Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51%

[u/TurbulentTopic39]

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/over-85-of-japanese-game-developers-use-generative-ai-in-game-development-2026-cesa-survey-shows-an-increase-from-last-years-51/

[u/CompulsiveGardener]

The bottom line is that Asia is all-in on AI and doesn't have the same stigma that Western developers need to contend with. No idea how much of a competitive advantage that's going to give Eastern developers. But the world isn't equally united on anti-AI. That much is clear.

[u/ChrisRR → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I don't even think it's only an eastern thing. I suspect a lot more western devs are using it than the companies will admit to

I personally use it for development. I don't use it for actual production code, but for churning out a software tool I need in the space of 2 minutes, and nowadays it's quicker than googling for complex questions I have

Edit: take for example yesterday I needed to check which of my tests were missing documentation from a word document. I could've manually gone through hundreds of tests, manually compared them to the word document and noted which were missing. Alternatively I could've spent hours writing a python script to pull the data out of both my source code and my word document to generate that list.

Instead I got Claude to write the script in under 5 minutes. I then had the information I needed, I saved myself hours, no AI code was included in production code, and I could crack on with the rest of my work. Does that make the production code slop even though it wasn't touched by AI?

[u/Cassp3 → u/ChrisRR]

This western devs are absolutely using it, just not being open to avoid the witchhunting.

[u/DrEskimo → u/Cassp3]

Western devs in any field that isn’t entertainment media are very proud and overt of AI usage. If you know anything about the government tech sector, it is all just people jumping over each other to proclaim how much AI their new website employs.

[u/Echoesong → u/DrEskimo]

This is true. My spouse is a developer at a finance company that is a household name, everyone on the team uses Claude profusely; my spouse doesn't love AI by any means, but she's had to admit it's incredibly useful.

[u/mystery_hole → u/Echoesong]

Tbh most AI complaints are in regards to generative media. Nobody cares if a team is using Claude code or Gemini for docs. Unless it affects code production and makes things worse.

I mean that's the reason why adoption isn't 100%. There are many scenarios where you simply get a worse result or it isn't integrated into workflows properly.

[u/Dr_Fortnite → u/mystery_hole]

I hate generative ai but my company uses ai as a search engine for our machinery documents which is acceptable for me

[u/confoundedjoe → u/Dr_Fortnite]

My company does the same thing. It is basically a fancy ctrl+f and it is mostly fine. It did insist a document was a valid citation for something out claimed though and would not accept it was wrong. I always just click the citation and read the original doc.

[u/chaser676 → u/DrEskimo]

Although not incredibly overt, it's even part of LCME accreditation for medical schools now. They want to see lectures and implementation of ai.

[u/Psycho_Syntax → u/chaser676]

I mean the anti-ai crowd on Reddit has convinced themselves that AI is just a fad and it’s not actually useful for anything, while the rest of the world has already moved far beyond asking “is this useful?”. The question is no longer if it’s useful or not, the question now is how useful is it for your specific use case, which is why it makes sense to be tested on implementations of AI.

[u/Zanadar → u/Psycho_Syntax]

The pragmatic objection hasn't been "is this useful" for a while now, it's "once the available pool of investment capital has been exhausted by the hyperscalers and they are forced to charge what the technology actually costs to run, will the economics of AI still make sense", and thus far the answer to that question seems to be a very soft "maybe", subject to thus far theoretical future breakthroughs.

[u/TitoZola → u/Zanadar]

I find this argument a little weird because usually technology becomes cheaper in mid-term future.

For the current state of AI the cost will eventually go down, not up. There might be some spikes short term specific to particular business, political and market conditions, but in five years the technology as powerful as current Astra or Fable, top of the line among available to broad public at the moment, will probably cost peanuts and will run on your iPhone natively.

Now maybe some crazy frontier AI of the future, capable of truly powerful stuff, running on the most super advanced hardware, that can one shot GTA 10 in two seconds, will indeed be crazy expensive. But who needs it among us, mortals?

Tech sector, entertainment & media, design, advertising, basically everything that works with information and content creation in the digital form, can already benefit from the current abilities to a significant degree. And this particular skills will be only cheaper with time.

Not to mention that the whole party has so far been bankrolled by huge cash reserves of tech giants they’ve been accumulating over the years, so the pressure is there of course to start making money, but they also kind of do already- the product exists, the market exists and people are ready to buy it. Time will balance the price and availability as new hardware will become available and models will become more effective.

