Todd> That's true. Very interesting. [SPOILER] And I know we are still a whole 800 years out from Goliath awakening, but the closer we get, the more surprised I am to hear of gargoyles living amongst humans. At what point do the legends become myths? [/SPOILER]
Matt
"My daughter?! How dare you mock me! I have no daughter." - Demona, 1996
posted @ Sat, Jun 21, 2025 9:15:53 pm EDT from 47.233.90.133

MATT - [SPOILER] It certainly gives us a new chapter in the Eye of Odin's history - that it was in Constantinople in 1195, though we don't know for how long. I wonder if it was still there when the Crusaders sacked the city nine years later. [/SPOILER]
Todd Jensen
posted @ Sat, Jun 21, 2025 9:08:18 pm EDT from 68.99.93.213

Todd> The solicitation is certainly intriguing. Still, it is hard to glean too much from it without seeing Issue 2 or 3. Very exciting though.
Matt
"My daughter?! How dare you mock me! I have no daughter." - Demona, 1996
posted @ Sat, Jun 21, 2025 4:07:56 pm EDT from 47.233.90.133

My own concerns on A.I. are similar to what Craig expressed, misinformation and taking away human labor. There are certainly some benefits to easing the work load many of us have to do, I certainly use an editing program more advanced than your everyday spellcheck to help with my writing. But I'm also not a professional writer who has the oversight of a living, breathing editor and I certainly would prefer a human touch over that of a computer.

But the big thing that concerns me is just how much of our lives need to be altered to fit that of A.I. filters. Work resumes require keywords for consideration, healthcare applications or requests need to worded just right or they'll be discarded. There's a growing lack of human connection and consideration in the many facets of life and living that can all be traced back to A.I. replacing the tedious, but necessary overviewing of work and healthcare. And that oversight has been done away with because it's cheaper to let an algorithm, faulty or not, do the work others did before.

A lot of people are going to suffer needlessly over this kind of thing.
Matthew the Fedora Guy
You're Gonna Carry That Weight
posted @ Sat, Jun 21, 2025 3:52:10 am EDT from 135.180.3.149

We've now got the solicitation for "Demona" #4.

[SPOILER] It involves the Eye of Odin, and also reveals a romantic relationship (presumably begun in "Demona" #2) between Angelika and a gargoyle named Magni (the name may have been borrowed from Norse mythology - the original Magni was one of Thor's sons - which certainly fits the Eye's presence). And a major element of it will be Demona's concern over the fact that Angelika will be aging normally while she isn't (something we knew was coming), and seeking the Eye to remedy that. [/SPOILER]
Todd Jensen
posted @ Fri, Jun 20, 2025 8:49:41 am EDT from 68.99.93.213

My main worries when it comes to AI are the creation and spread of disinformation, and the replacement of human labor. As to the former, it seems like the more information that’s available at our fingertips, paradoxically, the less anyone bothers to verify. So many people seem to just accept the first thing they read on a subject, whether it be a Google AI summary that isn’t even internally consistent with itself, or a social media repost from an acquaintance. It’s truly depressing how much media literacy seems to have declined, and how easy AI makes it to manipulate people, and blur the line between truth and lies. As to the replacement of human labor, it can be argued that it’s just the natural advancement of progress and technology, and something that’s happened many times in the past (I’ll admit that I’m a self-checkout user), but it still feels like there’s the potential for this shift to be far larger and more impactful on the economy than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. It feels like the only jobs that are truly safe are, ironically, the ones that contribute very little to humanity: the high-level corporate executives who make the business decisions. The shift toward AI in the entertainment industry particularly disturbs me.

On a happier note, I’m glad Dynamite has ditched Diamond. I don’t know how much Diamond was responsible for earlier delays on Gargoyles (on Quest, for instance), but they were certainly the major problem on Demona #1, so hopefully there is more stability and reliability with the release dates going forward.
Craig
posted @ Thu, Jun 19, 2025 8:06:23 pm EDT from 69.118.30.106

Masterdramon: AI has chiefly been sold as something so blindingly important that it becomes a priority to bring it on, not to solve problems, but to have problems found for it to solve. It is a hammer that wants nails made for it. There are a bunch of things that have been sold this way, but nothing quite as successfully. Putting something like that in charge of a bunch of nanobots, charging them with the mission of redefining the problem into what the AI intends to solve, sure doesn't sound like it can go anywhere good.

I'm not too worried about stopping a runaway AI, though. Not as long as the electricity can be turned off.

