AI: Scary or Useful?
- enchanted-lore
- Feb 8, 2025
- 5 min read
Hello again fellow creatives and adventurers! By now you should know that I’m not shy about dipping my toes in the treacherous swamp scum of Topics-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, and this week’s will be particularly scummy.
What creature of the swamp will I be talking about? Well, if you read the article title, you know that it is none other than the mechanical creature known as AI!
It is here to stay.
At this point it’s probably not a surprise to anyone, but AI is here to stay. Governments and private companies are investing billions of dollars into the development of the programs as well as the infrastructure to support the programs. More and more companies are also making use of the various types of AI to optimize their services and improve the efficiency of their systems. Even scientists and doctors are making use of it!
But what about the concerns about AI?
These concerns are valid! Like many creatures being studied and tamed, there are a few hurdles that need to be addressed.
In the case of AI, trust issues are a huge concern. Because this program cannot reason there are several factors that contribute to the lack of trust in AI to the overall public.
AI hallucinations – the strange and odd results the program will put out that makes no logical sense to the prompt or question being asked.
GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) – AI doesn’t understand satire and considers all information it consumes as “facts” regardless of if the information is true or not.
Bias and disinformation – who is controlling the program and what their intentions are vastly impact the information that AI puts out.
It’s encouraging to know that companies are working on these issues, but they still have the burden to prove to the public that there is and will continue to be improvement.
Another huge concern is in the area of copyright issues, specifically when it comes to training of the AI. Artists, authors, and other creatives are rightfully upset at their work being scraped into the AI machine so that it can produce works copied from them without their consent or compensation. Copyright protection is supposed to prevent this kind of harm and plagiarism, but there is still no clear cut solution established to protect the interests of those getting their works scraped and gobbled up.
Some countries are in the process of developing systems where artists can willingly train the AI for compensation and this would greatly help with the quality of the information/images produced by the AI. Others are seeking to ensure there are ways for creatives to opt out of having their work scraped.
The U.S. Copyright office’s current stance is that you cannot copyright something produced by AI unless it has gone through significant editing/improving. But there isn’t really anything that currently addresses the scraping and information eating process that AI requires to operate.
Some artists are using programs that are designed to “poison” the data set being scraped in an attempt to sabotage the programs and protect their own works, but it is still a battle being fought with no clear end in sight. Other creatives are utilizing AI to improve the speed of their workflow at the cost of some creative control.
Another major concern with AI is that there are people losing their jobs and being replaced with AI programs. This obviously taps into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – this is causing people to be concerned with their most basic needs so they are less understanding and patient with the development and integration of AI into society because they aren’t seeing an overall vision of how this will be helping, and not hurting, themselves and others. It will be up to societal leaders of all sectors to create and show the general population how AI can best be used for the betterment of society while also bringing solutions to the replacement of jobs.
writing) recently done in the UK highlights another issue with the use of AI which was the loss of critical thinking and creativity. In a test with a sample size of 300 persons, they found that individuals that received AI prompts for their writing were individually much more novel and useful (having high enough quality to be published), but the group of writers that used the AI prompts were more homogenous.
“In other words, the chatbot made each individual more creative, but it made the group that had AI help less creative.”
Finally, there are serious environmental concerns with the use of AI, specifically when it comes the amount of energy needed for the programs to be used and the amount of water required to cool down the heat produced by the data centers. This will be an important thing to address with the future iterations of AI, and we do have an example of China’s Deepseek AI running on older, less powerful GPUs. Hopefully, this will inspire others to make their machines more efficient in energy consumption!
Now that we’ve got a clearer picture of AI, how exactly can or should it be used in the RP community?
At it’s most basic level, AI is just a tool. Just like a hammer is a tool! Now, you wouldn’t use a hammer to solve every problem, because it’s not the right tool for every issue. It’s the same with AI. It can be a helpful tool, especially for non-commercial and personal use.
Particularly for RPing, here are a few specific ways that you can use AI in a helpful
manner.
If you have writer’s block, AI can help you with -
mission ideas
scene descriptions
provide specific phrases and examples of thought patterns to help flesh out a character
It can be a better option for looking up
It can help with looking up sources and information.
No ads!
The search results are often better than what the mainstream search engines are offering.
It can also help you in the expression of your creativity.
You can create custom images for your campaign characters or monsters without having to commission the work (faster turnaround and less expensive).
You can play with a wider range of creative expression around your campaign, such as the players who used SUNO to create a fun song about their campaign.
If you and your group decide that using AI would be beneficial for your campaign, then go for it! Don’t let trolls and other internet beasties bully you or make you feel badly for something you are using for non-commercial use. Just have fun!
Thank you for checking in for another week of information! Check out our video on
youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtMZSZ73yU) for a bit fuller discussion of
the topic, and feel free to share your thoughts with us! Are you pro- or anti-AI? Jump on
to our Discord channel (https://discord.com/invite/g2NBTssuMh) to further the discussion!
Until next time!
Credit: Meraki Forest