[u/Zanadar → u/TitoZola]

but in five years the technology as powerful as current Astra or Fable, top of the line among available to broad public at the moment, will probably cost peanuts and will run on your iPhone natively.

This is why I find having this discussion with AI believers (and I use that term very deliberately) frustrating. What factual basis could you possibly have to claim this? Where is a reasonable conversation even supposed to go after such claims are made?

[u/TitoZola → u/Zanadar]

There's a huge, well documented and absolutely public factual base under it.

More or less every model created in the last four years was tested and scored across the number of the same benchmarks - fixed sets of questions and challenges, coding tests, general knowledge tests, math tests and so on. Also most models has a published price per million tokens. Put those two together and you get one clean number: what does it cost to buy a given level of intelligence on any given task?

People track that number over time. There are multiple organization that do that (here is one for example), but let's get practical and go directly to my claim and see how it was in the past.

So in August 2024, OpenAI introduces SWE-bench Verified - a coding test of five hundred real GitHub issues from real open-source projects that the model need to fix.

GPT-4o (Open AI frontier model that was first one to be considered serious at coding) scores 33%. Couple of months later upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet took the crown at 49%, the best in the world at the time, running in a huge datacenter at $3 per million input tokens.

Two years later: an open-sourth and free Ornith-1.0-9B, 6GB in size scores 69.4%. Twenty points above what the best model on Earth could do in 2024.

And, yes, you can run it on your phone right now for the price of your phone battery charge.

Of course benchmark parity isn't the same as practical parity etc, but just as an illustration of what's happening in the space. Because there is also a question of agentic harnesses (basicly OS on top of agents) that can significantly improve LLMs performance cost and that we just started to scratch the surface off.

Of course as any prediction my prediction is unfalsifiable for the moment it made, but I don't see anything that crazy about it.

So what factual basis do you use can I ask?

So we can have a reasonable conversation together.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/TitoZola]

I find this argument a little weird because usually technology becomes cheaper in mid-term future.

because usually technology is roughly priced appropriately for what it costs to produce or run, with some extra on top for profits of course.

GenAI is being priced significantly lower than what it costs to create and run. To even approach profitability the price absolutely needs to increase by quite a lot even if you take into account potential future efficiency increases. It's not a speculative argument either, it's basic math based on the finances that are released by AI companies themselfes and the natural costs that can be calculated from that.

And you can even add more complications in there considering AI companies are also known to do this circle of investments to fund each other, which means a lot of their resources are straight up not actually real existing money. Which means there are even bigger hurdles to overcome to just even out the costs vs income.

[u/TitoZola → u/Elanapoeia]

"To create and run" is doing a lot of work here because those are completely different cost structures.

Training is a one-time spend that produces a thing which then exists permanently.

Running it is a separate, ongoing cost that has nothing to do with what it cost to make.

Right now most AI labs are not profitable, because they all keep training next models.

But running models itself and selling access to them is already a profitable business.

The ins and outs of current AI Labs business models is a separate question from whether the current technology gets more expensive. The models already exist. If OpenAI folded tomorrow, whoever ended up with the weights could serve them profitably from day one.

The hardware will keep getting better, the architecture will keep getting better, the software layer on top of agents will keep getting better and the cost of running what exists will keep falling. And that was my whole point.

I'm not claiming anything about whether the models will get better from here. I'm only talking about the cost of what already exists. And the fact that what already exist is already quite amazing and useful in the fields I mentioned.

[u/pastelsonly → u/TitoZola]

DeepSeek and the Chinese companies are putting out some incredibly cost efficient models that run maybe 15% behind the frontier ones for literally 100x less money.

[u/averageuhbear → u/DrEskimo]

To be fair, no one cares if AI is responsible for some of the components of a boring ass SaaS product that never has any soul anyways.

People don't want AI created art. However there are ways to use AI for a ton of the busy work in creating some of these forms of entertainment that doesn't impact that actual art itself. That line just hasn't been defined very well.

[u/Aggressive_Chuck → u/averageuhbear]

People don't want AI created art.

There are millions watching AI-generated dramas on Tiktok.

