WotC Hasbro CEO optimistic about AI in D&D and MTG’s future

[FitzTheRuke]

He never said that.

Cynthia Williams said the Brand was undermonetised, in regards to merch, games, movies and other media. This was before the D&D movie and BG III came out too.

I believe you. I didn't listen to it, I only read a transcript, and that was something like two years ago (or whatever it was). And when it comes to merch, movies, and other media, I absolutely agree.

But Cocks has been talking about the ways to monetize it (in this very discussion) that I am less thrilled with.

AGAIN, IF I could believe that he's simply talking about AI DM-aid tools being made available, I'd be fine with it. But experience (and I continue to insist - I DO NOT jump to assuming the worst, I assume the best and then get proven wrong over and over) tells me that he's talking about maybe a product like that, but more likely the company saving money by having AI do the jobs of actual humans.

 

[SlyFlourish]

One of the things that chaps my ass is how this directly goes against their own statements to their fans and supporters – both on Twitter and at the D&D Community Summit.

From https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-creator-summit-vtt-one-d-d.696974/

I'd like to address the advent of AI. Do you know the current stance of AI inside of WotC

AI is completely incompatible with our process. We work with people. We can't speak for other people but as far as Wizards is concerned, we work with people. Machine learning tools can raise the floor but not the ceiling and we're about the raising the ceiling.

and this:

Well, that was a lie.

I don't know if Chris Cocks was just talking out of his ass or trying to make his other CEO buddies any board of directors / big investor companies happy by making sure the term "AI" showed up somewhere in his statements but it reinforces to me how, with the best of intentions of the D&D design team themselves – Hasbro is still Hasbro and Hasbro pulls the strings.

I just think that's worth keeping in mind when we think about them. Love the game, not the corporation.

 

[mamba]

AI is not an existential threat to humanity and the propaganda surrounding computers 30-40 years ago was worse (i.e. the Terminator movie).

the Terminator movie was about AI…

 

[Cadence]

One of the things that chaps my ass is how this directly goes against their own statements to their fans and supporters – both on Twitter and at the D&D Community Summit.

From https://www.enworld.org/threads/d-d-creator-summit-vtt-one-d-d.696974/




and this:

View attachment 351681

Well, that was a lie.

I don't know if Chris Cocks was just talking out of his ass or trying to make his other CEO buddies any board of directors / big investor companies happy by making sure the term "AI" showed up somewhere in his statements but it reinforces to me how, with the best of intentions of the D&D design team themselves – Hasbro is still Hasbro and Hasbro pulls the strings.

I just think that's worth keeping in mind when we think about them. Love the game, not the corporation.

January 18, 2023 feels like a while ago now in AI terms? (Was that only a month and a half or so into the Chat GPT demo being released).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There is no single answer about AI being good or bad. Like all disruptive technologies, it's both, and will just get moreso. We have already seen election interference via a very convincing deep fake this year, and it's going to get a lot worse. But AI is also finding cancerous tumors faster than human doctors can.

Every other disruptive technology was similarly a mix of good and bad. (Actual disruptive technologies -- techbros calling the blockchain or Bitcoin disruptive doesn't magically make it so and only time will tell about either of those.)

 

[Kannik]

I don’t believe that is the case. The television, the indoor toilet, the refrigerator. These went from scarce to common in the space of 10 years. Four transformative technologies that changed people’s lives in a single decade.

From the National Museum of American History (a branch of the Smithsonian):

Refrigerators were adopted faster than just about any other technological innovation of the 20th century. They made their debut in the teens, and 30 years later, over half of Americans had them.

If it took 30 years for half of the US to have them, and it was one of the fastest technological innovation of the 20th century, then we can assume that most others were on the order of 15-20 years.

Re, toilets, the one source I quickly found stated it was 50% in 1940, then 66% 1950, and 85% in 1960... so still multi decade.

Generative AI in 2 years is orders of magnitude faster. (And to forestall future comments: I am not saying that no other thing ever got adopted this quickly -- I am pointing out that this has the potential of causing a lot of very rapid economic calamity for many people, especially painful given that it was their very labour that is being exploited to annul their ability to earn a living from it.)

 

[Oofta]

-deleted-

 

[Oofta]

From the National Museum of American History (a branch of the Smithsonian):

Refrigerators were adopted faster than just about any other technological innovation of the 20th century. They made their debut in the teens, and 30 years later, over half of Americans had them.

If it took 30 years for half of the US to have them, and it was one of the fastest technological innovation of the 20th century, then we can assume that most others were on the order of 15-20 years.

Re, toilets, the one source I quickly found stated it was 50% in 1940, then 66% 1950, and 85% in 1960... so still multi decade.

Generative AI in 2 years is orders of magnitude faster. (And to forestall future comments: I am not saying that no other thing ever got adopted this quickly -- I am pointing out that this has the potential of causing a lot of very rapid economic calamity for many people, especially painful given that it was their very labour that is being exploited to annul their ability to earn a living from it.)

The technology behind the LLMs that is freaking everyone out is much older than 2 years. It's just that it's only been noticed by the general public for a couple of years.

Much like many surprise overnight advances, it's been decades in the making.

 

[Cadence]

The technology behind the LLMs that is freaking everyone out is much older than 2 years. It's just that it's only been noticed by the general public for a couple of years.

Much like many surprise overnight advances, it's been decades in the making.

Are Transformer models in 2017 the biggest thing for letting LLMs explode?

The history, timeline, and future of LLMs

From the learning process to reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), let’s delve deeper into the foundations of language models, how they’re trained, and how they work.

toloka.ai

 

[Vaalingrade]

Everyone just adopted the 'move fast, break things' philosophy. You know, the one exemplified by the company that made taxi rides more dangerous and less economical for both riders and drivers..