AI! Is there a race against time?

I know AI has been brought up a few times for NPCs, but the current trajectory of AI and the acceleration of progress, it makes me wonder if releases (ones that are ~2 years out say) are in a race against time. The idea is that there will be a point that AI will be able to simulate and iterate virtually exponentially better than then your average game developer. When this holds true, more perfect worlds will be able to be created at a fraction of the development cost. I know this might sound like science fiction, but the train is arriving to the station faster than anyone has initially predicted. The picture is from NVIDIAs release of Blackwell, and it should help paint the picture.

Should ashes account for this? Is this nothing but a positive and there is nothing to worry about? Is Ashes planning to use AI? I would be worried to hear that AI isn’t being seriously looked at considering it appears that they have a long way to go.

Just a discussion to be had.

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Jam21

AI is already used in the process of making games, and i hope Interpid can use the latest developments in their pipeline to speed up AoC release.

However, actual usage of AI (like in forms of "intelligent" NPCs or whatever) is very very far. Why? Simple - because it will use too much computing power to keep them operating normally. Will be very expensive to run if ran from server-side, and don't even get me started for what it would be like if the LLMs used for in-game purposes would be client-side (and thus modifable by haxxors).

nanfoodle

Aszkalon wrote: »

Individuated Soul wrote: »

The idea is that there will be a point that AI will be able to simulate and iterate virtually exponentially better than then your average game developer.

Not wanting to underestimate A.I.,

but i doubt that v~EEERY much that artificial Intelligence could do a better Job at for Example designing a huge and epic World like the World of Verra - than the respective Developers of Ashes of Creation.

An A.I. can only guess by it's Programming what Human Video Gamers want in an MMO.

It can never "listen and implement" the Wishes of a Human Playerbase as good and well as a Human Developer. Sure an A.I. doesn't need to sleep, eat, etc. But there are some things only Humans can do.

It is the same Reason we can leave things like Hospital Care for ill People not to A.I. Some Jobs and Tasks can just not be taken out of Human Hands. Because nothing non-human can replace a Human Being for Jobs and Tasks where literal Humanity and Human-thinking is required.

AI can play millions of game hours on a game in a matter of a few days. You can let AI play a game like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and in a few months the AI will know every inch of the game and every outcome. Something no human could do in their life time. Then give that same AI Elden Ring and do the same thing. Now ask it to make a zelda like game with Elden Rings art style. Humans are still part of the creative side. But a few days, a week later you have that game. That's not where we are now but that's in the scope of how AI is going and the current direction. This is not fantasy.

Sathrago

Azherae wrote: »

If anything, Intrepid would have a massive head start because even a non-Generative AI still needs goal parameters and constraints.

Intrepid, by the time AI consistently reaches that point, would have those. They'd be hugely ahead of any competition because they'd be at the 'here are our problems and pain points, and our underlying structure, help us fix this' instead of 'hey how much PvP should a good game have, Silvia?'

We have seen examples of them being very smart with how they use their tools. Remember the showcase with how they built an in-editor generator/editor for their assets, letting them skip the blender process?

Neox365

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

Aszkalon

nanfoodle wrote: »

AI can play millions of game hours on a game in a matter of a few days. You can let AI play a game like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and in a few months the AI will know every inch of the game and every outcome. Something no human could do in their life time. Then give that same AI Elden Ring and do the same thing. Now ask it to make a zelda like game with Elden Rings art style. Humans are still part of the creative side. But a few days, a week later you have that game. That's not where we are now but that's in the scope of how AI is going and the current direction. This is not fantasy.

As amazing as this is - why should an A.I. be a better Game Developer, though ? 🤔

nanfoodle

Aszkalon wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

AI can play millions of game hours on a game in a matter of a few days. You can let AI play a game like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and in a few months the AI will know every inch of the game and every outcome. Something no human could do in their life time. Then give that same AI Elden Ring and do the same thing. Now ask it to make a zelda like game with Elden Rings art style. Humans are still part of the creative side. But a few days, a week later you have that game. That's not where we are now but that's in the scope of how AI is going and the current direction. This is not fantasy.

