Functionally Useless, But Undeniably Cool

Welcome back to the FAIK Files! In this episode: Mason fills in for Perry as best he can, with a mix of topics that all fall under the broad umbrella of "functionally useless, but cool". Well... except the last segment; that one is inarguably kind of un-cool. We play a little bit of a 100% AI-generated rendition of Quake 2, and discuss how it works under the hood - as well as the general reaction to it. A software engineer named Alex Chan created a PDF file that is larger than the observable universe, and we break down how that was possible. Bullethead, a member of our discord, sent us a Language Diffusion model to check out: the recently released Dream 7B! Finally, Mason pontificates a bit about the highly aggressive noncompete clauses that Google has been pushing on their AI staff. ===== Learn more about the upcoming OFFENSIVE CYBER DECEPTION MASTERCLASS (Las Vegas, August 2-5, 2025) please visit this link: https://tinyurl.com/5ytpvjv7 ===== ***** Subscribe to our YouTube channel! You can find the channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@theFAIKfiles ***** Want to leave us a voicemail? Here's the magic link to do just that: https://sayhi.chat/FAIK You can also join our Discord server here: ⁠⁠https://faik.to/discord⁠ ***** Love the podcast? Check out the book: FAIK: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deceptions (Amazon Associates link) ***** *** NOTES AND REFERENCES *** AI Generated Quake 2: Play the demo: https://copilot.microsoft.com/wham?features=labs-wham-enabled Xbox Wire article about Muse: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/02/19/muse-ai-xbox-empowering-creators-and-players/ Azure AI Foundry Muse page: https://ai.azure.com/labs/projects/muse Techcrawlr Article: https://techcrawlr.com/microsofts-ai-powered-quake-2-demo-gets-mixed-reactions-online/ A PDF Bigger than the Universe: Alex (the creator)'s Blog about it: https://alexwlchan.net/2024/big-pdf/ BigThink Article: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/the-worlds-largest-pdf-is-bigger-than-the-universe/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=BigThink/magazine/Big+Think Dream 7B - A New Diffusion Model for Language Try it out: https://huggingface.co/spaces/multimodalart/Dream Read the paper: https://hkunlp.github.io/blog/2025/dream/ – blog Autoregression Explained: https://spotintelligence.com/2023/10/25/autoregressive-ar-models/ Diffusion Explained: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/understanding-diffusion-models-an-essential-guide-for-aec-professionals/ AI Dumpster Fire of the Week: Google's Aggressive Noncompete Contracts The Business Insider article: https://archive.is/20250409121528/https://www.businessinsider.com/google-deepmind-ai-talent-war-aggressive-noncompetes-2025-4 Noncompete legality: https://frostbrowntodd.com/the-non-compete-agreement-landscape-in-2025 Microsoft VP of AI & Former Deepmind Director's Tweet: https://xcancel.com/NandoDF/status/1904818330143273222 *** THE BOILERPLATE *** Check out Perry & Mason's other show, the Digital Folklore Podcast: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-folklore/id1657374458 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2v1BelkrbSRSkHEP4cYffj?si=u4XTTY4pR4qEqh5zMNSVQA Other: https://digitalfolklore.fm Want to connect with us? Here's how: Connect with Perry: Perry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrycarpenter Perry on X: https://x.com/perrycarpenter Perry on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/perrycarpenter.bsky.social Connect with Mason: Mason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mason-amadeus-a853a7242/ Mason on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/wickedinterest.ing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices