6 ms·

Don't underestimate how anti-AI the tabletop community is. This could have been entitled: "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use

Don't underestimate how anti-AI the tabletop community is. This could have been entitled: "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable." I don't do much with crypto/NFTs/AI, because I don't find any of it useful yet. But I get so much "with us or against us" heat for not being zealously against the the idea of them. It was NFTs, NFTs, NFTs at the table for months until it became AI, AI, AI. My preference is to talk about something else while playing board games. One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." A minority are conflicted about this position. When I talk to technical people at game nights we almost never talk about tech. The one time our programmers all played RoboRally the night kind of died because it felt too close to work for a Saturday night. If GW was going to use AI they would probably start with sprue layouts. Maybe the AI could number the bits in sane way? I would be for that.

ronsor 9mo ago
This basically reflects my observations. > Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable. Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them. > One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." This is because they don't view programming as a "creative" form of labor. I think this is an incorrect view, but this knowledge is at least useful in weighting their opinions. The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. Their stated preference is they don't want any AI anywhere, but their revealed preference is they'll continue to spend money as long as the product is good. Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.
- StrLght 9mo ago
  > Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them. I agree that this is often the case. I still see Games Workshop as an exception. They could have moved plastic production to a cheaper region (e.g. China), but they haven't done so. Financials are obviously important to them, but they're being very careful and thoughtful about their actions. This AI ban is just another showcase of that.
  - miiiiiike 9mo ago
    The UK production is mostly about speed (turnaround from 3d prototype, to mold, to finished sprue, and ‘Eavy Metal painted promo images) and quality control for the models. All of their paper and hard plastic products (books, dice, etc) are produced in China.
- doctorpangloss 9mo ago
  > The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. ... Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap. how can you go and generalize about these people, calling them idiots (that's what "deep of an opinion" means, even if you don't say that), and then breathlessly engage in the exact same rhetoric?
  - wduquette 9mo ago
    I took him to mean "deep" in the sense of "strongly felt", not as a comment on how sensible or well-informed the opinion is.
    - ronsor 9mo ago
      This is the right interpretation
- miiiiiike 9mo ago
  That’s the thing. One day everyone is going to just stop caring about being anti-AI. Already I’ve noticed that most people are only against other people’s use of AI. Their use is justified. I actively don’t use AI because the results are unreliable or ugly. I’m just not against AI in principle. It’s funny that my position is considered contemptible by people who regularly use AI but are hard hardliners against it on moral grounds. Remember when everything wasn’t a religious war? Actually, I don’t. It was always like this and it’s always going to be like this. Just one forever crusade after another.
wk_end 9mo ago
> while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." Three things: 1. People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour. Replacing devs with AI is viewed in the same way as replacing assembly line workers with robots. 2. Somewhat informed people might know that for coding tasks, LLMs are broadly trained on code that was publicly shared to help people out on Reddit or SO or as part of open-source projects (the nuance of, say, the GPL will be lost). Whereas the art is was trained on is, broadly speaking, copywritten. 3. And, related to two: people feel great sympathy for artists, since artists generally struggle quite a bit to make a living. Whereas engineers have solid, high paying white collar jobs; thus, they're not considered entitled to any kind of sympathy or support.
- throwaway2027 9mo ago
  Most of the code that was publicly available to be trained on is written by people in their spare time, not directly making any money off of it though. Personally I think if you are fine with AI used to generate code you should also be fine with it being used to generate art. That doesn't mean that I think that big companies just scraping the entire internet and training on large amount of portfolio pieces from ArtStation or people making open source projects is good either.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Groxx 9mo ago
    There is the nuance that much code that is available publicly (which includes a GIGANTIC amount of that "written by people in their spare time" stuff) is put there for the explicit goal of showing other people all the details so they can read, reuse, and modify it. Open-source licenses in some form are incredibly popular, though the details vary, and seeing your side project in a product that 100k people use is usually just neat, not "you stole from me". Artworks have their relatively-popular creative-commons stuff, and some of those follow a similar "do whatever" vibe, but I far more frequently see "attribution required" which generally requires it at the point of use, i.e. immediately along-side the art-piece. And if it's something where someone saw your work once and made something different separately, the license generally does not apply. LLMs have no way to do that kind of attribution though, and hammer out stuff that looks eerily familiar but isn't pixel-precise to the original, so it feels like and probably is an unapproved use of their work. The code equivalent of this