is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
Your TV is an Xbox. Your computer is an Xbox. Your phone, your crummy Android tablet, your car’s infotainment display, oops all Xboxes. If Microsoft is right about the future of gaming, your game console might soon be an Xbox even if it’s not an Xbox. It’s an interesting idea, and raises some fascinating questions about the gaming industry. Here’s one of those questions: shouldn’t an Xbox play Xbox games? Here’s another: are they ever going to be any good?
On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Sean Hollister begins the show by telling us about his experience with two new Xboxes: the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X. In a sea of Windows-powered handhelds, these have the official Xbox brand, and thus come with some high expectations. They largely do not meet those expectations. That makes us wonder: is Microsoft’s vision for the future of gaming the correct one? And even if so, can Microsoft pull it off?
After that, The Verge’s Hayden Field joins to discuss a couple of recent controversial studies that seem to be indicating that AI is making us dumber. This sort of concern always appears at the advent of new technologies — people thought the newspaper was the end of civilization, then thought the same about radio and television and a thousand other things besides. Is the AI backlash just another in a series of moral panics, or are we making a cognitive mistake by offloading our brains to chatbots? The science is still nascent, but it’s already interesting.
Finally, Sean returns to help us answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about whether hybrid computers, a very 2012 idea, could be the future of computing. Why have lots of devices when you could have one device, in many parts?
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
- Xbox Ally and Ally X review: this is not an Xbox
- Prongs rock
- From MIT: Your Brain on ChatGPT
- From Microsoft: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
- How chatbots — and their makers — are enabling AI psychosis
- Sam Altman says ChatGPT will stop talking about suicide with teens
- Some doctors got worse at detecting cancer after relying on AI
- Bring back Microsoft’s Surface Book
