D&D (2024) Using AI for Your Home Game

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Well, that’s debatable. Where does this alleged excess value come from, if not the labor? Under some theories, it doesn’t; the seller simply steals a portion of the product’s value from the laborers who produced it.

Again, this depends on what theory of value you’re using.

I'm going by the market theory of value, which is the only one that's relevant in daily life as long as we live in a market economy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Labor is still part of the 'value' though. When you pay for something, the cost you pay is calculated in part from how much it cost to make in edition to how much they think they can crush out of you.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Labor is still part of the 'value' though. When you pay for something, the cost you pay is calculated in part from how much it cost to make in edition to how much they think they can crush out of you.

Only "much they think they can crush out of you" matters. The actual cost of production only matters when there's multiple suppliers of a product, and I have to option to buy from the supplier who offers the lowest price, ie. the one who accepts the lowest margins.

In a competitive market, the cost of production creates an effective floor for the price of an item, but most businesses these days hate competitive markets.

Anyway, this is getting pretty off topic, so this will be my final post about economics, even though it's a fascinating subject.

 

[ECMO3]

nm

 

[ECMO3]

Labor is still part of the 'value' though. When you pay for something, the cost you pay is calculated in part from how much it cost to make in edition to how much they think they can crush out of you.

Not really. For labor to be effective it must add value in excess of the time and effort used to create it.

Digging dirt and putting it in bags to sell is not adding value, you are still selling dirt.

If an artist spends 10 hours working on a image worth $5 their labor does not make that image worth more.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

So if I take a pick and spend 5 hours chipping away at rock and break off some Limestone and I sell you that rock you should pay me the same as if I sold pounds of gold that I mined

While if I stumble on a gold nugget accidentally while walking my dog, I can only sell it for cents.

 

[ECMO3]

So now I'm supposed to kill my creativity and replae it with a worthless toy to give my players bland generic experience devoid of fun? If this is the future, I hope I won't live to see it.

I get the opposite effect. As a DM I use AI to give my players a wonderful, immersive experience at a price point that I (and they) can afford.

Maybe someday AI will replace me as a DM, but that is not a bad thing, especially not if it does as good a job as it has at replacing artists.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If an artist spends 10 hours working on a image worth $5 their labor does not make that image worth more.

Illustration:

The right image is a representation of Jesus, an artwork that was displayed in a Spanish church. The left image is the result after a (probably good intentioned) worshipper decide to put some work to make it look better.

I am convinced that the added work didn't translate to added value.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I get the opposite effect. As a DM I use AI to give my players a wonderful, immersive experience at a price point that I (and they) can afford.

Maybe someday AI will replace me as a DM, but that is not a bad thing, especially not if it does as good a job as it has at replacing artists.

You mean, at some point we'll have robot-DM that our group can ask to DM a great campaign, anytime, for free, so all of us can play when we don't want to be the GM or nobody has the time to prep this week? That's great. If it is a possible outcome, I am glad that my writings on the Internet are being scraped to train LLM.

 

[ECMO3]

Which could not have been made without their labor, and their labor is part of the price of the image. This is just basic economics.

Sure that exact image could not be made without their labor, but another one could be and for the value of their labor another 100 or more could be made and some of them WILL be better than the one they produce.

No, see, the equivalent to cooking your own burger in this analogy is making your own art.

That is what I am doing with AI.

I mean when I cook a burger I am using modern appliances to do it, I am not rubbing 2 sticks together to get fire. I am relying on training built apon millenia of civilization. My mother taught me how to cook and I am pretty good at it, but I would not say I "stole" that knowlege from her and she did not "steal" it either, even though neither of us were the first people to cook, or use a stove, or eat meat or any of that.

You may protest, “but I’m not a good artist.”

When I am using AI I am a great artist, and I feel I am great at being creative in other ways without AI.

Right, you’re supporting the people who are building tools designed to steal labor value.

That is nonsense and the artists I hired are doing the same thing by using a computer and the internet.

See, the thing is, those LLMs don’t just make images ex nihilo. They have to be trained how to make those images by feeding them hundreds of thousands of examples, all of which were made by artists and not paid for. This is the point where the burger analogy breaks down, but if we were to force it to fit, you’d be paying people who made some sort of burger-cloning machine that all the chefs and short order cooks and fast food line workers of the world were forced to contribute feedback to developing.

No artist is forced to provide their art to LLMs. They can make their art and keep in their home and never sell it and then the LLMs could not use it.

Sure, if you’re willing to under-charge for your own labor, that’s a choice you’re free to make. Or, maybe it’s a choice you’re forced to make to keep your prices competitive because of market forces outside your control. These are factors artists also deal with. But, DMing is a less specialized skill than most visual art, so it’s generally in greater supply. Regardless, the cost is the cost. If people want the product, they can pay what’s being asked for it, or they can learn to make the product for themselves, or they can accept not having the product. Stealing the product is generally not considered a socially acceptable option, with good reason, because society generally requires trust to function. But, in this case, there are widely available art theft machines, and people are just accepting their existence. Pardon me if I refuse.

I am not stealing anything. None of the images I use in my paid games are copyrighted. I own them, not the artists who's art trained the LLM and not the software I use to make them. They are mine.

Labor is part of the cost of literally any product. That’s why products cost more than the net value of their raw materials.

Some products cost more and other products don't. Digital art costs almost nothing in terms of raw materials (absent the investment in memory) and the value of it is generally not appreciably more due to the labor put into it.

There are exceptions. Any art made by Gerhard Richter, for example is going to be valuable, and it is going to be valuable even if it is not good.

Yes, because the labor value isn’t part of the cost of AI-generated images, because that labor was stolen. Machines can’t make art. What they do is redistribute and recombine a small portion of the labor done by countless artists, without compensating them for that labor.

Artists can't make digital art without machines.

If the owners of these LLMs actually had to pay royalties to the artists whose work the LLMs were trained on, you can bet your ass the products would be a lot more expensive.

They should not have to pay royalties if their art is available on the open domain, to include if it was sold.

Unless they sold it with a disclaimer, in which case they artists affected should take legal action against the person they sold it to.