is usually "if you have source releases, include it there" or a very few have the equivalent of "please shove a mention somewhere deep in a settings screen that nobody will tap on". Using that code for training is I think relatively justifiable. The licenses matter (and have clearly been broadly ignored, which should not be allowed) but if it wasn't prohibited, it's generally allowed, and if you didn't want that you would need to choose a restrictive license or not publish it. Plus, like, artists generally are their style, in practical terms. So copying their style is effectively impersonation. Coders on the other hand often intentionally lean heavily on style erasing tools like auto-formatters and common design patterns and whatnot, so their code blends cleanly in more places rather than sounding like exclusively "them". --- I'm generally okay with permissive open source licensed code being ingested and spat back out in a useful product. That's kinda the point of those licenses. If it requires attribution, it gets murky and probably leans towards "no" - it's clearly not a black-box re-implementation, the LLMs are observing the internals and sometimes regurgitate it verbatim and that is generally not approved when humans do it. Do I think the biggest LLM companies are staying within the more-obviously-acceptable licenses? Hell no. So I avoid them. Do I trust any LLM business to actually stick to those licenses? ... probably not right now. But one could exist. Hopefully it'd still have enough training data to be useful.
neutronicus 9mo ago
Yes, anyone with an art-adjacent hobby like tabletop gaming is militantly anti-AI. Shelling out to support artists is seen as virtuous, and AI is seen as the opposite of that - not merely replacing artists but stealing from them. There's also a general perception that every cost-saving measure is killing the quality of the product. So you've got a PR double-whammy there.
- rpdillon 9mo ago
  I play a lot of solo RPGs (4AD, Riftbreakers, Ker Nethalas, Kal-Arath, Al-Rathak, and just picked up Ironsworn: Starforged last night!) and I find AI to be amazing at filling in scenario and campaign details. I might roll and find out I'm investigating a burial ground, and I'd just left the shore where my boat ran aground. My local GPT-OSS 120B is fantastic at generating the scene, descriptors for the environment, and small details I can cue on and ask my oracle questions about. It's like an automated GM-lite that can embellish a scene. It's also really good at suggesting complications to situations in games like The Sprawl (based on WoD), where, as a GM, I want to ratchet up the tension. AI is super-cool, and has the potential to transform a lot of areas. I get that people are threatened by it, but letting that overshadow its utility seems...short sighted? Not to be procative, but, how do folks think this will play out over the next 20 years? Doesn't it seem like AI could be used to make the gaming experience better, not just cheaper?
  - tstrimple 9mo ago
    Just naming things in a world consistent way would be an amazing tool. Naming things is one of the most difficult parts of programming and writing and world creation I guess.
  - neutronicus 9mo ago
    To be clear, I think the quality angle is secondary, and thirst for the approval of artists is primary. Personally, I haven't used AI to generate prose like you, but I do appreciate delegating "remembering dusty corners of the rules" to Claude, especially in a narrative campaign where you really just want an answer vs settling a dispute.
seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
> "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable." They will definitely start using AI when their competitors do to the point that they gain a substantial competitive advantage. Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist. At that point, it is more survival bias (companies that used AI survived) rather than profit motive (companies used AI to make more money).
- mcmcmc 9mo ago
  > Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist. That is a false dichotomy. Eschewing AI may actually provide a competitive advantage in some markets. In other words, the third choice is to pivot and differentiate.
- kryptiskt 9mo ago
  Games Workshop is more entrenched in their niche than any of the FAANGs. They can do what they want, because nobody else can do WH40K.
  - seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
    I can guarantee you that there are more than a few small producers in Guangzhou that can, and are using whatever advantage they can leverage (including AI, like the rest of China's industry).
    - tstrimple 9mo ago
      It's a license and IP issue. Nothing technical otherwise 3d printers should have put GW out of business overnight.
    - raincole 9mo ago
      It's like saying because even the newest Pokemon game has shitty textures which anyone can do better than with AI, you can compete against Pokemon. People don't buy merchs of these well-established IP for their astonishing production value. And especially not for how cheap they are.
venndeezl 9mo ago
Don't assume your experience is uniformly distributed. I know tabletop gamers addicted to AI and 3D printing their own game pieces. I would describe them as anti-corporate IP/copyright cartel. They understand things like automobiles and personal computers require organized heavy lifting but laying claim to own our culture and entertainment, our emotional identity is a joke. Just rich people controlling agency, indoctrinating kids with capitalist essentialism; by chance we were born before you and survived this long so neener neener! We own everything! Such an unserious country.
JeremyNT 9mo ago
I doubt a random internet commenter can persuade you, but LLMs and tools built around them are fundamentally different from NFT/crypto. NFTs/Crypto are just ways to do crimes/speculate/evade regulations. They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering." You were right to dismiss them. LLMs are extremely useful for real world use cases. There are a lot of practical and ethical concerns with their use: energy usage, who owns them, who profits from them, slop generation, trust erosion... I mean, a lot. And there are indeed hucksters selling AI snake oil everywhere, which may be what tripped off your BS meter. But fundamentally, LLMs are very useful, and comparing them to NFT/Crypto does a disservice to the utility of the tech.