As amazing as this is - why should an A.I. be a better Game Developer, though ? 🤔

That's yet to be determined when it case to quality. Speed is the big reason developers are interested and needing less man power. My worry is games will feel just off enough that games will be in that uncanny valley. Like everything is just a lillte bit off.

RocketFarmer

I think AI is a tool to be used for a variety of uses.

The number one utility is time.

Can be used to reduce the time required to code as well as iteration.

Has the capability to simulate results for more options/choices in design optimization that could save time in that part of the design.

Has capability to help in the art and story departments. I still think human guidance is needed for the overall vision of the project. Could make these departments extremely more productive.

I think the ultimate goal of AI in role playing games is to simulate player actions and behaviors, therefore making the NPCs much more interactive. That can also be utilized to fill out lower population servers to avoid degrading player experience in that situation. Of course the primary limits will be the costs of the infrastructure to accommodate that much AI applicability. Current game AI is used in this fashion, but significantly less powerful that what folks are predicting or hoping for.

Also need to remember that the idea of something isn’t always realized in the end or in timeframes people anticipate. In the 80s and 90s VR was viewed as the future and dangerous in that people would be lost in that “reality”, however that prediction has only been partially true. You could say social media and smartphones have achieved that far more than VR.

Gaming is a time sink, but I don’t think AI changes that too much. The MMORPG market is kind of at a low point compared to the past. AI might be able to have the genre see a bounce-back, but I think the AI implementation will be a factor. A poor to cringeworthy AI implementation could cause many to not consume those games. So there’s the potential of a huge risk even if you can save on development costs. But I think it time it will get there, just when is anyone’s guess.

On the flip side, AI has the potential of affecting the gaming market with a flood of games. Like Kickstarter and Indy games did, but possibly on a wider scale. Could see some very polished games, but play like crap. May depend on the AI utilized to plan, develop and test said game, and what kind of human input is involve. Or in other words, thousands of self published games that you have to buy and play before you can tell whether they are crap or good.

Suppose AI would also be used for reviews and marketing, so current methods of seeing whether you should buy one may become diluted. That means the #1 currency between developers and consumers will be trust. It really has always been that, but I think AI will enhance its importance. There’s also legal questions regarding AI that we just don’t know at this time. If AI engages in fraud or outright harm, who does the victim seek recovery or compensation? Since those legal questions extend beyond the game, the laws in various regions will have an influence on what can or cannot be done with AI or whether a developer would even want that degree of liability. So the costs of developing a game may just move from your technical staff to your legal team. And I don’t think anyone would consider that progress.

CROW3

Hm… can AI write a game so complex that AI can never beat it?

That’s how you cheese Skynet. Maybe I’ll buy some more Nvidia shares before someone puts that on a product roadmap. 😆

Sathrago

Neox365 wrote: »

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

from what I hear its pretty good at doing a bunch of the busy work. If you know coding you just have to correct it from time to time. Just because its not perfectly doing everything for you doesnt make it useless.

Sunboy

I love the technology and use it everyday. It has flaws like every tool. Many will be ironed out with time. But it still a tool and a tool is only as good as the user.

Much love

Depraved

Sathrago wrote: »

Neox365 wrote: »

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

from what I hear its pretty good at doing a bunch of the busy work. If you know coding you just have to correct it from time to time. Just because its not perfectly doing everything for you doesnt make it useless.

we've had code generators for decades now and they are better than ai xddd
not saying ai wont be able to do it better in the future, sure its possible. ai is the future, but ai "has been being the future" since the 60s or earlier

Sathrago

Depraved wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

Neox365 wrote: »

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

from what I hear its pretty good at doing a bunch of the busy work. If you know coding you just have to correct it from time to time. Just because its not perfectly doing everything for you doesnt make it useless.

we've had code generators for decades now and they are better than ai xddd
not saying ai wont be able to do it better in the future, sure its possible. ai is the future, but ai "has been being the future" since the 60s or earlier

So to clarify, You have had programs that you can tell to "create C++ code for an interactive inventory where I can place items in it, and take them out." and it will just give you everything copy pasta like?

