D&D General Would you buy an AI-generated Castle Greyhawk "by" Gary Gygax?" Should you?

[Scribe]

I rolled my eyes for a long time at Gmail's attempts to guess what I was writing. And then, about a year ago, it got really good at it and began just tapping tab to let it complete sentences periodically. I still write the majority of my emails -- and I'm a very strong written communicator in English -- but if I'm finding value in these tools, I think it's likely that they're more widely used than anyone outside Google could imagine.

So...I agree, they likely are widely used, and likely a lot of people are finding value in them.

I think that is a net negative. They are not learning. They may (if just tabbing away and not understanding what it is doing) not even be picking up what they COULD be writing instead.

Its like penmanship. My wife writes well (as most women seem to do?) and older people write well, but my penmanship has always sucked, and my son's chicken scratch is an absolute travesty to try and read.

This is not a good thing. We are regressing as a society. This is not advancement, its just offloading the burden to a computer (or millions of them) and we as individuals, are less than we could be for it.

Its not like we are gaining any benefit with this offload of cognitive processing. I am not better off for forgetting cursive. My son is not better off for not even learning it.

Its Idiocracy, we are getting worse as a society.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

From Plato's Phaedrus.

If literacy didn't ruin the human race, I have faith that we'll survive AI.

Not a lot of people mourn the fact that we can no longer routinely remember 50 telephone numbers, now that smartphones take care of that for us.

 

[Scribe]

Not a lot of people mourn the fact that we can no longer routinely remember 50 telephone numbers, now that smartphones take care of that for us.

No, instead we remember the details of our hobbies, sports, or reality TV soaps... is this progress?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No, instead we remember the details of our hobbies, sports, or reality TV soaps... is this progress?

Over memorizing strings of numbers? Yes.

 

[Scribe]

Over memorizing strings of numbers? Yes.

Why? Inherently the only thing of value is the string of numbers, because if you are ever without your phone, and you need to call (with someone elses phone) you are SOL otherwise.

 

[General_Tangent]

From Plato's Phaedrus.

If literacy didn't ruin the human race, I have faith that we'll survive AI.

Not a lot of people mourn the fact that we can no longer routinely remember 50 telephone numbers, now that smartphones take care of that for us.

I use that part of my brain to memorise passwords now.

 

[Clint_L]

Is current generative AI work good or bad? I dunno; it's a question of taste. Good and bad are not objective qualities of the universe, after all. I think most would agree that it is getting better/improving in terms of the complexity of what it can manage, and at a very rapid pace.

Even assuming that current generative AI work is bad, will it always be bad? I dunno; I don't have a crystal ball. However, given the history of technology and the rapid development that we have already seen, I wouldn't bet the farm against the rapid spread of generative AI in creative media.

I don't think that there is anything uniquely special about Homo sapiens that cannot be replicated or exceeded. I mean, we are all comfortable with the idea that many other animals have capacities that we lack, and that even simple machines can exceed us in lots of ways. Even a simple calculator can manage mathematical computations far, far better than any human. So the notion that an AI could do art as well as a homo sapiens, or even exceed us, does not seem logically impossible or anything. I don't think art is supernatural, nor is the human mind.

And in any case, this debate will be, and already is being, settled at a practical level. Generative AI is already being widely used, and that will only accelerate.

 

[General_Tangent]

... unless we are talking about a 2nd or 3rd language (Europeans and their better education systems!) what?

You dont need a post secondary education to write emails, and we certainly dont need the idiotic prompts of Outlook/Teams to convey a message.

Having done first line technical support, the ability to write in a clear and concise manner really does wonders for how quickly your ticket is dealt with and resolved.

In my personal experience I found that the people that could clearly convey their issues were those people with English as a second language.

 

[Clint_L]

From Plato's Phaedrus.

If literacy didn't ruin the human race, I have faith that we'll survive AI.

Not a lot of people mourn the fact that we can no longer routinely remember 50 telephone numbers, now that smartphones take care of that for us.

I have cited this same passage in discussions at work with teachers who bewail the impact phones are having on students memorizing material. Instead of looking at phones as competing with our memory and knowledge, we should look at them as memory and knowledge prosthetics. Just like books, but on steroids.

Incidentally, I also use my phone to remember most of my passwords.

 

[Orius]

You guys are all missing the most obvious positive here.

Anything an AI produces has GOT to be superior to WG7.

Admittedly, that's a very low bar to clear.