- oconnor663 9mo ago
  > They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering." Without disagreeing with your overall point in 99% of cases, we did actually have a good use for pinning things in the Bitcoin blockchain when I worked at Keybase. If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem.
  - blibble 9mo ago
    > If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem. and it only requires the same electricity as a medium sized country to do it continuously, forever
  - wizzwizz4 9mo ago
    The property that makes the blockchain useful for this, though, is that it's widely-distributed. "Throw a classified in the national newspaper" is just as good. Nowadays, we have better solutions (appendable BitTorrent comes to mind), with most of the advantages of blockchain but few of the disadvantages.
cthalupa 9mo ago
> One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." I had a conversation with an artist friend some time back. He uses Squarespace for his portfolio website. He was a few drinks in, and ranting about how even if it's primarily artists using these tools professionally at the moment, it'll still lead to a consolidation of jobs, how it's built on the skillset and learning of a broader community than those that will profit, etc. How the little guy was going to get screwed over and over by this sort of thing. I started out doing webdesign work before I moved more to the operations and infrastructure management side of things, but I saw the writing on the wall with CMS systems, WYSIWYG editors, etc. At the time building anything decent still took someone doing design and dev work, but I knew that they would get better over time, and figured I should make the change. So I asked him about this. I spoke about how yeah, the people behind Squarespace had the expertise - just like the artists using AI now - but every website built with it or similar is a job that formerly would have gone to the same sort of little guy he was talking about. How it's a consolidation of all the learnings and practices built out by that larger community, where the financial benefits are heavily consolidated. I told him it doesn't much matter to the end web designer whether or not the job got eliminated by non-AI automation and software or an LLM, the work is still gone and the career less and less viable. I've had similar conversations with artists before. They invariably maintain that it's different, somehow. I don't relish jobs disappearing, but it's nothing new. Someday, maybe enough careers will vanish that we'll need to figure out some sort of system that doesn't involve nearly every adult human working.
numpad0 9mo ago
> ... while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites ... And this is not complicated at all. It's the quality of output. Users appreciate vibecoded apps but developers are universally unfazed about vibecoded pull requests. Lots of same devs use AI for "menial" tasks and business emails. And this is NOT a double standard: people are clearly ok when generative AI outputs may exist but aren't exposed to unsuspecting human eyes, and it's not ok if they are exposed to human eyes, because the data AIs generate haven't exceeded the low-side threshold of some sort. Maybe SAN values. (also: IIUC, cults and ponzi scheme recruitment are endemic in tabletop game communities. so board game producers distancing from anything hot in those circles, even if it were slightly irrational to do so, also makes sense.)
jasonlotito 9mo ago
So, stuff generated from AI is copyrightable now?
heavyset_go 9mo ago
It's not "anti-AI" to acknowledge the fact that when your job is to create work for hire in order to build up your employer's IP portfolio, being paid to use AI to create work that isn't IP isn't doing your job. Your job is to create IP. As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted, so it is not anyone's IP, not yours, not your employer's. That's not "anti-AI", that's AI and copyright reality. Game Workshop runs their business on IP, suddenly creating work that anyone can copy, sell or reproduce because it isn't anyone's IP is antithetical to the purpose of a for-profit company.
- rpdillon 9mo ago
  > As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted I'm glad you mentioned this. It's true. But AI output as part of a larger pipeline of work to generate something is copyrightable. So I'm not sure how this is going to play out in a practical sense. I don't think we've tested this legally yet.
- pkaye 9mo ago
  If a person holds a camera and clicks a button, the output can be copyrighted. But if I write a few pages worth of prompts and click enter, it cannot be copyrighted?
  - heavyset_go 9mo ago
    Copyright protects human creations. It's no different than spending years training a chimp to paint like Van Gogh, its output are not human creations and thus cannot be copyrighted, no matter how much effort you put into training that chimp.
rainsford 9mo ago
The idea of being anti-AI for art or game design vs pro-AI for software or websites is interesting because it presumably reflects the fact that those people value art and game design more than they do software or websites. Their view of AI is as a means to an end for stuff that's necessary but low value to them while preserving the human touch for stuff that matters more. This actually doesn't seem that unreasonable or inconsistent with how most people treat technology or similar conveniences. Many if not most people value a human component for things they think are important, even if it costs more or has other tradeoffs.
danielbln 9mo ago
> I don't do much with crypto/NFTs/AI, because I don't find any of it useful yet. Throwing AI in with crypto/NFTs from a pure utility perspective is an odd take.

