AI IN COMPUTER GAMES AND GAME DEVELOPMENT

James R. Parker

From the book "Ascenti: Humans Opening to AI"
A Commentary
"A commentary here must, I feel, come with value judgements. The question is: “When a robot takes a job from a person, what should that person do now”? In my view, the use of robots for human work is fine, but humans should not have to suffer on that account. This is not a situation where, for example, the job has become obsolete because the product is no longer needed (eg. buggy-whip makers) or due to the resources no longer being there (eg. fishing). The replacement of humans by robots­­—AI—is purely a matter of convenience and cost savings on the part of a small group, at the expense of the creative human workers.
This is unacceptable. And yet some companies insist they will aggressively push ahead with using AI.
What are the options? Well, we could forbid AI from doing human jobs, but that seems impractical. We could expand copyright laws so that the training of the AI involved payment to those who created the training data. That’s going on now, and is a beginning.
I suggest that AI use be allowed at a price, and part of that price would be paid to the humans who were no longer able to do those jobs due to the use of AI. Call it a levy or a tax, it would in my opinion be more like the old concept of profit sharing. This will not be voluntary, and would have to be attached to the AI tools or the products they generate."

About James R. Parker
minkhollow.ca
James R. Parker studied mathematics and computer science before ending up as a Professor of Art at the University of Calgary. His expertise ranges from computer simulation, image processing, artificial intelligence, game design, and generative art. He is the author of Generative Art: Algorithms as Artistic Tool, An Artist’s Guide to Programming: A Graphical Introduction and other books in games, programming and generative art.

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