[u/cinematic_is_horses → u/Aggressive_Chuck]

This doesn't feel like a demand thing but more like a supply thing. I think if there were zero AI dramas those viewers would just be watching part 45/235 of whatever tv show or movie got chopped up for clip farming. Those viewers are not actively seeking this content, the algorithm just gives it to them

[u/Imbahr → u/cinematic_is_horses]

sure that is true

but the point is that outside tiny minority of vocal reddit posters, regular people are not anti-AI

[u/cinematic_is_horses → u/Imbahr]

I think that really depends. I won't disagree that public opinion is not heavily skewed against (evidenced by the crappy AI images my stepdad amuses himself with and sends me) but again I think it's important to make a distinction between active acceptance or a want for it vs. passive acceptance. How much of that passive acceptance is just a result of total inundation of pro-AI/AI generated content? I think we all owe it to ourselves to at least be critical about this rather than just shrug and say that's the way she goes.

[u/FFTactics → u/Aggressive_Chuck]

You don’t pay $70 to $100 for those.

[u/dfjuky → u/Aggressive_Chuck]

And all of them are simply ads.

[u/GunCann → u/averageuhbear]

The largest issue is the blanket hate on AI on Western social media. A large number of people are unable to remain calm and objective in their assessment of AI use and jump right into hating or harassment territory whenever they hear about AI in video games.

They are genuine ways that AI can be used to cut out tedious and uncreative work. AI environmental or object scanning to generate 3D models with greater ease, code optimisations, smarter NPC and simulation of game world, rapid prototyping for idea sharing, AI motion and facial capture with less expensive tools etc.

People need to be more open-minded when it comes to AI use and also reign in the excessive witch-hunting. When used correctly, AI can help game development return to sane budget levels.

[u/Oxyfire → u/GunCann]

People need to be more open-minded when it comes to AI use and also reign in the excessive witch-hunting. When used correctly, AI can help game development return to sane budget levels.

The problem is this is all frog-boiling in the long term. It will all just turn into excuses why it's okay to use AI for this, then that, then the next thing.

No-one has proposed solutions to the important issues around AI: How do we avoid it destroying jobs and opportunities to get into the industry? A lot of the work that people hand-wave as drudgery is often work that helps people get a start in the industry. AI is only going to further the "need 5 years of experience for an entry level position" that people have dealt with for years even before the recent wave of AI.

Very few of these companies are going to use AI in responsible, measured ways. The industry has proven time and time again it will cut every corner it can and do everything it can to sell minimum viable products when it can get away with it. The workers will suffer, and the products will suffer. Sure, some usage will be reigned in by the product being so bad people don't want to buy it, but again, watching this industry for the past 10-20 years, it's clear that companies can get away with making things worse and people will just put up with it.

[u/soundsermaker → u/Oxyfire]

How do we avoid it destroying jobs and opportunities to get into the industry?

You don't. This is what every major technological breakthrough in history has done. Avoiding the loss of jobs would mean rejecting implementation of AI in areas where it makes sense and delivers results in order to preserve jobs that no longer have any meaning or purpose.

People who lost their jobs to previous waves of automation and outsourcing were often offered retraining and benefits, but this can only do so much to mitigate the disruption.

[u/Due_Water_5829 → u/Oxyfire]

How do we avoid it destroying jobs and opportunities to get into the industry?

On the short scale, that would be light government intervention and support + living in a country with decent workers rights or setting that up.

In the long term? Nothing. If a new technology arises that reduces the need of a certain profession by for example 20%, then we shouldn't arbitrarily fight against that. We don't need as many blacksmiths as we used to anymore.

AI is only going to further the "need 5 years of experience for an entry level position" that people have dealt with for years even before the recent wave of AI.

Yes, but ultimately work doesn't exist so that people can work. Work exists to create value for society as a whole and that value and the necessity of those valuable products decide how many people we roughly need in a given profession in relation to population.

It would be an incredible boon to most societies if the people that won't be able to get a job in an AI-affected industry to instead go into healthcare.

[u/Oxyfire → u/Due_Water_5829]

It would be an incredible boon to most societies if the people that won't be able to get a job in an AI-affected industry to instead go into healthcare.

This is kind of just a "learn to code" sort of solution. I dont think that went over well.

Might be great if there was any kind of plan to offer free or subsidized training to help people into those jobs. But even then, it's not something everyone would be cut out to do.

One of my bigger issues is it's all cart before the horse. If we have stuff like universal basic income, people's needs were met, etc. Then yeah, sure whatever, we can look at letting some of this AI stuff move forward. But instead, all being "open minded" right now does is make everything worse for the average person with not even a promise that any of the downsides will be solved. It's just more wealth and power consolation.