ronsor 9mo ago

This basically reflects my observations. > Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable. Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them. > One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." This is because they don't view programming as a "creative" form of labor. I think this is an incorrect view, but this knowledge is at least useful in weighting their opinions. The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. Their stated preference is they don't want any AI anywhere, but their revealed preference is they'll continue to spend money as long as the product is good. Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.

StrLght 9mo ago
> Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them. I agree that this is often the case. I still see Games Workshop as an exception. They could have moved plastic production to a cheaper region (e.g. China), but they haven't done so. Financials are obviously important to them, but they're being very careful and thoughtful about their actions. This AI ban is just another showcase of that.
- miiiiiike 9mo ago
  The UK production is mostly about speed (turnaround from 3d prototype, to mold, to finished sprue, and ‘Eavy Metal painted promo images) and quality control for the models. All of their paper and hard plastic products (books, dice, etc) are produced in China.
doctorpangloss 9mo ago
> The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. ... Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap. how can you go and generalize about these people, calling them idiots (that's what "deep of an opinion" means, even if you don't say that), and then breathlessly engage in the exact same rhetoric?
- wduquette 9mo ago
  I took him to mean "deep" in the sense of "strongly felt", not as a comment on how sensible or well-informed the opinion is.
  - ronsor 9mo ago
    This is the right interpretation
miiiiiike 9mo ago
That’s the thing. One day everyone is going to just stop caring about being anti-AI. Already I’ve noticed that most people are only against other people’s use of AI. Their use is justified. I actively don’t use AI because the results are unreliable or ugly. I’m just not against AI in principle. It’s funny that my position is considered contemptible by people who regularly use AI but are hard hardliners against it on moral grounds. Remember when everything wasn’t a religious war? Actually, I don’t. It was always like this and it’s always going to be like this. Just one forever crusade after another.