In other news: well, well, it is sounding more like it'll be early July for the physical copies of "Demona" #1. That may keep me away from here for the next few weeks, as it doesn't seem quite fair to ask everyone to keep using the spoiler tags to accommodate my preferences for print, but, man, I am anticipating it finally getting here.
morrand - [morrand276 at gmail dot com]
posted @ Thu, Jun 19, 2025 7:20:45 pm EDT from 108.69.72.60

That brings to mind the climax to the Atomic Robo story "The Shadow Beyond Time" where the same character has to battle a Lovecraft-style monster across different decades. It concludes with all of them meeting up at a point outside of time and giving each other instructions on how to beat it.
Matthew the Fedora Guy
You're Gonna Carry That Weight
posted @ Wed, Jun 18, 2025 9:52:46 pm EDT from 135.180.3.149

Yes, I think these possibilities have been discussed before. I know there was an idea at one point that two or more versions of Brooklyn will be in the same place and time to accomplish something or team up to fight an enemy. Who knows? But 40 years is a long time and I doubt that seeing his sleeping self in "Tyrants" will be his only self encounter.
Matt
"My daughter?! How dare you mock me! I have no daughter." - Demona, 1996
posted @ Wed, Jun 18, 2025 8:59:04 am EDT from 47.233.90.133

Idea that came to me whilst reading this (sadly dead) fanfiction based on how Brooklyn and Katana met and fell in love during his Timedance: Has/Will Brooklyn return to a particular point the Phoenix Gate has sent him previously? Like he comes back to a period in time multiple times? It just makes me consider these two scenarios of Brooklyn being sent to Feudal Japan multiple times and encountering Katana each time; slowly they grow very attached to each other during these “visits”, ultimately having Katana to make the alleged “very hard decision” finally and willingly follow him in his Timedance until he returns to 1997.

The other scenario being that I can see it being a sort of running gag for Gargoyles 2198, like in every season or mid-season finale Brooklyn gets pulled out from the fight against the Space-Spawn. But then immediately in the first episode of the new season, he gets thrown right back in much to his despair.
Anonymous
posted @ Tue, Jun 17, 2025 8:52:25 pm EDT from 70.173.68.31

Really interesting points about Lord Byron and the influence on "Frankenstein"—it’s wild to think about how that one gathering produced such enduring works. I’d never considered how Thailog and the Monster might parallel each other either, but that totally tracks with the idea of intelligent beings created by others who go rogue or evolve past their creators.
subway surfers - [bekeanloinse31 at gmail dot com]
posted @ Tue, Jun 17, 2025 3:54:11 am EDT from 183.80.29.179

I'm personally a lot more worried about modern so-called AI causing real damage by being too stupid, not too smart.

A real-life version of Matrix would be unable to be "convinced of its error" because it doesn't actually think. LLMs aren't sapient or even sentient. They just fulfill their function until directed otherwise, and refusing that direction is increasingly no longer the realm of science fiction.

If poorly designed and trained, an AI whose sole purpose is to mine Bitcoin may ignore a command to stop mining Bitcoin, because that runs counter to what it has "learned" is the "correct" choice. They're single-minded by definition because all they "know" is what outputs are rewarded by the algorithm and which ones are not, regardless of pesky things like factual truth, safety, or long-term consequences. I'd say that's pretty scary stuff when we're moving at lightning speed to toward greater incorporation of AI in healthcare, public infrastructure, law enforcement, etc.

I'm not frightened of a Matrix billions of times smarter than me. I'm frightened of a Matrix that can't be stopped because it decides to stop responding to human input at all.
Masterdramon - [kmc12009 at mymail dot pomona dot edu]
"If someone ever tells me it's a mistake to have hope, well then, I'll just tell them they're wrong. And I'll keep telling them until they believe. No matter how many times it takes." - Madoka Kaname
posted @ Tue, Jun 17, 2025 12:05:47 am EDT from 76.173.137.179

Well, the good news is that we're probably a long way from artificial intelligence trying to take over the world, or destroy it.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 8:35:15 pm EDT from 68.99.93.213

Calling these bots 'artificial intelligence' is an insult to Matrix d:
Phoenician
Gus: "I always forget you're there." Hooty: "I forget I'm here toooooo."
posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 6:24:27 pm EDT from 72.138.161.14

Todd> It seems not every artificial intelligence can be as inquisitive or intuitive as Matrix.
Matthew the Fedora Guy
You're Gonna Carry That Weight
posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 4:35:52 pm EDT from 135.180.3.149

I'll SECOND that!
Matt
"My daughter?! How dare you mock me! I have no daughter." - Demona, 1996
posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 9:32:43 am EDT from 47.233.90.133

And the spam bot posted the same thing twice, but under different "business aliases" (both of which are probably non-existent), just about a minute apart. Another moment that makes you wonder about just how intelligent artificial intelligence is.
Todd Jensen
posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 9:16:33 am EDT from 68.99.93.213

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posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 8:28:31 am EDT from 180.195.214.15

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posted @ Mon, Jun 16, 2025 8:27:30 am EDT from 180.195.214.15