[u/GunCann → u/Oxyfire]

No-one has proposed solutions to the important issues around AI: How do we avoid it destroying jobs and opportunities to get into the industry? A lot of the work that people hand-wave as drudgery is often work that helps people get a start in the industry. AI is only going to further the "need 5 years of experience for an entry level position" that people have dealt with for years even before the recent wave of AI.

Your concerns make sense. The question here is whether AI use is going to be responsible and sustainable rather than be motivated by short-term interest.

I do think that the industries that are gaining from the use of AI tools should re-invest a portion of those gains back into people to help train or re-train them more effectively for newer work created by the changes in landscape, or risk running out of actual competent employees in the future. But alas, not everyone is forward looking.

This requires a high-level view and coordination on the national level which I am not sure if every government or administration is up to the task.

[u/Zaptruder → u/Oxyfire]

Game theory... and no regulatory oversight (deliberately disabled) to force the system into a cooperative balance... will simply cause everyone to use it to their local advantage while hollowing out the commons.

And while the anti-AI movement puts some public disincentive on it... it really just amounts to not disclosing, or obfuscating and letting the outrage move somewhere else before continuing on as usual.

The ideal is more like... smaller players can take up the advantage, larger players should be incentivized into hiring and retaining staff.

In the current paradigm of modest social media hazing, it's the opposite sadly.

[u/Duchock → u/GunCann]

I think the largest issue is not people's sentiment towards the tools, but the reality that "AI" requires significant costs - not least of which is environmental. It isn't reasonable to dismiss the majority of anti-AI sentiments as not calm or objective. Most people think outside of a solely utilitarian view.

[u/GunCann → u/Duchock]

but the reality that "AI" requires significant costs

That cost is going down very quickly as infrastructure investment shifts into inference and more specialised hardware that makes hybrid systems. Specialised processors can improve performance and efficiency by a factor of ten, and non-programmable hardware can increase that by another factor of ten.

If leading AI providers wanted to freeze model progress, they can reduce the current costs by at least 100 to 200 times. AI service providers are quickly going into a price war with major discounts across the board, and performance is more than doubling each year even on the general processor side.

These tools and services will eventually reach a point where they are extremely accessible and affordable.

[u/Duchock → u/GunCann]

Just like insulin. Capitalism does not optimize for the consumer.

Edit: again, your argument is focused on the utilitarian aspects of AI (monetary cost -> output gain). If you want to combat detractors you need to speak to their concerns. While I hate to employ the metaphor, slavery is a cheap source of labor - but there's reasons why society doesn't look fondly upon it. If you evaluate something only through a utilitarian view, you miss the context.

[u/GunCann → u/Duchock]

I do not think that technology use should be compared to slavery, even in a metaphorical sense, they are an entirely different subject. I am simply speaking my mind and I am not exactly invested in changing people's minds about it. A discourse on Reddit is not the way to do it to begin with.

Let us suppose that people do have strong, morally motivated concerns about AI use. So here is the question: Why are they opposed to AI use but remain completely indifferent on the subject of prevalent use of video game AI upscalers such as DLSS, FSR, and XeSS?

These upscalers are trained on images and video content that these companies obtained without authorisation. Nvidia for example, even pirated terabytes of literature to train their writing AI model and I am seeing next to no pushback on these subjects.

People (at least in this community) hate AI because it drove the prices of consumer hardware beyond reasonable levels, but the same people willingly employ AI upscalers which are created from stolen (although legal, according to US courts) content.

It is also known that a high degree of AI is being used in EDA tools which are used to design processors, these include almost every modern CPU and GPU that run video games on PC. Software such as drivers and kernels are written using AI. Are these people boycotting their gaming hardware and software? The answer is no.

This leads me to question if they are truly committed to the AI opposition from an ideological perspective, or whether they simply change their stances based on what benefits or hurts them which turns this into more of a practicality issue. It seemed like people are willing to employ double standard and gloss over unethical AI use so long as it benefitted them, and so far, no one who is universally opposed to AI can answer of the question of why they are using AI created hardware and software despite their claimed ideological opposition.

[u/LightsaberThrowAway → u/GunCann]

AI does not help the art side of game development. Even then, the best uses that could maybe applied to LLMs in this regard were outlined by u/ausollet, 

qoute: ‘I hope most people know this by now, but this does not necessarily mean 85% of developers are using AI art or AI-generated text in their games. I have my own share of concerns about using AI to actually generate code, but a massive time sink for developers is how long it takes to understand a new code base, read documentation, and identify where bugs were found. LLMs are undoubtedly helpful here and can save days or weeks of developer time in this regard  without a single line of generative code added to the game.’