wk_end 9mo ago

> while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." Three things: 1. People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour. Replacing devs with AI is viewed in the same way as replacing assembly line workers with robots. 2. Somewhat informed people might know that for coding tasks, LLMs are broadly trained on code that was publicly shared to help people out on Reddit or SO or as part of open-source projects (the nuance of, say, the GPL will be lost). Whereas the art is was trained on is, broadly speaking, copywritten. 3. And, related to two: people feel great sympathy for artists, since artists generally struggle quite a bit to make a living. Whereas engineers have solid, high paying white collar jobs; thus, they're not considered entitled to any kind of sympathy or support.

throwaway2027 9mo ago
Most of the code that was publicly available to be trained on is written by people in their spare time, not directly making any money off of it though. Personally I think if you are fine with AI used to generate code you should also be fine with it being used to generate art. That doesn't mean that I think that big companies just scraping the entire internet and training on large amount of portfolio pieces from ArtStation or people making open source projects is good either.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- Groxx 9mo ago
  There is the nuance that much code that is available publicly (which includes a GIGANTIC amount of that "written by people in their spare time" stuff) is put there for the explicit goal of showing other people all the details so they can read, reuse, and modify it. Open-source licenses in some form are incredibly popular, though the details vary, and seeing your side project in a product that 100k people use is usually just neat, not "you stole from me". Artworks have their relatively-popular creative-commons stuff, and some of those follow a similar "do whatever" vibe, but I far more frequently see "attribution required" which generally requires it at the point of use, i.e. immediately along-side the art-piece. And if it's something where someone saw your work once and made something different separately, the license generally does not apply. LLMs have no way to do that kind of attribution though, and hammer out stuff that looks eerily familiar but isn't pixel-precise to the original, so it feels like and probably is an unapproved use of their work. The code equivalent of this is usually "if you have source releases, include it there" or a very few have the equivalent of "please shove a mention somewhere deep in a settings screen that nobody will tap on". Using that code for training is I think relatively justifiable. The licenses matter (and have clearly been broadly ignored, which should not be allowed) but if it wasn't prohibited, it's generally allowed, and if you didn't want that you would need to choose a restrictive license or not publish it. Plus, like, artists generally are their style, in practical terms. So copying their style is effectively impersonation. Coders on the other hand often intentionally lean heavily on style erasing tools like auto-formatters and common design patterns and whatnot, so their code blends cleanly in more places rather than sounding like exclusively "them". --- I'm generally okay with permissive open source licensed code being ingested and spat back out in a useful product. That's kinda the point of those licenses. If it requires attribution, it gets murky and probably leans towards "no" - it's clearly not a black-box re-implementation, the LLMs are observing the internals and sometimes regurgitate it verbatim and that is generally not approved when humans do it. Do I think the biggest LLM companies are staying within the more-obviously-acceptable licenses? Hell no. So I avoid them. Do I trust any LLM business to actually stick to those licenses? ... probably not right now. But one could exist. Hopefully it'd still have enough training data to be useful.

neutronicus 9mo ago

Yes, anyone with an art-adjacent hobby like tabletop gaming is militantly anti-AI. Shelling out to support artists is seen as virtuous, and AI is seen as the opposite of that - not merely replacing artists but stealing from them. There's also a general perception that every cost-saving measure is killing the quality of the product. So you've got a PR double-whammy there.

