Good point, but probably not (directly) related to this study.

Yeah, it's not a good study. If nothing else (and there is much else) the sample size is too small.

OTOH, I find it difficult to understand why so many people seem to think it's "obviously wrong", when I would have predicted that result from a good study. People tend to be unreasonably biased, and not just about sex. There've been studies where two groups of people were divided at random. Those who ended up in each group tended to prefer their group over the other, even though the group didn't exist outside of the study. (I say that, but I don't know for sure that the folks didn't maintain their groups after the study was over...but it was a pretty short study.)

Lots of people anthropomorphize their car or motorcycle. It's one of the things people do.

That's a difference, it's just not a significant difference. It might well justify a larger study with more careful controls. But the result they produced is what I would have guessed, so I'm a bit biased.

Still, look at any sports team match. People tend to favor one side over the other for reasons that have nothing to do with skill.

I'm sure that's happening. I'm also sure it's only a part of the story. Some of the other posts have raised other contributory issues, like image quality. And actually I think your point is a valid example of a more general trend, i.e. people tend to favor those who are more socially approved. The reasons for the social approval are nearly irrelevant, but different groups within society will use different measures. (E.g. Catholics will tend to approve of different people than Unitarians, even if they adopt the same proposals.) Think of how some people rate their favorites sports team vs. the way they rate the other side.

That's a single data point. I've seen it be true, but I've also seen it be false. Also they tend to be differently Machiavellian, but I wouldn't say men were more Machiavellian than women, or the converse. Just that they tend to do it differently.

The study *is* flawed. The sample size is too small, and I doubt that the people tested replicate the world population average.

But it *is* "food for thought", and the result is the one I would have expected. People *do* tend to be biased in favor of the socially more approved of groups. (You don't need a study to prove that. Just read either the news or history, especially the history of a conflict.)

Do you really think those suggested biases aren't present? My guess would be that they are. People generally feel that "the superior group" deserves better treatment, where "superior group" is basically defined by public relations, with a large helping of "people like me".

Slightly off topic, but people don't hire on merit. The merit claim is cockypot. Merit gets your foot in the interview door, but social factors are what decides after that. I've been on hiring committees. One of the questions posed to the committee was, "Which candidate would you feel most comfortable working with for 40+ hours a week?" Let that question sink in.

Of course the candidate with a similar socioeconomic profile as your own would be preferred: somebody who likes the same food, watches the same movies and sports, worships the same deity, etc. It's not direct discrimination, but has discrimination as an end result.

Prove the study is flawed or STFU. Gut guesses are a dime a dozen.

This. No good game was ever created from a single prompt. Not to an AI, not a human development team. Every single person writing those damn "look which game my AI built from a single prompt and $x in tokens!" postings is a newbie and almost certainly has never actually shipped a single game.

Game development can be summed up as endless iterations. Every system you build, every visual you create, every sound, text, button, movement, weapon, skill, powerup needs polishing, refinement and changes. It is never, never good enough the first time.

No it is not, but it IS a very successful platform for a specific subclass of games. If I were in it for the money, I could probably AI refactor some of my earliest games and publish them on Roblox and make a quick buck. If your thing is the kind of games you played on your C64 back in 1793, then Roblox got you covered. Well, if you ignore the scams and money-grabbing.

*sigh* I wish Unity would actually complete some of their dozens half-finished sub-systems instead of constantly chasing the latest trend. It's become really, really annoying. The engine used to be really good. These days, it falls apart if you look at it the wrong way, and at least from the responses to my bug reports it's clear that fixing issues is way down on the agenda.

Maybe this is their attempt to regain grounds in the indie game market - the very market they pushed away by focussing on AAA requirements for years and ignoring the single devs and small teams. If so, I can already tell them that it won't work. We collectively laugh about all the "look what my AI built for me from a single prompt" postings on reddit, where people proudly show off some AI slop that would get them last place at a game jam.

Their AI efforts so far: Tried to build and sell their own AI tools, to a collective yawn from the audience. Built a barely-working MCP server, then deprecated it before it was even finished in order to push a CLI interface to the editor instead, which only works if it's run as the same user as the editor on the same machine. And completely ignores every single advise on workflows and good development practices you can think of.

Unity, I love your engine, I despise your management. Please return to when you were actually good and stop chasing butterflies.

Prompt: "Hunt down and clean up Slashdot dupes before they coagulate and turn into human eating monsters. Low scorers have to watch goatse for 2 minutes before reactivating their account."

Well, part of the answer is clearly "because the official stance of the US govt. is that AI should not be regulated". (Yeah, it's more nuanced than that, but that's the short form.)

"I'm writing a book on Jeffrey Dahmer...