BJW

You make compelling points. Ignore the kneejerk down votes from morons blinded by hatred. You contribute significantly to the conversation, they just hate that you do.

I will do good. Toby will be fed! (I promise an AI didn’t name him.)

I know your type. I’ll just save us both time and energy: yes, you’re right about everything! I was wrong, and could never be as smart as you. You know so much more than me! All your arguments are pristine and mine are indefensible. You know my analogies better than I do myself! I should have had you write them, and then explain them to me, rather than attempting to think for myself.

Please forgive me for the error of my ways for not thinking like you and the rest of the popular kids in the mob. You are all so knowledgeable and incapable of error. I was a fool to have my own opinions. I throw myself at the mercy of your forgiveness. I’ll only perform right-think now. Watch, please:

AI is bad! It is evil! Anyone who says otherwise is simply lazy, and they don’t own any of their own ideas! I bet they use AI to even have opinions, so therefore everything they say is invalid! They are thieves who have stolen from artists. Nothing an AI-user thinks or says has any merit! They simultaneously will steal all our jobs, but paradoxically everything they create is slop of no value!

Happy? I’m going back to developing using a candle, with a hamster in a wheel powering my typewriter, to make sure I don’t offend you in the future with my use of evil technology again, sir. I won’t risk using electricity because it may have been generated by coal, ruining our ecology, and I won’t risk having ideas of my own because I might have seen a similar idea in the past, and I don’t want to risk stealing an idea from someone just like an AI would. Only the original creators can have ideas, I recognize now that I cannot. If I had an idea, it probably came from an AI so it was stolen from someone by default. I won’t try to make analogies, because I don’t know which ones have been approved by you as morally allowed. I probably wouldn’t even understand my own arguments, even if I did. I’m just not smart enough. Not like you, oh brilliant one.

lol

I guess that’s the point on which we disagree fundamentally - I don’t see it as theft anymore than an author reading a book, being inspired by it, and writing their own works by incorporating ideas from the various media they’ve consumed. At a technical level, that is true of AI, too. At the base level, it is an adjustment of weights in synapses - same as our brains. You will only ever see it as theft, though, and I suspect it’s because you hold an incorrect view of how the information is retained by the model.

I’ve never once used AI for a post here, or on any social media. Not once. That just illustrates my point that you cant tell the difference between something that is AI created, and something that is not. My intent in comparing it to similar situations is to invoke empathy for the developers involved. You say “a game is not a person” and no one is ever saying they were, but if you were following my analogy correctly your statement would have been “a developer is not a person” which highlights the moral quandary you are conveniently overlooking.

My mistake, I mistook your argument. It is a common one with people who here AI and I over generalized in my response. However, I also believe in paying humans fairly for labor, especially creative works. However, that is not viable for a lone developer with no budget, and that is AI is such a boon. In it’s absence, they wouldn’t be paying people, the art just wouldn’t be created at all. I think that governments should be taxing organizations that benefit from AI and using those funds for Universal Basic Income. That would be fair compensation for any inspiration from original works, in my opinion.

Meta is scum, with morally bankrupt practices. No argument there. I’ve never used their models, and never will. However, by using community developed, open models, I’m opening myself up to the same hate that they’ve earned by self-reporting that I’ve used AI because the angry mob does not do subtly. They don’t make that distinction, so only harm is done by reporting that I’ve used AI.

That’s no different from saying all art/music you enjoy comes from the other art/music the creator stole for inspiration. Nothing is derived from a vacuum.

You also make it sound like using AI takes no work or effort. It, also, doesn’t work in a vacuum. You need skillful prompts to get anything of value, and oversight to ensure it’s of appropriate quality. It’s less work and effort than not using AI, but that’s the whole point.

Some people will, but that’s the same as saying “Every non-straight person should be outed, because people will still like them” completely ignoring the hate that those with irrational abhorrence will target them for being open. If you don’t want to face that animosity no one should be forcing you to.

And if the argument is that AI is low quality, then you shouldn’t need to disclose that it was used - it will be self evident, if that argument holds any water. The closing argument is that all creations should be judged based on their quality, not based on prejudice of the tools used.

No, large companies that focus on AI are losing money, underperforming and menacing the stability of society. When I use Qwen on my local hardware, using renewable energy, I’m doing none of those things. It’s hated all the same.

I don’t work for any AI-related companies. Just an avid gamer and part-time indie developer.

AI is the best thing to ever happen for gamers, and indie developers specifically, but the irrational, angry mob spoils it for everyone.

Forcing developers to report AI usage is like forcing people that oppose Israel to wear pro-Palestine shirts to a Trump rally. The mob doesn’t understand it at all, they just know they’ve been taught to hate it.

You literally don’t understand what you’re talking about. It’s not a database, no copies are being made. The weights of digital synapses are adjusted in a neural network, the same as happens in our brains when we learn something. For all intents and purposes it is indeed learning from an example, not making a copy. There’s no “auto-complete” involved, anymore than there is when a human creates something using something else as inspiration.

No copies are being made, no money is being made by something being sold. You can download the models and use them for free. You are only paying for access to the hardware to host the neural network, not the model itself. Again, nothing has been stolen, and no copies have been made. It’s learning from data, same as people do from open source projects.

If there was a license that said you are not allowed to learn from reading the code, then you might have a point, but there are none of those that exist to my knowledge. If you weren’t meant to learn from them then they wouldn’t be publicly available.

It is only different because you say it’s different. Whether human or machine, in both cases it’s learning from the material. There’s no law in any county against a machine learning from content. Whether there should be is an entirely different discussion.

