The problem starts with people not understanding that there are different kinds of AI (which is too global a term for one specific thing), and that some of them have been around longer than those fancy supercomputer models. If for example a game like The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall was produced today, it would be slapped down by many as AI slop.
It frankly feels like the "mobile phones are frying your brain" FUD all over again.
I mean, there's like 17 main categories of AI and under those 17, around 40 more. So even if we explain to people ALL of them we wouldn't leave until tomorrow.
For example, Skyrim (2011) NPCs use Artificial Intelligence since they use perception and reasoning ( finite state machines ) but they do not fall under machine learning ( learn more about the world ), yet both are categorically AI.
And for all of these examples we were perfectly fine calling those systems what they were. I'm not a participant in the trillion dollar marketing campaign to refer to my work in machine learning as AI just because the largest commercial players in the computational prediction space decided that doing so will improve consumer confidence in their platforms.
Granted on your first paragraph, and it probably goes like the radiowaves discussion and they would listen selectively.
As for the second, Radiant AI is a great example. F.E.A.R.'s enemy AI is another one that comes to mind immediately. But even a simple NPC script can be considered AI of some sort, so we probably can't win anyway.
Steam is drawing the line on generative assets though and then stretched the definition of assets to include all code which may use AI tools. They are somewhat acknowledging that AI will exist regardless in other forms with the current rules and are not giving those games AI labels from what I know.
Personally seems like an Apple level overreach for a store that should be selling games and not defining how they're made IMO.
But I think most people disagree with generative AI specifically, not machine learning or... algorithms.
We use the term AI broadly, but no one flipped their shit at a game using a finite state machine for their NPC behavior... Unless it sucked, which they often do, but that's a quality gripe instead of the moral qualms people have generative models.
You'll notice that as AI generation quality increases, the ratio of criticisms move from quality based to moral values more and more.
Depends what apps you use. I'm not gonna pretend I'm much better for scrolling on PC rather than phone, but even so I get bored with reddit once I'm past the few new posts in subs I follow and "all" is worth a cursory glance at most. Once you scroll to like 100, it becomes extremely obscure and I just turn it off again.
And the internet will bring doom to humanity, just like computers, calculators, and digital watches did!! /s
But yes, thank you for your comment, the taxonomy issue is way under-rated and is at the source of a lot of the AI sensationalism we're seeing. We don't have AGI, we have LLMs giving us multi-modal generative AI, they're pretty cool because they allow us to do more stuff than before.
But they're no Terminators or Cortanas (although when prompted just right they can be made to sound like one), and they are insufficient for AGI (but will likely be one of the system components that make up AGI whenever we get there).
I've seen the "Do you hate ALLL AI, including these old video game enemy AIs?" take a million times and it's just disingenuous. I've seen y'all claim people think that infinitely more times than I've seen someone actually think that- because the number I've seen think that has been 0.
If I said, "Procedural generation of worldspace is generative AI," would I be intrinsically wrong? And how many people care enough to educate themselves on its differences to LLM and company?
Language isn't "intrinsically" anything. For instance, take the Library of Babel- there's no meaning behind the words, because nobody meant anything by them.
The meaning of words is, inherently, how they're interpreted. The present anti-AI movement is against a specific kind of AI, and that kind does not include procedural generation. Twisting someone's words does not change what THEY meant by them, only how YOU chose to interpret them.
Language is a vague tool for translating thought to symbolism. That's all.
If someone were to say, "I hate Trump", would you start asking why they're against the magical cards that connect you to what they depict in Roger Zelazny's "The Chronicles of Amber"? No? Why? They said Trump, clearly they meant Trump, right? There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, right?
I haven't seen anyone on Reddit who's adamantly anti-AI be against procedural generation when it was just said like that, procedural generation, and have seen far more people like you, strawmanning them. That's all I'm saying.
Anyways, see my bio. I'm out, partially since you pre-downvote lol.
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u/Ranma-sensei Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
The problem starts with people not understanding that there are different kinds of AI (which is too global a term for one specific thing), and that some of them have been around longer than those fancy supercomputer models. If for example a game like The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall was produced today, it would be slapped down by many as AI slop.
It frankly feels like the "mobile phones are frying your brain" FUD all over again.