The article was titled “Mark Rosewater says Lightning Greaves 0 equip cost was a mistake”.
If you go to Rosewater’s tumblr post on the topic, he said no such thing. He used the card Lightning Greaves to point to why 0 cost effects are hard for play design.
But the tip off that made me go “this is AI slop and good to discuss the dangers of AI” was a claim “Lightning Greaves is banned in standard, which makes sense, but is still legal in Commander and Modern.”
Standard is a format where the most recent 2 to 3 years of cards are legal. It is rotating. At rotation, all sets from a specific year are no longer legal.
Lightning Greaves saw its last printing in Standard in a set released in 2003. It rotated out of Standard in 2005 and has not been reprinted once into Standard since.
This is why this claim is such a valuable microcosm for why AI slop is dangerous.
You have to know enough about Magic to know what Standard is, how it works, how rotation works, and be able to navigate card databases to check for last legal standard printings. It’s easy enough to do thanks to scryfall, but it still requires some degree of knowledge about the game.
Now imagine if that claim wasn’t an innocuous claim for a trading card game. But much more serious. Like medical information, climate science, cybersecurity, history.
Comments
If you go to Rosewater’s tumblr post on the topic, he said no such thing. He used the card Lightning Greaves to point to why 0 cost effects are hard for play design.
Standard is a format where the most recent 2 to 3 years of cards are legal. It is rotating. At rotation, all sets from a specific year are no longer legal.
This is why this claim is such a valuable microcosm for why AI slop is dangerous.
That is the danger.