Gameplay focuses on an open world where the player can choose missions to progress an overall story, as well as engaging in side activities, all consisting of action-adventure, driving, third-person shooting, occasional role-playing, stealth, and racing elements. The series also has elements of the earlier beat 'em up games from the 16-bit era. The series has gained controversy for its adult nature and violent themes.Surely most parents of students attending Valley Catholic High School—probably most parents period—aren't encouraging their children to practice the art of playing Grand Theft Auto. (For the rest of this post I'll simply refer to Grand Theft Auto using the less notorious-sounding acronym GTA, since I'm too lazy to type The game that shall not be named over and over again.)
The description of GTA above is enough to convince many, even among those who have never heard of GTA before, that it's not an especially “nice” sort of game. That's why I'm fascinated by a story by Will Knight published on 12 September 2016 in the MIT Technology Review titled “Self-Driving Cars Can Learn a Lot by Playing Grand Theft Auto”. Amazingly, the article says that research groups are using GTA to “train algorithms that might enable a self-driving car to navigate a real road”!
Might someone someday owe their life to an algorithm that a) prevented a car crash and b) was influenced by GTA? How does this intriguing possibility affect your view of GTA? What other examples of apparently “bad” technologies or uses of technology (computer-related technologies or otherwise) can you identify that have yielded or might yield “good” results?
What about the other way around? Do apparently good technologies sometimes go bad? Try to provide some examples.
Esther Baldwin, a good friend of mine who is a Director of Innovation at Intel Corporation and was recently appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, introduced me to the phrase, “What's good is bad; what's bad is good.” Do you agree with this general assertion? Why or why not?