rpdillon 9mo ago
I play a lot of solo RPGs (4AD, Riftbreakers, Ker Nethalas, Kal-Arath, Al-Rathak, and just picked up Ironsworn: Starforged last night!) and I find AI to be amazing at filling in scenario and campaign details. I might roll and find out I'm investigating a burial ground, and I'd just left the shore where my boat ran aground. My local GPT-OSS 120B is fantastic at generating the scene, descriptors for the environment, and small details I can cue on and ask my oracle questions about. It's like an automated GM-lite that can embellish a scene. It's also really good at suggesting complications to situations in games like The Sprawl (based on WoD), where, as a GM, I want to ratchet up the tension. AI is super-cool, and has the potential to transform a lot of areas. I get that people are threatened by it, but letting that overshadow its utility seems...short sighted? Not to be procative, but, how do folks think this will play out over the next 20 years? Doesn't it seem like AI could be used to make the gaming experience better, not just cheaper?
- tstrimple 9mo ago
  Just naming things in a world consistent way would be an amazing tool. Naming things is one of the most difficult parts of programming and writing and world creation I guess.
- neutronicus 9mo ago
  To be clear, I think the quality angle is secondary, and thirst for the approval of artists is primary. Personally, I haven't used AI to generate prose like you, but I do appreciate delegating "remembering dusty corners of the rules" to Claude, especially in a narrative campaign where you really just want an answer vs settling a dispute.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago

> "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable." They will definitely start using AI when their competitors do to the point that they gain a substantial competitive advantage. Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist. At that point, it is more survival bias (companies that used AI survived) rather than profit motive (companies used AI to make more money).

mcmcmc 9mo ago
> Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist. That is a false dichotomy. Eschewing AI may actually provide a competitive advantage in some markets. In other words, the third choice is to pivot and differentiate.
kryptiskt 9mo ago
Games Workshop is more entrenched in their niche than any of the FAANGs. They can do what they want, because nobody else can do WH40K.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  I can guarantee you that there are more than a few small producers in Guangzhou that can, and are using whatever advantage they can leverage (including AI, like the rest of China's industry).
  - tstrimple 9mo ago
    It's a license and IP issue. Nothing technical otherwise 3d printers should have put GW out of business overnight.
  - raincole 9mo ago
    It's like saying because even the newest Pokemon game has shitty textures which anyone can do better than with AI, you can compete against Pokemon. People don't buy merchs of these well-established IP for their astonishing production value. And especially not for how cheap they are.

venndeezl 9mo ago

Don't assume your experience is uniformly distributed. I know tabletop gamers addicted to AI and 3D printing their own game pieces. I would describe them as anti-corporate IP/copyright cartel. They understand things like automobiles and personal computers require organized heavy lifting but laying claim to own our culture and entertainment, our emotional identity is a joke. Just rich people controlling agency, indoctrinating kids with capitalist essentialism; by chance we were born before you and survived this long so neener neener! We own everything! Such an unserious country.

JeremyNT 9mo ago

I doubt a random internet commenter can persuade you, but LLMs and tools built around them are fundamentally different from NFT/crypto. NFTs/Crypto are just ways to do crimes/speculate/evade regulations. They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering." You were right to dismiss them. LLMs are extremely useful for real world use cases. There are a lot of practical and ethical concerns with their use: energy usage, who owns them, who profits from them, slop generation, trust erosion... I mean, a lot. And there are indeed hucksters selling AI snake oil everywhere, which may be what tripped off your BS meter. But fundamentally, LLMs are very useful, and comparing them to NFT/Crypto does a disservice to the utility of the tech.

oconnor663 9mo ago
> They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering." Without disagreeing with your overall point in 99% of cases, we did actually have a good use for pinning things in the Bitcoin blockchain when I worked at Keybase. If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem.
- blibble 9mo ago
  > If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem. and it only requires the same electricity as a medium sized country to do it continuously, forever
- wizzwizz4 9mo ago
  The property that makes the blockchain useful for this, though, is that it's widely-distributed. "Throw a classified in the national newspaper" is just as good. Nowadays, we have better solutions (appendable BitTorrent comes to mind), with most of the advantages of blockchain but few of the disadvantages.

