Yeah, AI text extraction can be very powerful. It's arguably the thing that neural network systems are best at, and one of the first things. We got them to do.
There's alot of promise in using this kind of tech for quickly digitizing massive swathes of books. The more complicated part, however, is converting any images in-layed in the text.
Cyberpunk depicts a techno-integrated capitalist hellscape in the same way. They essentially take ideas to extreme conclusions to show how hellish things will get.
Steampunk's alittle different, but the satirical depiction of colonialism is pretty punk.
You are talking about the outcome being pointless, but I'd go further and say that the process of completing college is bullshit as well.
Forced to live in shoebox dorm room for the first year or more in many colleges, being given lectures that are quite simply shit the majority of the time - to the point that it was the norm to just stop attending lectures and basically just self-teach yourself the textbook - and often taking tests that fail to actually meaningfully test your comprehension of the subject. Then you leave, and quite often you completely forget a large portion of what you studied as you enter the job market and never have to apply that knowledge again.
So how do you pay off your tit loan? Like, how is it different from rent-a-tit? Am I going to end up getting loaned 30 tits and have to pay back annual tit interest? Am I going to have to give them fractions of a tit? Where do I get more tits?
Yeeeaaahh, we really did turn a tool which was supposedly meant to enhance our performance in the real world into a world of its own, that's often mentally addictive and exploitative.
At the same time, the real world is properly fucked right now, where individuals are highly isolated from one another and there are financial barriers at every turn. I don't blame folks who get stuck in a spot where they only have people they want to interact with online.
I mean, we can point at the legal system, but as you said, casinos just find new loopholes to circumvent the law. Ultimately, Valve is the group with the power to remove any gambling-adjacent mechanics from their games, but they have been pretty flaccid regarding changes because they know that they will lose money from it.
Crackdowns won't stop the gambling on CS, legislation and enforcement won't change it, but making items non-tradeable, or damaging item value or appeal through any method, can stop the gambling - but at the cost of CS's financial success and overall appeal.
It's Neco Arc Astolfo. X post from supposed OP