Not done with chapter 1 yet, but the part about the game seems interesting. The foreign character learns Japanese and you can tell they’re making progress based on the player’s input, e.g. grammar and expression. Sounds kind of similar to how AI works with how it can remember previous conversations. Interesting. This book is from 1998. Were games like this back then? I think they were way more simplistic, right? Could this be considered contemporary science fiction or what to call it?
It does sound quite advanced for the time. Even with today’s tech, if the thing is learning English from scratch just from you talking to it… not sure we know how to do that? (not an AI expert) But you know, it was obviously programmed by our favorite 天才プログラマ so it’s got to be amazing. Did you notice that she left her name in the game?
We know 四季 must be a villain because she doesn’t use Hepburn romanization
The game wouldn’t be even remotely possible in 1998. With modern AI you could probably fake it. The main issue is time - a long RPG is ~100 hours (much of which would not be spent talking to that specific character), and we all know that isn’t enough time to learn a language .
@miwuc That’s a pretty awesome catch! I didn’t notice at all. I did think having the hallway with two dead-end side paths was bizarre, but that certainly explains it
And yeah, certainly an interesting idea in the book, especially given the recent AI boom. Probably wouldn’t have been feasible the way the book described it (esp teaching it new languages), but an approximation might be more possible than you’d expect… After all, ELIZA was made in 1966! But there’s also so many obvious flaws in modern AIs that try to function as video game story generators (like characterAI and the modern portopia remake). Ah well, that’s 天才プログラマー for ya
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