cthalupa 9mo ago

> One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it." I had a conversation with an artist friend some time back. He uses Squarespace for his portfolio website. He was a few drinks in, and ranting about how even if it's primarily artists using these tools professionally at the moment, it'll still lead to a consolidation of jobs, how it's built on the skillset and learning of a broader community than those that will profit, etc. How the little guy was going to get screwed over and over by this sort of thing. I started out doing webdesign work before I moved more to the operations and infrastructure management side of things, but I saw the writing on the wall with CMS systems, WYSIWYG editors, etc. At the time building anything decent still took someone doing design and dev work, but I knew that they would get better over time, and figured I should make the change. So I asked him about this. I spoke about how yeah, the people behind Squarespace had the expertise - just like the artists using AI now - but every website built with it or similar is a job that formerly would have gone to the same sort of little guy he was talking about. How it's a consolidation of all the learnings and practices built out by that larger community, where the financial benefits are heavily consolidated. I told him it doesn't much matter to the end web designer whether or not the job got eliminated by non-AI automation and software or an LLM, the work is still gone and the career less and less viable. I've had similar conversations with artists before. They invariably maintain that it's different, somehow. I don't relish jobs disappearing, but it's nothing new. Someday, maybe enough careers will vanish that we'll need to figure out some sort of system that doesn't involve nearly every adult human working.

numpad0 9mo ago

> ... while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites ... And this is not complicated at all. It's the quality of output. Users appreciate vibecoded apps but developers are universally unfazed about vibecoded pull requests. Lots of same devs use AI for "menial" tasks and business emails. And this is NOT a double standard: people are clearly ok when generative AI outputs may exist but aren't exposed to unsuspecting human eyes, and it's not ok if they are exposed to human eyes, because the data AIs generate haven't exceeded the low-side threshold of some sort. Maybe SAN values. (also: IIUC, cults and ponzi scheme recruitment are endemic in tabletop game communities. so board game producers distancing from anything hot in those circles, even if it were slightly irrational to do so, also makes sense.)

jasonlotito 9mo ago

So, stuff generated from AI is copyrightable now?

heavyset_go 9mo ago

It's not "anti-AI" to acknowledge the fact that when your job is to create work for hire in order to build up your employer's IP portfolio, being paid to use AI to create work that isn't IP isn't doing your job. Your job is to create IP. As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted, so it is not anyone's IP, not yours, not your employer's. That's not "anti-AI", that's AI and copyright reality. Game Workshop runs their business on IP, suddenly creating work that anyone can copy, sell or reproduce because it isn't anyone's IP is antithetical to the purpose of a for-profit company.

rpdillon 9mo ago
> As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted I'm glad you mentioned this. It's true. But AI output as part of a larger pipeline of work to generate something is copyrightable. So I'm not sure how this is going to play out in a practical sense. I don't think we've tested this legally yet.
pkaye 9mo ago
If a person holds a camera and clicks a button, the output can be copyrighted. But if I write a few pages worth of prompts and click enter, it cannot be copyrighted?
- heavyset_go 9mo ago
  Copyright protects human creations. It's no different than spending years training a chimp to paint like Van Gogh, its output are not human creations and thus cannot be copyrighted, no matter how much effort you put into training that chimp.

rainsford 9mo ago

The idea of being anti-AI for art or game design vs pro-AI for software or websites is interesting because it presumably reflects the fact that those people value art and game design more than they do software or websites. Their view of AI is as a means to an end for stuff that's necessary but low value to them while preserving the human touch for stuff that matters more. This actually doesn't seem that unreasonable or inconsistent with how most people treat technology or similar conveniences. Many if not most people value a human component for things they think are important, even if it costs more or has other tradeoffs.

danielbln 9mo ago

> I don't do much with crypto/NFTs/AI, because I don't find any of it useful yet. Throwing AI in with crypto/NFTs from a pure utility perspective is an odd take.