there's a member here trying to accomplish that iircStuff like replacing NPC dialogue with some chatGPT trash is worthless and any game that uses it deserves to fail.
Can't remember the exact wording but I saw someone say once that AI is a tool to free up time for human creativity, not a substitute for it, and it pretty much summed up my feelings on it.
I would posit that there is a gaping chasm of difference between creators willingly making free assets for the Unity store and an AI model scrubbing everything it can from thousands upon thousands of artists.There's a moral problem when it comes to training AI, but it's not that far away from creators uploading free assets to the unity store
Artists willingly uploading free assets for artists to share is a world away from unlicensed, en-masse art scraping done by AI engines that is then packaged, monetised and sold.There's a moral problem when it comes to training AI, but it's not that far away from creators uploading free assets to the unity store. It puts other artists out of a job, but it greatly helps indie developers creating game.
This is something I meant to touch on in my first post in the thread but forgot to, but nah, I'm not okay with this either. Some people will be happy as long as nothing AI generated ends up in the final product. Meanwhile companies will be cutting concept artists by the thousands and most customers will be none the wiser. This scares meFor Concepting and drafting games Generative AI can be a really great tool.
This is my concern, that AI involvement in the conceptual phase of creation is still an "overrated" area, as AI is not really capable of generating original concepts on its own, but rather can only be used to generate new concepts by learning and disassembling the creations of human artists.This is something I meant to touch on in my first post in the thread but forgot to, but nah, I'm not okay with this either. Some people will be happy as long as nothing AI generated ends up in the final product. Meanwhile companies will be cutting concept artists by the thousands and most customers will be none the wiser. This scares me
And I didn't even touch on the environmental cost of large language models, which is horrendous
I agree with you deontologically. Consequentially, it's a lot closer. Art gets devalued, people lose their livelihood.I would posit that there is a gaping chasm of difference between creators willingly making free assets for the Unity store and an AI model scrubbing everything it can from thousands upon thousands of artists.
DLSS's use of AI is one of the absolute positive cases that has allowed the gaming industry to evolve away from the useless hardware-graphics race, but I definitely don't think that human creativity has any potential to be replaced by AI at this point in time, and I don't want to rehash meaningless Enlightenment humanist doctrines, I just think that the current aggressive exploration of AI by major gaming companies is due to nothing more than the fact that the cost of the unlimited stacking of mega-videogames over the first two generations is high, and that gaming companies are seeking new avenues to reduce their costs and that once they've accomplished their goal it's going to be a case of further massive job loss.I am very certain that devs at Nintendo are using AI in some form already, even if it is just as an assist tool for coding or drafting. I mean they technically use it already if the next Hardware supports DLSS, but I get that is not what you really meant.
In regular Software Development/Coding AI got already quite common and otherwise Devs of all kinds of fields are very eager to experiment with it, at least of what I‘m aware of.
I do agree with this. Even if there are theoretically ethical applications, execs absolutely cannot be trusted to restrain themselves. The technology is moving way faster than old clueless politicians can keep up with (though unfortunately most of them would probably support it anyway), so regulations have no hope of keeping up.Y'know, I sort of resent the narrative of "AI is ok when applied to laborious labor", because I've seen how computer-assisted translation (not machine translation, different thing) has been used to undervalue and homogenize the entire field, to the detriment of both the workers and the quality of the final product. Corporations just cannot be trusted to implement new technologies in a humane, worker-friendly way.
opinion: programming is an art in itself
another opinion: compilers basically write the code anyway so who gives a shit
Modern frameworks take away a lot of the boilerplate though. We don't need AI in order to replace that. Instead, AI's gonna replace the part of my job I actually like, and I'm gonna be left with the horrible tasks of maintaining it and fixing bugs.Programming is an art. But also we need to reconcile with the fact like 70% of the code you write is boilerplate, functionally needed framework that doesn't really do anything you want but it's still required for the cool software you want to write to happen.
Even before AI was a thing we were already trying to optimize writing that heavily. Has anyone used a UML to code converter? Those were super popular back in my day to generate the entire data model for you.
First of all, so sorry to hear that. That is goddamn gross.Sorry sorry, long message and personal story here, since both my dayjob and dreamjob are concerned. Nothing really important to add, just some sort of rant because I'm sick and sleepy, feel free to skip xD
The company I work for (for at least 3-4 more days before working full time as an artist so please buy my books when they're released) has made the shift to AI about 6-7 months ago. It's not a video game company, they have apps for HR people used by gigantic (and horrific) clients, and for now they're forcing the devs to use and nurrish it.
