studio was synonymous with Peter Molyneux, the idiosyncratic game designer who co-founded seminal Guildford studio Bullfrog in the 1990s. There, he oversaw a string of classic sim titles – Populous, Powermonger, Syndicate, Theme Park – before selling up to Electronic Arts in 1995.