WotC Would you buy WotC products produced or enhanced with AI?

[SlyFlourish]

Interestingly, we're reaching the (temporary) point where open-source models are strugging to compete with AI companies because most home users just don't have the necessary compute power (and notably, VRAM) to run the more powerful models. Would you mind a company that would release their model and yet offer the service of running it?

Also, not totally unrelated, would you mind a closed model run by a public agency, so no tech bro is profitting from it, only the People in general?

I would feel better about both of those approachs than I feel now but there's still a lot to be managed like focusing on using up a lot less power.

 

[Reynard]

The "authors" took existing books and used AI to modify them slightly, then sold them.

This is a totally different use case than having AI write a thing that turns out to be just like another thing.

You could do this without AI, of course. Search/replace and cut/paste and a little elbow grease would do it, but an LLM would certainly make it go faster. But that is a person using a tool for a blatantly illegal scam. It isn't a thing inherent to LLMs. If we decried any tool that enabled bad actors, we would have no tools at all.

In the end, making crappy prose and images is the least interesting, least valuable thing AI can be used for and only bottom feeders are likely to engage with it. It just isn't profitable enough compared to the costs of developing AI. And it may be that nothing is, but replacing armies of coders, HR reps and customer service reps at least gets closer.

 

[The Firebird]

I've watched Star Wars numerous times, and I'm pretty sure that he didn't use footage from any of their films.

Likewise, the LLM does not use text directly from training data. Sometimes outputs can look similar to things that have been seen before, as in all art and literature.

Drawing inspiration from a source and using that to make your own material is not the same as putting a prompt in a textbox and having a computer make up a story for you.

Well, clearly. And I think anyone claiming to be a talented artist in that regard is a fool. My point was narrower--not all sources of inspiration must be cited. In many cases we are unaware of what inspires us.

A lot of the same energy as "my opinions are worth as much as your expertise, education and experience" which is kind of weird but fits the online space.

"My prompts are worth as much as your training, dedication, and craft."

I want to be very clear that I think someone who has this attitude about their LLM prompts is being incredibly rude.

Bit of a tangent, which sciences would that be?

In my field (astrophysics), everything from the last 15+ years has anyway been put on arxiv, so there’s no real need to pirate anything.

Not saying you are wrong, just curious about the status of other disciplines.

I work in chemistry. Arxiv is a great solution. There shouldn't be a need for piracy to make science work, but unfortunately arxiv is not as widely used in other fields.

 

[Queer Venger]

I mean, the Pandora's box has been opened at this point. I think AI is here to stay. That said, as a consumer I chose to not buy AI created gaming content, particularly art.

 

[Sulicius]

I mean, the Pandora's box has been opened at this point. I think AI is here to stay. That said, as a consumer I chose to not buy AI created gaming content, particularly art.

This is my take too. In the end we vote with our wallets.

 

[Ath'kethin]

I initially voted "probably not" but quickly changed my vote to "never."

I can see a case, distasteful as it may be, for a small independent designer using AI either to create art or guide their writing. But I've also seen the pushback against folks doing that, and in one specific case of which I am aware a publisher who had planned to use AI reversed course and hired actual artists to work on their product. It funded fine and game out great.

Especially when tiny independent publishers can manage to write and edit their own material and hire artists - name artists, famous within the circles of the game the product is for - there is absolutely no justification or excuse for the biggest company in the industry to use AI fo any part of its process. It's unconscionable.

 

[Queer Venger]

This is my take too. In the end we vote with our wallets.

yep, $$ talks

 

[Scribe]

Likewise, the LLM does not use text directly from training data.

It does, this is false.

 

[The Firebird]

This is not true. Storing weights and biases are not the same as storing the original text. It is not accessing the original text and returning it to you. The original text is not present in the model. If you train it Macbeth, then it knows the patterns in Macbeth, but does not retain the text.

Likewise I know more or less what comes after 'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow'. But I don't know it verbatim. I know how the trench run sequence goes in Star Wars, and I can describe the order to you. I could shoot a sequence that is pretty similar. But those shots are not stored in my brain.

 

[Scribe]

This is not true. Storing weights and biases are not the same as storing the original text. It is not accessing the original text and returning it to you. The original text is not present in the model. If you train it Macbeth, then it knows the patterns in Macbeth, but does not retain the text.

Likewise I know more or less what comes after 'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow'. But I don't know it verbatim. I know how the trench run sequence goes in Star Wars, and I can describe the order to you. I could shoot a sequence that is pretty similar. But those shots are not stored in my brain.

The 5.0 PHB had sections quoted verbatim. You claim it's not using the text, I don't care about what hoops you wish to jump through, if you can get a chunk of reprinted text, it's obvious the text was stolen.