The QA side of the company I'm part of will be next in a few months, but as for the devs, they seem to enjoy it as a way to help them resolve problems faster when it comes to all the bugs reported. The AI looks for what could be the issues in uncommented lines of code written daily by countless of devs since the company started decades ago, and it makes their job faster and less heavy on the brain, which I think should be the one use for AI. They're not happy about not having to create new features, but for now they're still observing how things turn out.
The issue is the company is also firing a LOT of people to cut cost (me included), despite having made a billion € of benefits last year. And the endgoal is to make sure no "historic" dev in the company is vital. The old devs cost a lot of money, so replacing them with a couple of juniors who can use the knowledge put into the AI to do the same work is a big win for the people at the top. So big that all the people being fired are from the IT side, while they hire more and more people in the sales and marketing departments. All they do now is buy small companies with their product and list of clients, make people leave or fire them, and ask the devs left to just bug check with AI.
And as artist, I can tell you AI has already invaded many companies, not just video games for concept arts, but animation studios, the YA/serious adult book industry and board games publishers as well. I have NO idea what's going to happen to artists in big companies. I honestly fear we will go through a future where these companies only have one big Artist Lead with tiny teams they can parade around for publicity and awards.
HOWEVER, it also means small companies will show up, using the "made by humans" aspect as a major sellpoint. I see artists and friends I love already switching to self publishing after working for big studios. They go back to traditional medias, make zines and games together and attend conventions again, something a lot had given up on years ago (because we're old now). Money-wise, it SUCKS! I'm terrified of what my finances will be in a year or two. But there's a bit of hope that if we fight back doing what only we can do, we can find make a niche for ourselves with people proud and happy to support us.
If you're into AAA games or your dream is/was to get into these big companies, yeah, the future is freaking dark. But if you enjoy or at least are curious about indie art, please support these people, their creativity and freedom, remind them why you love what THEY do, and I can promise you, you'll find everything you want and more!
It depends on from where you are coming from. Like said, for me working in small teams with not too many resources it can help especially in the early stages. And for programming it is a very powerful tool, especially for people who are good in coding.This is something I meant to touch on in my first post in the thread but forgot to, but nah, I'm not okay with this either. Some people will be happy as long as nothing AI generated ends up in the final product. Meanwhile companies will be cutting concept artists by the thousands and most customers will be none the wiser. This scares me
And I didn't even touch on the environmental cost of large language models, which is horrendous
I agree. My issue I think is just that there are many use cases with AI which can actually add up to art and design wich get lost in the discussion. Both in the question about the moral dilemma and even more so by Tech Bros.DLSS's use of AI is one of the absolute positive cases that has allowed the gaming industry to evolve away from the useless hardware-graphics race, but I definitely don't think that human creativity has any potential to be replaced by AI at this point in time, and I don't want to rehash meaningless Enlightenment humanist doctrines, I just think that the current aggressive exploration of AI by major gaming companies is due to nothing more than the fact that the cost of the unlimited stacking of mega-videogames over the first two generations is high, and that gaming companies are seeking new avenues to reduce their costs and that once they've accomplished their goal it's going to be a case of further massive job loss.
I'm not a "Humanist Marxist", I'm just talking about the huge costs of structural change. Mass unemployment, whereby a large number of unemployed people become the reserve army of a new industry, is something that happens with every technological revolution, and it's not a question of right or wrong, but rather of the fact that capitalism is indeed producing its own crises by means of a number of technological revolutions.
Thank you so muchFirst of all, so sorry to hear that. That is goddamn gross.
But reading out the way you described what's happening there gave me another thought. Like this is pretty obvious but I never thought of it this way:
AI gives companies the ability to literally own their labor force.
What you said about them wanting to replace the long-time devs with AI so they can hire some cheap younguns and let the AI fill in the blanks of institutional knowledge? That basically removes any leverage any employee could have to stick around or even be hired again. The necessity to keep people around who know what they're doing, people who could take their knowledge and leave for better opportunities at any time, is gone when the company repositions around AI being the main labor, because then they own it. They can't own employees or their knowledge or skills, but they can own the AI.
Absolutely! AI isn't all evil at all. In the hands of someone who knows their job, it is a powerful tool that can help improve your skills and solve issues the human brain would have a hard time dealing with.It depends on from where you are coming from. Like said, for me working in small teams with not too many resources it can help especially in the early stages. And for programming it is a very powerful tool, especially for people who are good in coding.
