Hi, i would like to ask creators who are unwilling to use neural networks for visuals or writing how you feel about using GPTs to write some code used in the process – e.g. a webpage or some random generator.
Do you use them? Do you declare them as “using AI in your work”? Do you think they are ok?
Personally, with writing and illustrations, i do not use “AI” – for multiple reasons, but the main one might be that i like creating the stuff and it’s the last thing i want to outsource to some corpo. With stuff i can’t do myself (i.e. illustrations), i am having fun with inviting other people to collaborate. But i just can’t seem to find any coder that would not use those tools. We’ve been discussing it in our team with some people enjoying using these tools while others not sure how can we honestly draw the line between writing modules and writing code.
I would like to read your thoughts. I don’t need advice on what to do – we will work it out – however i am curious what other creators think.
A poster on a reddit ttrpg forum got massacred just the other day for complaining being called out for using AI while admitting they used spellchecking, which other users jumped on them for. I was gobsmacked that spellcheckers now call on AI engines and wouldn’t have thought that even spellchecking can be sus (I quit using spellcheckers in the 90s because their dictionaries weren’t large enough to recognize words I used).
I stumbled across an image that illustrates different types of AI that clues me in on changes of that sort. I’m appalled that anybody who thinks of themself as being a programmer/coder would rely on AI to do any of the coding – that’s the fun part of the work! (Ages ago, I loved to program and even had a subscription to Dr Dobbs’, despite not chasing a degree in it.) I also saw reference to a system that rates AI usage by levels, from 0 to 6, I think.
It might be useful to find that sort of reference and use it to discuss what sorts of AI usage each of you is comfortable using and then simply stating that up front. There are folks who aren’t bothered by AI use in some degree or another and others don’t want the stink of it on anything.
I’m on the human-only side of things. I’m not interested in machines doing tasks that humans should be doing when they claim to be making something. Using the machine to do creative work is akin to calling Domino’s to deliver pizza and then claiming you made the pizza (“I wrote the prompts!” Well, I can order pizza, too, and I’m not stupid enough to claim to have made it.)
As a software developer, I have tended towards avoiding LLMs for writing code. I’ve found they more often create false promises of things working. Further, for things such as hobby projects, I just don’t want to use them. I want the experience of exploring a beloved problem space (e.g. tools for games).
i do web development and absolutely do not touch genAI. i like writing code! it’s a skill that deserves respect and people “vibe coding” their websites feels as smarmy to me as people generating their art or writing!
it’s this thing i see with genAI where people are opposed to it specifically for the medium(s) in which they work. a writer would never consult chatGPT for their writing but will create the cover image with midjourney. an illustrator thinks that’s appalling but is fine with creating genAI music. people “vibe code” their websites, layouts, and so on and so forth because they don’t think the actual skill is worth any value, consciously or otherwise.
companies are slapping “AI” on basically anything they can get away with even when it’s not genAI/LLMs, which does make some things difficult—ex. not all spellcheck is genAI, but my god do companies like to say it is; procedural generation in video games is a whole separate thing but it can be easy to get it confused if you aren’t familiar with the medium. i tend to avoid anything that uses the label, but try to do my due diligence before getting publicly mad about it when it isn’t obvious genAI.
I am currently working on a google sheets logic engine as a quick combat resolution machine for my own system. I’m doing it all myself and a whole lot of the work is having it reject nonsense inputs. I am hoping I can embed the top sheet to my website.
I would prefer to have it independent of google but I have no other programming skills. I have been wondering if I could convert my completed logic engine into some kind of web widget. When I have spoken about this with others they have suggested that AI could do it. But I am very sceptical, I’ve not used any AI so far and I don’t want to invite criticism.
Quite apart from all the ethical / philosophical objections to using AI, if you use a coding LLM to convert a program in that way, you’ll need to check it has produced something error free. This will require you to either be able to comprehend its output (at which point you may as well just learn to write a web app) or you’ll have to exhaustively test inputs and outputs to make sure everything still works.
I am a coder and wish I could offer to help (with this and other RPG projects) but my health is not good enough at the moment.
As a developer I know that there are boring parts and I won’t pretend everything is a beautiful math challenge. But that’s why boilerplate templates and copy-paste tools exist, and I trust those more than LLM output. I can read them and understand if there’s some bug or weird condition that applies to me. There’s a way that LLM code reads that makes it unnecessarily complicated, just like with their English, you can see there’s too much text for too little meaning. I dislike them for that, projects are already set up to balloon into enormous codebases even with just humans writing, if we turn on the text-spewing machine then it’s directly unmanageable for humans.