The Link Between Half-Life and the Atomic Bomb

[@AIandGames]

The History of AI and Games continues as we visit the origins of the AI of Half-Life. I honestly forgot that Half-Life turned 25 years old last month. But yeah, consider this an unofficial celebration!

[@ivankocienski1]

i hate being the nitpicking nerd but the ENIAC was not a general purpose computer. It was a computer in the sense it could perform complex calculations but it lacked a programming language (it was wired up differently for each job). the funny thing is that you missed a neat factoid that Von Neumann went on to create (obviously) the stored program "Von Neumann" architecture that most CPUs are based on.

[@PlebNC]

My favourite part of Half-Life is when Gordon Freeman said "..." and then proceeded to ... all over the place.

[@_vofy]

...

[@djbeema]

I thought towards the end there walking about how so many scientific advances came from the military industrial complex and their less than ethical needs, you were gonna loop it back around to that being the thrust of the plot in Half Life 1 😂

[@AIandGames]

A missed opportunity! 😅

[@29once]

The link is a third one is never going to drop?

[@eibriel]

Thanks for making the video critical, in an appropriate somber tone, and not praising (or attempting to be neutral about) warfare technology 👏 I remember reading about the calculations for the height nuclear bombs explodes, a chill ran through my body.

[@rajackar]

Very cool video. A bit of a departure from the usual videos but very insightful and interesting.

[@hdorodev]

Amazing storytelling and threading! Loved the ethical take on this - we can't dissociate tech from its political consequences. Would love to see more of your perception on the double-sided nature of AI and its power, Tommy 🙏

[@LGFischer]

The video is great, congrats! But I have to say: the title can't be more clickbait. Any software have states. Using this line of tought, even the cellphone that my mother uses can be linked to the atomic bomb!

[@redoxee]

Thanks for your contribution, I love thoses kind of indepth reflections about the influence into and outof the process of games!

[@slammesh]

I just got this pushed to me. Stellar video! Id add that the most common theoretical mode for computer architecture, as in the physical component systems that constitute a “computer”, is called the Von Neumann mode ! This is based on his work for ENIAC! So, when you think of a computer that consists of a CPU, RAM, disk-storage, and inputs/output devices, that’s Von Neumann! Same scientist is responsible for that and the ‘kiloton’ small world! Great video!!

[@pointedmammal29]

Freemenheimer

[@TehPwnographer]

Barben FreeHeimer

[@El-Burrito]

Barbie Freeman, in the plastic...

[@kenan35TR]

These are interesting pieces of information but they are not strongly connected nor is this a deep dive. I think you are aware of this.

[@Luanmm]

Yeah, by the end I was confused at how specificaly the two events were connected. I thought I'd probably missed some part of the explanation, but by your comment I guess it is just not strongly connected after all.

[@Michelle_Wellbeck]

"Half Life" is a physics term that is the probability of a radioactive particle to decay

[@_vofy]

"Half-life is the time it takes for half of the unstable nuclei in a sample to decay or for the activity of the sample to halve or for the count rate to halve."

[@atlev]

thank you for this!

[@fireaza]

"If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals." -Curtis LeMay, US air force chief of staff, on the topic of the atomic bombings of Japan

[@Birbface]

nuclear bombs were also used on populations in places like the Marshall islands

[@AlanZucconi]

This is the content I'm here for! 😎⠠⠵ (and thanks for the shoutout!!!)