I am once again begging everyone to remember that generative AI horseshit burns through real resources on earth
and that the "cloud" was named to imply no physical footprint (for marketing) when it's all massive massive data centers, now turning into even more massive data centers
and that early, kind of conservative estimates are that generative AI right now burns through 33x the electricity of a purpose-built function
reminding you also that electricity is a physical resource and nearly all means of getting it cause a degree of pollution or carbon emissions — and the lower instances demand hazardous materials in high volume
(when I told y'all I loved that the Switch was "underpowered," I wasn't joking! but it sure is manufactured, so the footprint is far from negligible...)
AI also burns through freshwater resources — roughly 16oz per every 5 to 50 ChatGPT requests depending on region — with an estimated ten million ChatGPT requests per day right now in the early stage. that's 50,000 gallons a day.
that's just text requests! I don't have data on images, let alone videos, but you can bet your ass they're MASSIVE burns on electricity and water!
so I want you to look at the extreme rate of AI growth, take what we know about it all right now... and then frame that in our current world and climate
where we've had increasing power grid failures that quite literally kill people
where drought is increasing and shitheads are sticking pipelines through the great lakes, one of our biggest reserves of freshwater — while other shitheads are racing to buy control over water sources in the vile-as-fuck "Blue Gold" strategy
where extreme weather, hot and cold, require electric countermeasures and water supply to keep people alive
when we are practically out of time to stop corporations from pouring out greenhouse gasses if we want a future on earth — the planet is resilient, sure, but humanity is comparatively not
AI will fucking kill people. not in the boring-ass base sci-fi way, nah. this isn't "smart" shit. it's massively, massively inefficient code — for venture capital dickheads to run for nonsense cash in their little fiefdoms, and arrogant dweebs who won't just fucking draw something for once in their damn life to feel good about themselves — that burns through an unbelievable volume of crucial shit, worsens the climate crisis in a three-pronged attack, and literally kills people.
and you bet your ass poorer people who don't give a fuck about AI will be dying from this disproportionately, vs. all the rich assholes and armchair whiteboys who will profit from this bullshit.
so my hatred of AI is not just superficial, or limited to all the artists fucked over. it's well-rounded.
Definitely, these games are the equivalent of the "AI artists" that are polluting the illustration and comics industry. Easy money done quick.If you think indie games aren't in trouble from this too think again. The flood of trash fake AI developed games (be it art, music or otherwise) on Steam that then end up on the console stores too is only going to continue to get worse, more and more and more games every day and companies like Valve don't care because they get a cut from even the smallest garbage. More games means more money for Gabe so keep em coming. And in the end that flood pushes the vast majority of real indie games down under the muck and out of sight, never to be seen again.
This flood of cheap trash knockoffs is how we got the first gaming crash and personally I'd like to avoid another one but people think that being able to have a filter on Steam means it's all fine. Boy it sure doesn't.
totally agreeDefinitely, these games are the equivalent of the "AI artists" that are polluting the illustration and comics industry. Easy money done quick.
That's why earlier I was talking about how important the support from people is to the genuine (for a lack of a better word) indie creators. We can't count on Steam and other big companies to really care about this issue. At the end of the day, they get the games to fill the catalogs and I assume big publishers' games are selling well enough for them to be the priority.
If you find indie artists in any field you enjoy, and you want to help them keep on doing what they do, share, talk about it, support in any way you can. It won't make the problem go away mainstream-wise, but you get to make a niche where the artists you love keep on working safely, while you still get the art you enjoy.
Too many swear words. I don't want to read itSuswave had a writeup in the General Thread a few days ago that probably belongs here:
The two extremes of... hyper-capitalistic environment-chewing widespread theft and people who want to keep their jobs and not have their work stolen?I love technology and advancements. I love mechas, robots, cyborgs... and also artificial intelligence. I like AI-generated art, but that doesn't mean I like them all equally; just as with human art. If there is an image that I like then I don't care if it has been generated by AI or not; but of course by getting more information I can stop liking it or I can like it even more.
If I discover that an AI image I like has been generated by obtaining the data of a lesser-known artist, then I will not like the AI image as much as before. Just as if I discover that an image I like made by a human has been created by doing something bad, then I won't like it as much as before. It all depends.
I'm in between the two extremes, which is rare and makes me get a lot of hate.
No no, the extremes of liking AI-generated stuff and disliking AI-generated stuff. For example, I love the anime Plastic Memories and the game NieR:Automata. Both feature androids and both made me cry. In the future there will be very advanced androids, that is a fact. So I imagine an android drawing a picture. I like that idea; but I know that many people don't like it and those people surely hate or would hate androids since they would be able to draw.The two extremes of... hyper-capitalistic environment-chewing widespread theft and people who want to keep their jobs and not have their work stolen?