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

[Charlaquin]

I rather doubt that a company like WOTC using AI as part of their games rises to the level of extinguishing life as we know it. There are a lot of things I worry about as a threat both short term and long. An AI DM assistant is not on that list.

An AI DM assistant is not an immediate threat to humanity, no. But the mass proliferation of AI in general is, and an AI DM assistant contributes to that. We face significant systemic problems, and we will not be able to solve them without thinking systematically. Nothing exists in a vacuum, these seemingly small individual decisions matter greatly in the broader picture.

 

[Charlaquin]

This isn't about AI art.

Eh, depends how you define art. It certainly isn’t about visual art being generated or altered by AI, but it is about AI’s effect on human creative works.

 

[Vaalingrade]

What social consequences?

Do you mean things like starving people being able to eat or reducing carbon dioxide emissions by optimizing logistics and supply chains or are you refering to being able to diagnose life threatening diseases quicker?

So... the power intensive process required to steal petabytes of content and hallucinate it into the world is going to reduce carbon emissions, eh? Pull the other one, it's on Etherium.

 

[Oofta]

The article mentions it, but Cocks talks about AI in D&D this way

All of which I read as DM assistant type applications. I don't really see a problem with that, anything that encourages players to DM is a plus in my book.

 

[Oofta]

An AI DM assistant is not an immediate threat to humanity, no. But the mass proliferation of AI in general is, and an AI DM assistant contributes to that. We face significant systemic problems, and we will not be able to solve them without thinking systematically. Nothing exists in a vacuum, these seemingly small individual decisions matter greatly in the broader picture.

There are forums dedicated to things like the broader impact of AI in society. This forum? This thread? Last I checked we were discussing D&D. So no, I'm not concerned in any way shape or form that what WOTC is doing with AI will be a threat to humanity. AI in general? I think the threat is over-hyped, at least compared to other threats we face.

 

[Scribe]

That argument was made about both computers and the internet.

I think we would be better off without either at this point.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Not all new technology is good.

The industrial revolution made life unarguably worse for people for a very long time, you know. We may have the benefits of that now... but uh. It was not fun to go through for the ordinary person. It created a lot of displaced, hurt people and in a significant amount of cases made their life measurably worse. The Luddites get a bad wrap... and well, you sure could look at what happened to people afterwards, and really wonder whether they were wrong.

So sure, we can just, like, pretend that technology marches on and pretend the consequences aren't there, and not, you know LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY AFFECTED BY IT.

Or we could maybe just pause and think for a second about all of this and regulate the damn stuff, and watch corporations like a hawk. And listen, to the people, affected.

Nobody ever suffered for assuming a corporation would do the wrong thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

There are forums dedicated to things like the broader impact of AI in society. This forum? This thread? Last I checked we were discussing D&D.

Yes, and since the CEO of the company that makes D&D is discussing ways to bring AI into the game, discussion of the ills of AI is relevant to the topic.

So no, I'm not concerned in any way shape or form that what WOTC is doing with AI will be a threat to humanity. AI in general? I think the threat is over-hyped, at least compared to other threats we face.

Ok. You’re welcome to be unconcerned about it. Those of us who are concerned about it are going to continue vocalizing those concerns, because it’s in Hazbro’s financial interest to ignore us if they can, which means our best hope is to make our concerns as difficult for them to ignore as possible.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

What social consequences?

Do you mean things like starving people being able to eat or reducing carbon dioxide emissions by optimizing logistics and supply chains or are you refering to being able to diagnose life threatening diseases quicker?

Wrong type of AI.

You can optimise logistics, as far as I know, without using generative AI.

This is why these AI discussions are annoying, because people throw around various pieces of terminology without detailing what they actually mean. Logistic analysis can be done using standard techniques and they don't require much of the typical neural-network based stuff that's been hot recently.

People who are anti generative AI (like me) tend to focus on the generative aspect. It''s fine and cool to use neural networks for other things. Alpha-go, for example, was a cool use of NNs.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, and since the CEO of the company that makes D&D is discussing ways to bring AI into the game, discussion of the ills of AI is relevant to the topic.

Ok. You’re welcome to be unconcerned about it. Those of us who are concerned about it are going to continue vocalizing those concerns, because it’s in Hazbro’s financial interest to ignore us if they can, which means our best hope is to make our concerns as difficult for them to ignore as possible.

I'd have more sympathy if I knew how you jump from "AI may be used as a DM aid" to end of times apocalypse.

I agree things are changing. They always are whether we accept it or not. But overreacting to every hypothetical threat isn't particularly healthy. Nothing we say here on forums like this means anything, especially not when we're talking about hypothetical vaporware and concerns so vague as to be effectively meaningless.

Tell WOTC you don't want AI art in the books? Cool, that's a specific direct issue that they can react to. Which they did by rejecting a piece of artwork that had been AI enhanced. Say "AI bad"? Well, that's pretty meaningless, especially because I think some basic AI tools to help people DM could be a good thing for both the hobby and for my own personal use.