'We support the work of those who are trying to limit the harm generative AI is doing to videogames and our world, and apologise that Big Walk’s LLM usage may not meet their standards'
I’d challenge the AI purists by asking where they draw the line. What if your developer uses AI to create every single texture and mesh? What if the entire codebase was built with AI assistance? What if the developer used AI to fix one single gremlin of a bug? What if they create all of their regression tests with AI? What if the developer needed a refresher on some basic C code syntax and got an AI summary from Google - where AI never touched the code?
I’m fine with AI for things that it had already been used for in the past but hadn’t been called AI like code suggestions or randomization of existing textures for existence for blades of grass for example.
What I don’t like is asset generation of AI music, AI voice work, and AI art.
What about new ways of generating those things? Eg, I’ve been getting more into music theory and have been thinking that this seems like something that is automatable, but from the theory rather than training on existing music. Things like chord progression and harmonies to back up a simple melody, maybe even generation of a melody itself.
It’s just an idea but if I actually get around to making it and it works, and then I actually get around to making the game I want to make, I’d want to use it to generate the music. Hiring a composer would depend entirely on the quality of its output and the budget.
It wouldn’t be taking any existing works and making something out of them, but it also wouldn’t be paying composers and musicians to create music.
It’s probably purely hypothetical because I get a lot of ideas of things to try that never end up going anywhere, if they even get started, but what would you think of that in this kind of a context?
Hate it. There’s just somethings I like AI which are things humans aren’t good at such as assisting with decompilations and pointing out coding errors and optimization. Observing patterns in large data sets for science, etc.
I don’t like assisted writing from AI, and its something that is human and been done for centuries. Same with art and yes music too.
Has same energy as people making the same reasoning for not hiring artists and having AI generate art but pass it off like its still their creative output because they were telling the AI what they wanted done. I still see it as AI creation not human with the human not having been capable of it begin with. Which is why they used AI.
Its like tracing art then claiming you hand drew it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself an AI purist I do have different views when it comes to using AI for coding compared to using it for art or music.
I feel that expecting a game to be completely AI free when it comes to coding is pretty much an impossible task. Now matter how much you try at some point a developer will have to use a tool or library or whatever that were developed with the use of AI. Expecting them to audit everything they use would mean spending more time on that than coding the actual game or spending time developing non-AI alternatives. The genie is out of the bottle for coding and there’s no putting it back.
Now when it comes to art, music and music I personally am less accepting. AI has been trained on the art of millions of people around the world without their permission or offering them any compensation. That is unacceptable to me. It also feels very weird that people are trying to replace art with something generated by a machine, it feels soulless, each piece of human art no matter how simple has some meaning to the artist. AI just mashes it together with no rhyme or reason.
Now some people are going to say that I’m a hypocrite and coding AI has also been trained on the code of millions of people without them getting compensation or asking for approval. While that is true I think that for coding it’s different just for the simple fact that at the end of the day it’s just a set of instructions. There is code that could be considered art? I would say there definitely is but the vast majority of it is just telling the computer to do a thing in just slightly different ways. This is just how I see it and no doubt people are going to disagree.
I feel that expecting a game to be completely AI free when it comes to coding is pretty much an impossible task.
It’s so wild to see people making claims like this… People have been making video games for like 50 fucking years without AI. People can (and do) still make games without AI.
Don’t be absurd. Don’t project your own personal shortcomings onto everyone else in the world.
While I agree with the main message, I’ll be one to say you are a hypocrite. Code doesn’t have to be art for the use without consent to be wrong. Arguing that way is the same as when people say that using AI to generate images is fine because they have the idea but not the skills to execute it.
Either way you are diminishing someone’s else work because you find this tool useful to achieve the results you want.
I draw the line at using it personally. I can’t control everyone else using it but I’ll gladly prioritize the work of someone who put the sweat in over one that simply prompted a model.
To me the AI use has become tantamount to endorsing and accepting the problems it is creating. Once we solve the problems it has created, I’ll feel fine using it again.
When it comes to the harms of these systems, that has a lot more to do with how these companies allow use of these tools…
The real harm is in these tools being pushed as learning tools, medical advice, companionship, etc. That they can even give medical advice seems like something Doctor’s Unions should be suing over, I can’t do it so why can the AI’s? Using these in learning situations is demonstrably doing the opposite, inducing cognitive offloading and dependency. The companionship thing is probably the most dangerous facet, it’s causing genuine psychosis in some people and honestly I feel that is by design.
None of this has to be for these tools to be used for coding. They represent a regulatory failure (complicity?) to constrain the dangerous uses.
Whereas I work with a small studio (<10 ppl) as the only programmer, asking Claude for bug hunting in regex’s and shader code has saved my behind a few times.
I’d argue there is a responsible way to use these tools. Letting an agent run amok in my project folder is a hard no; I ask about specific issues, providing generalized code, and insert and test the code by hand to ensure reliability. The amount of code inserted by an AI is zero, but the code written by AI would be <1% of my codebase.
I might use the tools for coding but I advocate locally to keep them out of schools, and support all efforts to limit the harms. You can use a tool for a useful purpose (hammer for a nail), while still restricting that tool’s usage (wielding a hammer to threaten people). So I disagree that using these tools is tantamount endorsing them for all purposes.
Frankly I’ve never paid any of them a dime, so I’m actually driving up their costs and hastening the decline 🤷
Nah, too many friends of mine have been fired because of “AI”. It’s the mothern cathedral, what the powerful are using to make us dependent on them. I can argue than even when you didn’t pay them a dime, you still gave them training material for the next model; furthering their goals ever so slightly.