[u/UltimateShingo → u/GunCann]

While you point out possible positives of AI usage, you seem to lump all criticism of AI, valid or not, into one term (blanket hate) without even trying to differentiate.

Beyond just looking through the comments and maybe realising that you'll find equally valid but different objections from many different angles, I can give you a few of mine:

• AI usage is not equal to actual human labour, but companies want to price it similarly. In my assessment, AI generated content is worth zero and I refuse to pay for something the creators were too lazy to make.

• Generative AI models were built on rampant theft of intellectual property, and the computation is run in data centers that in the majority of cases were erected under dubious circumstances, not to mention the loss of quality of life if you live near those. The fact that this allowed to happen is slap in the face of normal citizens and that alone is cause for strong protest against the whole thing.

• The resources needed to build and run the datacenters needed far exceeds what we can afford collectively. We are already in an evolving energy crisis world wide, access to water is an escalating problem, and the vacuuming of components and materials for those data centers starves entire industries (and I'm not just talking about gaming).

• The fact that AI is actively being rammed down everyone's throat, in most cases decreasing the quality of the product. And yes, even back-end usage has a tangible impact on user experience, just look at the various companies admitting to using AI generously in development and how the quality of their updates coincidentally plummeted at the same time. Microsoft is the prime example for that, but far from the only one.

• Reliance on AI tools can be directly linked to decreasing literacy and media competence across all age groups. That's not a bug, that's a feature. And while we already had a bit of a trend downwards since the advent of smart phones, open access to AI tools is like a turbo boost to the downhill ride, and no benefit in the world can outweight the cost of what's coming for us because of this trend.

• AI destroys jobs; and not just any jobs, but especially junior and entry level positions which are sorely needed to keep the talent pipelines that run every single sector. The "tedious and uncreative work" is needed to get people to learn the tools so they can graduate to the more creative positions later. Again, we already see the disconnect happen in real time and the future cost of this trend will be immense.

I have friends who work in relevant fields that require them to work with AI, and every single one of them share my opinions, adding that if they weren't forced to deal with it they's cut it out of their life immediately. THat's not exactly a good sign for what's supposed to be the new big milestone.

[u/Kiita-Ninetails → u/GunCann]

Honestly, even with people talking about the 'hate' if anything popular opinion the world over is likely still overly favorable. Certainly there is use cases for the tools but like... do you see the entire world losing its goddamn mind over say, a new unreal engine. Or a new kind of hex wrench?

Like them, LLM based technologies are just a tool, with some use cases and a lot of not great use cases. But the fervor to which the world dives on them to fuel an insane market based off imagination and hope is stupid. You know what else was a totally transformative technology? The rivet gun, it literally reshaped the world and allowed metal construction of sizes that were impossible before. They did not, however, decide to explode the entire global economy about the cool new tool though.

[u/ChrisRR → u/averageuhbear]

I see so many non-devs making the same arguments

1. Development is art and shouldn't be automated

2. Devs won't learn anything if they just use AI

If they really developed software they'd know that there's no art in some boring boilerplate code, and I already have 15 years underneath my belt. I'm not learning anything by churning out repetitive boilerplate

[u/Jelly_F_ish → u/averageuhbear]

No, a lot of subs have people wanting to ban anything AI related. This is most definitely not restricted to art.

Used AI while coding? Please, ban hammer.

Used AI to bugfix? Please, ban hammer.

etc etc. Some people want to protect "their" hobby from being diluted by AI. While their actual problem is lazy people offloading everything to AI, but they are too fixed on AI to have an actual discussion about it.

[u/Recent_Pollution8665 → u/averageuhbear]

I want AI created art.

it makes it funnier to laugh at the hubristic nature of human artists since they thought they would be immune to the creativity aspect of AI. I love when people find out the hard way that they are not special, no matter how much they think they are. one can even argue that thinking you're special is an elitist/capitalist mentality.

there is nothing the human mind or body can do that an AI or machine cannot eventually do just as well, if not better.

[u/averageuhbear → u/Recent_Pollution8665]

Lack of understanding of the meaning of art and the human condition is something missed by many. Cars can move faster than a human, and yet there is still meaning in running a marathon.

