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Why we don’t use AI

yarnspinner.dev

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#41

> This comment pops up a few times, often from programmers. Unfortunately, because of how messy the term AI now is, the same concerns still apply. Your adoption helps promote the companies making these tools. People see you using it and force it onto others at the studio, or at other workplaces entirely. From what we’ve seen, this is followed by people getting fired and overworked. If it isn’t happening to you and yo…

Strongly agree. It's like saying using a knife to prepare dinner is immoral because some people stab other people. I'm highly skeptical of AI, but that particular argument makes the whole article fall pretty flat to me.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#42

I struggle with the "good guys vs bad guys" framing here. Is a small indie dev "dodgy" if they use AI to unblock a tricky C# problem so they can actually finish their game? Yarn Spinner seems to conflate "Enterprise Scale Replacement" (firing 500 support staff) with "assistive tooling" (a solo dev using GenAI for texture variants). By drawing such a hard line, they might be signaling virtue to their base, but they ar…

I think most people don't have an issue with the models themselves, just the big service providers who are up to some very shady and possibly illegal stuff.

Personally I'd rather a future where everyone used local models.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#43
post #10

One could probably think of dozens of reasonable arguments for avoiding LLM use, but this one is awful. If LLMs actually are able to get more work done with fewer people aka "firing people" that would be wonderful for humankind. If you disagree and like getting less work done with more people, you are welcome to forego tractors, dishwashers, the steam engine, and all the rest.

Does this argument still work if LLMs end up increasing unemployment and making it a lot harder for graduates to find good jobs? Who is it good for in that case, the shareholders? It's nice if humans can always create more jobs, but that's not what the tech bros are promising investors. They're making claims about how AI is going to seriously reduce the need for human labor. Programming, writing and art are just the starting ground for what's coming, if their predictions are anywhere close to being correct.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#44

> AI is now a tool for firing people In essence we have an ownership problem. If I own the AI, I can do my work in couple of hours and then some and then have rest of the day off to enjoy things I like. If the company owns AI - I'm out of work. The difference between a world of plenty and beauty vs the world of misery for many of us - is who owns the AI.

> then have rest of the day off to enjoy things I like

But that's not what companies expect from you, even if you owns AI. They expect you to output more, and when you do, someone else is probably out of work.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#47
post #29

It's like saying we won't use compilers because it puts all the people who would manually create punch cards out of a job

There is a difference here, though. Compilers and the languages they enable aren't out-and-out ripping off previous creations. Lots of folks are mad about how the power of these tools comes from training things they put out in the open but didn't intend to be used to enrich or exclude others like this technology is enabling. Interesting times ahead... it's so powerful people who ignore it are going to get left behind…

You can apply this same logic to books and all learning and every piece of media and code you ever absorb. It's not theft to observe and incorporate public data. If it is.. lol.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#49

I struggle with the "good guys vs bad guys" framing here. Is a small indie dev "dodgy" if they use AI to unblock a tricky C# problem so they can actually finish their game? Yarn Spinner seems to conflate "Enterprise Scale Replacement" (firing 500 support staff) with "assistive tooling" (a solo dev using GenAI for texture variants). By drawing such a hard line, they might be signaling virtue to their base, but they ar…

I think the only people they're calling "dodgy" are the ones offering these AI tools, and not the people using them.

Here is some text from the post

> You need to realise that if you use them, you’re both financially and socially supporting dodgy companies doing dodgy things. They will use your support to push their agenda. If these tools are working for you, we’re genuinely pleased. But please also stop using them.

> Your adoption helps promote the companies making these tools. People see you using it and force it onto others at the studio, or at other workplaces entirely. From what we’ve seen, this is followed by people getting fired and overworked. If it isn’t happening to you and your colleagues, great. But you’re still helping it happen elsewhere. And as we said, even if you fixed the labour concerns tomorrow, there are still many other issues. There’s more than just being fired to worry about.

Re: Why we don’t use AI

#50

I struggle with the "good guys vs bad guys" framing here. Is a small indie dev "dodgy" if they use AI to unblock a tricky C# problem so they can actually finish their game? Yarn Spinner seems to conflate "Enterprise Scale Replacement" (firing 500 support staff) with "assistive tooling" (a solo dev using GenAI for texture variants). By drawing such a hard line, they might be signaling virtue to their base, but they ar…

> I struggle with the "good guys vs bad guys" framing here. It's because generative AI has become part of the "culture wars" and is therefore black and white to lots of people.

Seeing a lot of this, that any use of LLMs is immediately condemned.

I think it's self-defeating, but virtue signallers gonna virtue signal.

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