Just so we can sort this out, here's the answer chat gpt gave me. I have no clue about coding, so please tell me what its getting horribly wrong here.

https://chat.openai.com/share/2bbd0233-e3a0-4c5f-94cf-47e8a431d8ab

Azherae

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.12520

Aszkalon

nanfoodle wrote: »

That's yet to be determined when it case to quality. Speed is the big reason developers are interested and needing less man power.

Plus A.I.'s don't need to be paid a Salary - and need no sleeping or eating and so on.

As the Developer Team of Intrepid is working hard and long however to bring all the good Mechanics and Contents of Ashes to Life which many People loved already on the earlier ArcheAge,

i think they won't leave it to A.I. To many Chances that some Mistakes will be made and Players disappointed, won't there not ?

nanfoodle

Neox365 wrote: »

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

Then it starts coding itself. Now you worry.

Depraved

Sathrago wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

Neox365 wrote: »

AI can´t even write Proper C++ code

from what I hear its pretty good at doing a bunch of the busy work. If you know coding you just have to correct it from time to time. Just because its not perfectly doing everything for you doesnt make it useless.

we've had code generators for decades now and they are better than ai xddd
not saying ai wont be able to do it better in the future, sure its possible. ai is the future, but ai "has been being the future" since the 60s or earlier

So to clarify, You have had programs that you can tell to "create C++ code for an interactive inventory where I can place items in it, and take them out." and it will just give you everything copy pasta like?

Just so we can sort this out, here's the answer chat gpt gave me. I have no clue about coding, so please tell me what its getting horribly wrong here.

https://chat.openai.com/share/2bbd0233-e3a0-4c5f-94cf-47e8a431d8ab

yes. kind of

so an inventory is nothing more than an array (or a list). you can use other data structures if you want, such as a dictionary (check your big o notation), but I wont go there, ill keep it simple.

the same code that you would use to create a grocery list and add food to it, is the same code that you would write to create an inventory system, or a todo app, minus the variable names. i can use a code generator to create a list, a method to add items to it, and another one to remove items and I can use that generic code for an inventory system in a video game, a grocery list, a shopping cart, etc, etc. that's also code that has already been tested and optimized, so I don't need to do that again.

code made by ai needs to be tested. why? because ai doesn't give you the solution to what you want, it gives you what it thinks is the most probable solution. for example that code that you posted gave me a headache with all the if else's. i gave chatgpt the same prompt you did but told it to write the code using design patterns (check the design patterns book by gang of four) and it still gave me an if else and a for loop! i had to tell it to do it again and explicitly tell it to not use the if else's and for loops. without going into details, they are bad and made the code harder to read and test. to be fair, you could ask the ai to write the tests as well, or use TDD (test driven development) to create your programs, which is an improvement.

also, that code seems to have been made for a console program. it also put a big switch in the main function (ewww more smelly code) I'm an advocate of not putting code in the main function, only calling code. a lot of people do this too. switch cases are smelly as well, but its ok to use one for your main menu inside a while loop if you are writing a console program.

also, I haven't used c++ since 2014 or so so I don't remember all the nuances, but c++ requires manual memory management and garbage collection. chances are, there's something fked up in the code chat gpt wrote, but it doesn't know because it learns form good code and bad code. you also need to tell it the exact prompts. a non programmer wouldn't know how unsafe and difficult c++ is, then builds an app using chat gpt. 1 week later the app crashes and he cant fix the issue. he doesn't know whats going on. app is dead. ai is probably better now with languages that have automatic garbage collection, maybe minus javascript since you would still need to know about certain things, such as object freeze.

other nuances include using functional programming. for example, most languages have a way of removing elements from an array or a list (in the example you posted, chatgpt used vector.erase(), you also have vector.popback()) in javascript, you can use array.pop(), you can also use array.splice(). ai code generators would most likely use these methods, but you shouldn't. using filter() is safer since it creates a copy of the array minus the element(or item) you want to remove. use the equivalent for other languages.