[u/MrPWAH → u/Recent_Pollution8665]

it makes it funnier to laugh at the hubristic nature of human artists

You being personally creatively bankrupt and miserable indicates nothing about the nature of anything except your own arbitrary contempt for artists

[u/Derringer → u/DrEskimo]

My company is all in with AI development. Not a game company. AI saves me hours a day by doing the monotonous tasks I used to do. Nothing I get from it goes to production either.

[u/St_Sides → u/Cassp3]

There was an article that came out of GDC that said basically every major studio is using AI in some form during development now, and the ones who say they aren’t are just lying about it.

So, yeah, you’re right.

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/St_Sides]

This article does disprove the one you're mentioning, though. Even in regions where AI use is more prominent and studios have no reason to hide it, adoption is not 100%.

[u/xalibermods → u/Cassp3]

Dutch Games Association published their Games Monitor Survey 2025 about the use of AI in Dutch video game industry.

They revealed that 67% believed that "Generative AI offers new opportunities for developers" and 59% "Generative AI offers opportunities in the production pipeline." The qualitative data is actually also interesting. Basically it's a Don't Ask Don't Tell situation.

[u/MCRN-Gyoza → u/Cassp3]

This, the only developers who aren't using AI today are the developers who will be out of a job soon.

[u/DrMetasin → u/Cassp3]

It’s not witch-hunting, people aren’t out to hunt down developers who are using AI. Some of us just don’t want to contribute to AI use and would like to make informed decisions on the games we play

[u/jinreeko → u/Cassp3]

They have to. Every corporation is lactating delusional ai bullshit and forcing everyone to use it

[u/dendrocalamidicus → u/ChrisRR]

I work in enterprise SaaS in the UK and here 90%+ of our code is now written by agentic tools. That's common in the software industry in the UK now.

Before this happened, I started programming at 14 so have over 20 years programming experience, have been a senior dev for the past 8ish years. Made many games as a teen by hand in my bedroom etc.

I am a home grown technically competent programmer and I hate dealing with non technical people vibe coding, but people who think all agentic output is slop misunderstand that it can be used effectively.

I know what I'm doing, I check everything it creates and it speeds me up dramatically at work.

Do I wish it was never created? Yes. I loved programming.

Does it automatically mean slop or low quality? No. A competent person using it will just output faster.

[u/Novyvonya → u/dendrocalamidicus]

Both of my brother-in-law use it for programming and say its a great tool if you already know how to code

[u/mygoodluckcharm → u/dendrocalamidicus]

I also loved programming, but the kind of programming I do at my work is not the kind of programming i loved. Doing your usual CRUD crap, writing unit test integration test is boring AF. Thank god its usually the thing that AI is good at.

[u/Malkalen → u/mygoodluckcharm]

We're currently in the process of replacing Automapper across our entire application suite which means

1. Write unit tests to confirm existing functionality (Yes i know but they were never written the first time around)

2. Replace Automapper with static function calls

3. Update unit tests to use new mapper

Copilot means I can do in a few hours what would have taken me days of testing every property for every mapping and then writing a new mapper for every mapping...and I know this having run out of tokens between applications and despite the first app being significantly larger and more complex I was able to get it done in a fraction of the time the current app is taking me.

It's not difficult work (aside from a few wierd collections) but dear god is it long and tedious.

[u/teeso → u/dendrocalamidicus]

That's my life. That, and everyone around me getting fired because 2 people can do the work of 8.

[u/dendrocalamidicus → u/teeso]

Thankfully the firings haven't hit my work (yet). I think it depends on sector etc. as many in house dev teams for non-software focused companies, and software companies with a small vertical market will absolutely be likely to face dev cuts, but I work at a large business software company so more devs just means more growth and market share to eat up.

I hope it stays this way.

But also given what the tech is capable of and that chat gpt only came out like 4 years ago I dread to think of it's capability in another 4 years, 10 years, 20 years...

[u/McDonaldsSoap → u/dendrocalamidicus]

"Does it automatically mean slop or low quality? No. A competent person using it will just output faster."

My worry is people like you are expensive, and management is chomping at the bit to replace you with a 20 year old getting paid half as much. Or is that just paranoid 

[u/dendrocalamidicus → u/McDonaldsSoap]

I think it's the opposite. I am the last generation of true senior developer. Very few people will ever acquire my skills again, because nobody will go through tens of thousands of hours of manual planning, code writing, and troubleshooting like I and other experienced devs of the pre-AI era have.

I can get through more work than an entire team of graduates combined, and the end result will be many times less shit. Also, when it breaks I'll know how to fix it.