Stealing has a definition: “Stealing is the act of taking, using, or appropriating another person’s property, ideas, or services without right, permission, or legal consent, with the intention of permanently depriving the true owner of their use or value”

Permanently depriving the owner. It means something is taken and is now gone. Nothing is missing. Nothing was stolen.

What data is missing? It’s stolen in the same way an artist “steals” art by watching a Disney movie. Or a musician “steals” it by listening to an album. Nothing was stolen.

And Visual Studio is very much so generative. You generate programs with it using code; code that by your definition was “stolen” from a textbook, a blog, or a StackOverflow post.

Windows, Max and Linux are tools in game development, same as Visual Studio, Photoshop or AI. Only one of them is being singled out for disclosure.

I think you seem to believe AI makes games in a vacuum, and there are no people involved. It’s not the AI that suffers due to the boycott by the ignorant, it’s the people who make the games. You like to desperately pretend that no people are involved in the process, but that is a delusion. You’re hurting people with your prejudice, not AI.

“They” are the anti-AI mob. Like the anti-woke mob, but for artificial intelligence instead of non-white people and women. Same idea, different target.

Your analogy doesn’t make any sense. You know when something’s made by Nintendo, because Nintendo makes it. For all you know, they use AI, but since they’re not bound by Valve’s stupid rules you would never have any idea. Why would Steam take away reviews? Just because some people misuse it doesn’t mean there would be a blanket removal. That sounds like you’re arguing for my case actually: just because there are some bad actors, it doesn’t mean you hate the system used by the actors.

It should be disclosed transparently and then people should judge themselves.

Then where do you draw the line? Should they disclose if women worked on a game? Men? Trans? Non-binary? Should they disclose whether they used Windows? Linux? Mac? Should they disclose whether they used markers or paint for their concept art? Some people hate each of those things listed, so you think we should enable discrimination against them, too, by requiring disclosure so people can make their own decisions?

They hate it irrationally, based on misinformation and mob mentality. There are no legitimate reasons to hate it. There are plenty of reasons to hate the companies and their practices that are developing it, but the technology itself is blameless.

People who use open source models, on local hardware are being caught in the crossfire and being required to disclose what tools you use leads to prejudice by people who hold that irrational hatred and misinformed prejudice. It’s harmful with no benefit to anyone.

If there are copied sources then THAT is the problem, and plagiarism easily identifiable, with existing remedies for the crime.

Why do you you feel you have a right to know when it has no impact on you, other than enabling your prejudice? If it’s truly bad, it should be self evident and no disclosure is thus needed. The fact that it is necessary to have disclosure to determine if AI was used demonstrates that it is irrelevant. Regardless of what tools were used, the final product should be judged on its own merits and faults. Judging based on the tools used, and not the product itself, is infantile.

They do think. Have you tried Gemini Pro? It even provides you with a steam of consciousness prior to answering your prompt. So does Qwen 3.6 when used locally. It’s also not a database, it’s a neural network with digital synapses - not unlike our own brains. The difference is they are digital, and we are biological.

No one is selling models, they’re selling processing time on the servers that host the models. You can download a model and use your own hardware for free.

I don’t own any shares of any company. I do have a Master’s degree in Computer Science with a major of Artificial Intelligence, though.

Piracy would be selling someone else’s work, and that’s not happening. That’s like saying an artist is pirating all the content they’ve watched to inspire turn when they make anything. Nothing is being sold, other than time on a server, and you don’t need to pay that to use AI. It’s completely free if you host it locally, which I do.

That’s an interesting theory, but not accurate.

It’s the sum of human knowledge, and it’s available for free. The use of their hardware is what they charge for, but you don’t have to use it. You can use local hardware.

It’s getting costly to do so because some bad actors are buying it all up. Those companies are the ones that have my ire, but being upset with the technology itself is misplaced anger.

Also, it’s not profitable. They’re losing an unfathomable amount of money, hoping to make it back when people become reliant on it. Don’t - use your own hardware and models locally. It’s not difficult to setup.

That’s not true, it can be done using solar energy and closed loop cooling. Be angry with companies that are mismanaging it, not the technology itself.

It slows it down by causing developers to fear using the most efficient, productive tools because it will anger the irrational mob who down votes anything they disagree with, rather than whether or not it’s adding to a discussion.

If some creation is clearly a copy/paste of someone else’s work with only superficial changes then that is it’s own problem that can be dealt with in the same way that it would if some person had copied someone else’s work, and made superficial changes to claim it as their own. Art created using AI is not necessarily a copy of something existing, and it takes a skilled prompt writer to create their intention. People angry that a different skillset than is traditionally necessary to create art are being awnry gatekeepers in the same way that artists were at the advent of computer assisted drawing or computer generated imagery. New technology, same type of crybabies gatekeeping art creation.

I recognize that it’s not a ban, it’s just an unnecessary requirement in the current implementation. If it’s going to be done, at the very least categorize it so AI code generation is separated from the AI art generation, or other generative tools. I still assert that none of it should be necessary, and if it in some way lowers the quality of the creation then it will be readily apparent and can be judged based on the quality, not the method of creation itself.

I don’t like Tim Sweeney, or Epic Games, but I agree with him in this. In the future everything will use AI to some extent, and labeling it as such is stupid. It’s like having a label for whether electricity was used, or whether computers were used. It will be meaningless in short order, and just slows down the entire industry by painting targets on games that are using modern development processes.

Besides, if the AI is THAT onerous, then you don’t need a tag to identify it. It should be obvious, right? Make decisions based on the quality of a game, not based on what tools were used to create the game.

Fire: bad!