I’m taking a stance that looks harsh on the outset, but it’s basically the only one that doesn’t further the massive theft of our body of work onto the hands of 5 oligarchs.
I’d challenge the AI purists by asking where they draw the line. What if your developer uses AI to create every single texture and mesh? What if the entire codebase was built with AI assistance? What if the developer used AI to fix one single gremlin of a bug? What if they create all of their regression tests with AI? What if the developer needed a refresher on some basic C code syntax and got an AI summary from Google - where AI never touched the code?
Are all of these really equally heinous?
I’m fine with AI for things that it had already been used for in the past but hadn’t been called AI like code suggestions or randomization of existing textures for existence for blades of grass for example.
What I don’t like is asset generation of AI music, AI voice work, and AI art.
What about new ways of generating those things? Eg, I’ve been getting more into music theory and have been thinking that this seems like something that is automatable, but from the theory rather than training on existing music. Things like chord progression and harmonies to back up a simple melody, maybe even generation of a melody itself.
It’s just an idea but if I actually get around to making it and it works, and then I actually get around to making the game I want to make, I’d want to use it to generate the music. Hiring a composer would depend entirely on the quality of its output and the budget.
It wouldn’t be taking any existing works and making something out of them, but it also wouldn’t be paying composers and musicians to create music.
It’s probably purely hypothetical because I get a lot of ideas of things to try that never end up going anywhere, if they even get started, but what would you think of that in this kind of a context?
Hate it. There’s just somethings I like AI which are things humans aren’t good at such as assisting with decompilations and pointing out coding errors and optimization. Observing patterns in large data sets for science, etc.
I don’t like assisted writing from AI, and its something that is human and been done for centuries. Same with art and yes music too.
Has same energy as people making the same reasoning for not hiring artists and having AI generate art but pass it off like its still their creative output because they were telling the AI what they wanted done. I still see it as AI creation not human with the human not having been capable of it begin with. Which is why they used AI.
Its like tracing art then claiming you hand drew it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself an AI purist I do have different views when it comes to using AI for coding compared to using it for art or music.
I feel that expecting a game to be completely AI free when it comes to coding is pretty much an impossible task. Now matter how much you try at some point a developer will have to use a tool or library or whatever that were developed with the use of AI. Expecting them to audit everything they use would mean spending more time on that than coding the actual game or spending time developing non-AI alternatives. The genie is out of the bottle for coding and there’s no putting it back.
Now when it comes to art, music and music I personally am less accepting. AI has been trained on the art of millions of people around the world without their permission or offering them any compensation. That is unacceptable to me. It also feels very weird that people are trying to replace art with something generated by a machine, it feels soulless, each piece of human art no matter how simple has some meaning to the artist. AI just mashes it together with no rhyme or reason.
Now some people are going to say that I’m a hypocrite and coding AI has also been trained on the code of millions of people without them getting compensation or asking for approval. While that is true I think that for coding it’s different just for the simple fact that at the end of the day it’s just a set of instructions. There is code that could be considered art? I would say there definitely is but the vast majority of it is just telling the computer to do a thing in just slightly different ways. This is just how I see it and no doubt people are going to disagree.
It’s so wild to see people making claims like this… People have been making video games for like 50 fucking years without AI. People can (and do) still make games without AI.
Don’t be absurd. Don’t project your own personal shortcomings onto everyone else in the world.
While I agree with the main message, I’ll be one to say you are a hypocrite. Code doesn’t have to be art for the use without consent to be wrong. Arguing that way is the same as when people say that using AI to generate images is fine because they have the idea but not the skills to execute it.
Either way you are diminishing someone’s else work because you find this tool useful to achieve the results you want.
I draw the line at using it personally. I can’t control everyone else using it but I’ll gladly prioritize the work of someone who put the sweat in over one that simply prompted a model.
To me the AI use has become tantamount to endorsing and accepting the problems it is creating. Once we solve the problems it has created, I’ll feel fine using it again.
When it comes to the harms of these systems, that has a lot more to do with how these companies allow use of these tools…
The real harm is in these tools being pushed as learning tools, medical advice, companionship, etc. That they can even give medical advice seems like something Doctor’s Unions should be suing over, I can’t do it so why can the AI’s? Using these in learning situations is demonstrably doing the opposite, inducing cognitive offloading and dependency. The companionship thing is probably the most dangerous facet, it’s causing genuine psychosis in some people and honestly I feel that is by design.
None of this has to be for these tools to be used for coding. They represent a regulatory failure (complicity?) to constrain the dangerous uses.
Whereas I work with a small studio (<10 ppl) as the only programmer, asking Claude for bug hunting in regex’s and shader code has saved my behind a few times.
I’d argue there is a responsible way to use these tools. Letting an agent run amok in my project folder is a hard no; I ask about specific issues, providing generalized code, and insert and test the code by hand to ensure reliability. The amount of code inserted by an AI is zero, but the code written by AI would be <1% of my codebase.
I might use the tools for coding but I advocate locally to keep them out of schools, and support all efforts to limit the harms. You can use a tool for a useful purpose (hammer for a nail), while still restricting that tool’s usage (wielding a hammer to threaten people). So I disagree that using these tools is tantamount endorsing them for all purposes.
Frankly I’ve never paid any of them a dime, so I’m actually driving up their costs and hastening the decline 🤷
Nah, too many friends of mine have been fired because of “AI”. It’s the mothern cathedral, what the powerful are using to make us dependent on them. I can argue than even when you didn’t pay them a dime, you still gave them training material for the next model; furthering their goals ever so slightly.
I’m taking a stance that looks harsh on the outset, but it’s basically the only one that doesn’t further the massive theft of our body of work onto the hands of 5 oligarchs.