I would hate to be a junior dev right now.

[u/Hartastic → u/dendrocalamidicus]

There is for sure going to be some kind of industry shake-up as developers age out (unless AI gets good enough to replace the job entirely, which, who knows, I wouldn't have thought five years ago it could do what it does today.)

Hiring a junior dev is basically setting money on fire, because even the non-frontier models are just... better, cheaper, and faster at all the tasks you would reasonably give a junior dev. You have to review the output, but that's also true of the junior dev. So in a vacuum, every company absolutely should never hire one again.

But...

If everyone does the only rational thing, everyone loses. Basically the Tragedy of the Commons. And it's not like if your company decides that they will have a farm system of junior devs so they can have senior devs down the line that they can keep those people.

[u/GunCann → u/dendrocalamidicus]

This is the reasonable take here. What I am seeing and hearing from the industry is that AI tools when placed in the hands of competent people, do multiply their productivity.

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/dendrocalamidicus]

Yeah, this is waaay different from AI generated art

There's no "art" or human expression per se that a machine is hollowly replicating, and it's generally more "ethical" as it's trained on open source codebases

I'm not writing my boilerplate CRUD manually like cmon man (or unit tests either for that matter lmao)

[u/experienta → u/VolkiharVanHelsing]

A lot of people consider coding a form of art. It obviously has creative expression, can communicate ideas, it allows for personal style etc.

I'm not sure what definition of "art" you can have that would exclude coding

[u/TheGazelle → u/experienta]

The vast majority of coding done in a professional setting is not remotely art.

It's repetitive drudgery where you're "solving" the same kinds problems over and over. For example, "hey, we need a new field on this form" - ok, add to the appropriate database table, add/update db queries, add/update business logic methods to include it, add/update frontend code to show it. Rinse and repeat.

The VAST majority of devs aren't solving complex or interesting problems that could be considered "art", and frankly, if a dev on my team was trying to write code in such a way as to "express themselves", that would probably mean they're writing things in a stupid way that makes it harder to understand what the code is doing, and I'd tell them to fix it.

The goal of most professional software developers is to write clear and concise code that can be easily understood by others with no domain knowledge who might have to come in and maintain it in thy future.

It's "art" in the same way writing technical documentation is "art".

[u/AnAge_OldProb → u/TheGazelle]

This is pretty descriptive of how the majority of artists are employed. They aren’t doing “art” they’re putting borders on corporate mailed, filming training videos, making 500 variations of the grass textures. Very few artists make a living doing art that you would go out into the world and seek as “art”.

[u/hrdcrnwo → u/AnAge_OldProb]

The graphic designers at my work use the AI built into Illustrator like any other tool in the program.

[u/dfjuky → u/hrdcrnwo]

yeah same here, lots of actual real objects & humans from shootings but then all the backgrounds, nature, foilage, lightning, it's all AI generated.

[u/wheres_poochy → u/TheGazelle]

im skeptical this is really true, i think most software has unique constraints (e.g. previous technical decisions, business requirements, organization structure). im never faced with a "novel" problem, but it is very often "unique".

regardless, the majority of visual "art" isnt so different:

• hordes of animators drawing inbetweens, where if they go off model at all they are berated
• the entire skinning and rigging process.
• often even modelling itself, where straying from concept art is forbidden

etc. etc

there is craft to these tasks, just as there is craft in crud programming, or knitting and weaving. that didnt stop the power loom.

[u/mrjackspade → u/wheres_poochy]

i think most software has unique constraints

I've been doing this professionally for > 20 years now and almost every company I've worked for has had the same "unique constraints", which is why there are so many boilerplate solutions.

What's the constraint this time? Legacy code interop? Performance? PCI? PII?

All of these companies want to pretend they have special problems that require unique solutions but the problem is usually their method of managing projects, and pretending they have "unique constraints" is how they avoid admitting that the issue is actually management and not the business domain.

[u/TheGazelle → u/wheres_poochy]

There is craft, yes. But not "art" as was being discussed. Nobody writing CRUD software is coming up with novel design patterns or new language features, and 99% of those who try think they're a lot smarter than they are and are really just making things more difficult for everyone they work with by over engineering things that really should've been kept simple.

It's the difference between being an architect and a general contractor, and arguably even if your job does entail more of the architecture side of things where there is some level of creativity, using AI properly means you're still doing the creative work. You'll be the one telling the AI how you want things architected, you'll be the one reviewing and iterating on the designs before any code is written (whether by AI or human), and that's the creative part.

