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

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I like playing golf as one of my hobbies and the last few years a lot of the golf companies have touted the point that they are using AI in making the clubface. They say they can run millions of simulations to shape and mold the face to be able to make up for golfers not hitting the dead center of the face and help to get the ball to stay straight and go about as far. I have not noticed any backlash from golfers over using the AI in this form.

I'm not sure how Wizards will use AI, but I can guess that it is not going to be 100% bad/evil/corporate. Art and writing does appear to be a center of role-playing games and it is not like using AI to make better dice that roll more random somehow. I can see the fear of the unknown.

Different thing entirely.

Now admittedly I don't know how this golf thing works, but the whole AI debate has been oversimplified and there are a whole bunch of distinctions here between what different people mean when they use the term AI.

The golf AI example sounds like what I'd call traditional AI. Use some kind of algorithm to test different combinations of parameters and then simulate the parameters to investigate new possible clubs. This is a highly specific use case.

The other type of AI discussed is generative AI where you have some algorithm that has "learned" from given input how to generate output that is "similar" to the input. For example artwork generators and text generators. They function like this (almost always, of course it's possible to generate images and text without using any generative AI at all).

The first method is essentially just a form of optimisation and as such it's highly likely not to be practical without using algorithmic support. You can't employ that many people to manually try out golf clubs of custom made models and collect statistics because it'd take too much time. Using this AI approach would just speed up the process.

The second method is a parasite that must be destroyed. Death to generative AI.

 

[Retreater]

I'm thankful that other games exist that highlight the work of actual writers and artists instead of AI.
For me, there are better games and companies out there. I'll just focus on them

 

[eyeheartawk]

AI has tremendous potential to enrich humanity and help us solve problems.

It perhaps could. But you know, somehow, I don't think AI funded and controlled by the same forces of capital that have so far destroyed our planet and ruined just about everything else they touch will be the ones to do it.

 

[Nuclear Monkey]

Having been through the painful experience of running multiple WOTC published adventures, I wouldn't mind having an AI tool I could ask how tall the ceiling are in a room in a dungeon so I don't have to flip through 200 pages to find the one place where it's mentioned.

 

[Oofta]

it is a tool for people to use, sure, but the line is blurry. The AI could design monsters or MtG cards with next to no human input as well instead of being a tool used by a human to create better balanced monsters / cards

I guess we will see how they use it and whether it expands from there (assuming they have an interest in being transparent about it)

Replacement and tool are also not mutually exclusive. If it took a designer 8 hours for an MtG card and thanks to AI it now takes 4, you only need half as many designers

I empathize with people that lose their jobs but improving productivity is how we have the luxuries we have today. It wasn't that long ago that 2 got of 3 people were farmers. Go back to the 18th century and it was 90%.

Things change, technology advances. I didn't become a farmer like my father because of those advances.

 

[Oofta]

Serious question: What more demonstrable bad behavior from WotC would it take for you to not to assume good faith on their part? I mean, gestures vaguely at all their actions in the last 18 months in the D&D and MtG spheres

I don't pay much attention to MtG, but sending someone out to get product they did not legally have when they had been asked to return them is not exactly the sign of jack-booted thugs. The OGL thing was stupid but also totally reversed. Layoffs? Name one major corporation that doesn't occasionally lay off people.

I'm a pragmatic person. Corporations are far from perfect but WOTC is not particularly worse than any other corporation. Or the vast majority of small businesses for that matter.

 

[Alzrius]

I don't pay much attention to MtG, but sending someone out to get product they did not legally have when they had been asked to return them is not exactly the sign of jack-booted thugs.

I'm given to understand that they (that is, the person who'd purchased the cards) did, in fact, have them legally. A retailer breaking the street date for when something goes on sale, even accidentally, is not an issue of criminal law, and even if it was the penalty wouldn't fall on the customer who received the embargoed set of cards.

 

[Cadence]

I don't get this inherent hatred for AI. Unlike blockchain and NFTs (which at their heart aren't bad ideas, the concept of trustless protocols is a good one, but also unfortunately so complicated for an average user that you end up having to put a traditional layer of web2 protocols on top of it to make it accessible to the general public, which kills the reason for doing it in the first place) AI has tremendous potential to enrich humanity and help us solve problems.

Yes there need to be safeguards in place (particularly in the area of protecting intellectual property), but I can't help feel that the knee jerk reaction to AI has the potential to cause the same harm that the rejection of nuclear power has done. Were it not for the rejection of nuclear power at the end of the 20th century, we wouldn't be dealing with global warming now and likely also wouldn't have a water crisis in so much of the world.

I think part of it might be the amount of jumping already with no safeguards in place.

 

[TwoSix]

Since politics and business are near indistinguishable at this point I think this piece of data is pertinent. TLDR, they don't care if something is unpopular. Another easy example: How popular do you think Netflix's crackdown on sharing passwords was? I would say near 100% of the userbase didn't like it. Well, turns out it made them money and people grumbled but accepted it. Never discount the masses nihilistic apathy.

Plus, I don't think it's some pure apathy. Netflix saying "Look, everyone in your house can use the same account, but you can't just pay for your mom's house, your sister's house, and your best friend's house too" isn't some kind of moral travesty. Everyone grumbled because we were all getting away with something before and they took that away.

Not that I don't think there's plenty of apathy, but eh....I can't bother to fight about it.

 

[Cadence]

I empathize with people that lose their jobs but improving productivity is how we have the luxuries we have today. It wasn't that long ago that 2 got of 3 people were farmers. Go back to the 18th century and it was 90%.

Things change, technology advances. I didn't become a farmer like my father because of those advances.

The products of technology are tools.
The effect tools have on things depends on who is wielding them.
Big corporations will be among the biggest wielders (or their employees anyway - or individuals who become start-ups and sell out to big corporations or become them).
Modern wall-street capitalism doesn't tend to encourage corporations to look to the future.
Thank goodness for the EU regulators?