ai doesn't know this because it doesn't know coding. you would have to include these things in the prompt. also, ai isn't considering how extensible and maintenable the code is, or if you need to modify it or add / remove things later. maybe only if you tell it so. writing a program isn't an issue. maintaining it is.
prompt would probably be so complex that it would be faster to just write the damn thing yourself.

if you don't know the pitfalls to avoid from the specific languages the ai is using, you wont be able to tell that to the ai generator. a regular code generator made by a human already took that into consideration.

we mostly use code generators for boilerplate stuff though, although I've heard google is a decade or 2 ahead of everyone else in code generators, from someone who used to work there. the rest of us who don't have access to that technology just use the cli to generate certain stuff.

also, compilers, transpilers and interpreters are code generators, they have existed since the 50s. we don't write in assembly directly anymore. every time you see int age = 20; or print("hello world") that code is evaluated and the equivalent assembly code is generated automatically for you and then made into machine language. no ai needed (but probably not the answer you were looking for since you asked about the inventory).

to put it in perspective, before the 50s programming was a job of 2. you had one programmer write the code in a paper, then another one translated the code into computer language. then we got fortran and lisp. now programming was a 1 man's job. but guess what? people didn't lose their jobs. we got more programmers even though we needed less people to do the same job, and we still need more.

i have messed around before with chat gpt, and it writes really dirty code. I'm not saying things cant improve, but we arent there yet. its definitely a helpful tool in the toolkit, but not a replacement for humans yet.

edit: you also have libraries and frameworks made by other people. you could simply download an inventory library or asset, then slap it into your project and it will be far far better than asking ai to code it for you.

Depraved

Aszkalon wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

That's yet to be determined when it case to quality. Speed is the big reason developers are interested and needing less man power.

Plus A.I.'s don't need to be paid a Salary - and need no sleeping or eating and so on.

As the Developer Team of Intrepid is working hard and long however to bring all the good Mechanics and Contents of Ashes to Life which many People loved already on the earlier ArcheAge,

i think they won't leave it to A.I. To many Chances that some Mistakes will be made and Players disappointed, won't there not ?

but you need to pay someone who writes the prompts and know what pitfalls to avoid

Depraved

another thing i forgot to mention, you need to consider what kind of app you are building and for what?

if you are making a webapp, nothing beats using observables and functional reactive programming for asynchronous code and HTTP requests. but if you are building a microcontroller for an operating system, then you want to use a more imperative or procedural style because of certain limitations. and finally, if you are making a video game, you would want to use a more object oriented approach. you don't want to use a functional style here, since all that boxing and unboxing of thousands and thousands of functions on your update function every frame will make your player's computers crash. these are things to consider that ai doesn't know. prompts would be too complex.

also, more time is spent reading code than writing code anyways, just throwing that out there ;3

sorry for the triple post T_T

Aszkalon

Depraved wrote: »

but you need to pay someone who writes the prompts and know what pitfalls to avoid

The One who scripted the A.I., of Course.

But the A.I. itself ? When it makes the Job of +20 to +30 People or even more at once ? Why would pay something that has no free Will and will make whatever you order it to, Twenty-four-Seven every Day of the Year ?

Depraved

Aszkalon wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

but you need to pay someone who writes the prompts and know what pitfalls to avoid

The One who scripted the A.I., of Course.

But the A.I. itself ? When it makes the Job of +20 to +30 People or even more at once ? Why would pay something that has no free Will and will make whatever you order it to, Twenty-four-Seven every Day of the Year ?

the one who scripted the ai.... so basically If I make an ai that can code (and you actually mean a team of devs) they have to travel all over the world every time someone wants to use it?xD

also, ai programmers arent video game programmers, or web devs, or phone devs, etc. you would basically need to spend thenext 20 - 30 years learning about all the stuff you need to avoid in ever single domain in programming so that you can then start giving prompts?

or

become a programmer, get good in one area, and give the prompt...or just build the damn thing yourself

things might change in the future, but not anytime soon. again, been like that since the 50s xD

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