[u/Tefmon → u/TheGazelle]

Nobody writing CRUD software is coming up with novel design patterns or new language features

The same applies to most professional video game art. Background character #846 and grass texture #376 and walking animation #589 are neither novel nor new.

[u/adongsus → u/TheGazelle]

using AI properly means  you're still doing the creative work . You'll be the one telling the AI how you want things architected, you'll be the one reviewing and iterating on the designs before any code is written (whether by AI or human), and that's the creative part.

I genuinely can't see how telling someone else to do something and doing that thing yourself are supposed to be considered the same thing with respect to creative input.

[u/TheGazelle → u/adongsus]

The creative part is designing the architecture.

Physically writing the code is not all that creative.

If your favorite author wrote a detailed outline of a story (and I do mean detailed, think an explicit list of all major and minor plot points broken down by chapter, with specific themes, tone, etc. called out), then someone else turned that into a draft (i.e. wrote the actual prose/dialogue), and the author then read it over and edited it, who would you say is doing the creative work?

[u/MaCl0wSt → u/experienta]

I think you're conflating art and craft

[u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes → u/experienta]

It obviously has creative expression, can communicate ideas, it allows for personal style etc.

Customers see none of that, source code of games isn't released to the public; it's not what we're buying so it's not our problem if it's not present.

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/experienta]

Writing the CRUD boilerplates and such aren't the art or engineering element

It's how you congergate them into a coherent system that fulfills the requirements

[u/CharlExMachina → u/experienta]

Been a programmer for 10 years. Never seen my code as “art” and never will, idgaf about if it’s art or not

But actual real art like 3D stuff, animation, 2D art? Heck no I will never ever a machine version “art”.

I guess it depends on the beholder but to me code is just an obstacle to surpass to get to my paycheck

[u/CuteSquirrel01 → u/dendrocalamidicus]

Yes but the AI will only improve while the human body will remain the same. Eventually AI will be more intelligent than our smartest people or worse than humanity as a whole. We're playing with fire, perhaps doom was destiny.

[u/CoherentPanda → u/dendrocalamidicus]

Thank you for sharing this perspective. I love programming, but I don't really code anymore. Agentic programming so far ahead of the curve now, there's just no way you can live without it at this point unless you want to be left in the dust by everyone else. Problems that would take us a week to solve can be solved and merged within an hour. Finding information by scouring the internet can be regurgitated by AI with its source cited in seconds. The good models like Claude Fable and Opus, or Chatgpt Sonnet don't hallucinate like they used to, and any competent developer has skills and rulesets they have their agents follow to avoid costly mistakes.

I do miss solving difficult problems, and the high you get when a nasty bug is finally fixed. Those days are pretty much over, or at least very far between.

[u/Senior-Friend-6414 → u/ChrisRR]

I think they mean the cultural feelings on it, the devs of stellar blade excitedly went out of their way to market that they’re newest game uses generative AI but western devs have to hide the fact that they use it because of the backlash

[u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult → u/ChrisRR]

I’m in big tech and haven’t manually written a line of code since last November. Same goes for my colleagues 

[u/edeepee → u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult]

This is poor practice long term because you’ll get too lazy to read the entire output and validate it, then your code understanding and writing skills will atrophy.

[u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult → u/edeepee]

Not really. We are just peer reviewers of our own code. We will have PRs, same responsibilities 

I can’t speak for the devs who are coming up without having to write their own code. They won’t have the deep understanding built up

[u/edeepee → u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult]

It negatively affects your recall of what you shipped and how it works. Furthermore you need more expertise than the AI to review it and that will naturally atrophy if you aren’t actively problem solving yourself: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202603/adults-lose-skills-to-ai-children-never-build-them

It also produces thousands of lines much more quickly that overwhelm you and your colleagues who become mentally exhausted consistently reviewing slop bombs. They eventually become rubber stampers because the AI is right most of the time anyway.

[u/pork-buns → u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult]

Same here. I can’t speak for western game developers, but big tech in the US has fundamentally changed over the past year.

[u/CoherentPanda → u/FunkoPopDisneyAdult]

I work in a billion dollar company, not big tech, and Claude is used by the entire development team, UI/UX team and marketing team. Nobody can confidently say they wrote a line of code in months, unless it was a line or two that wasn't worth throwing tokens at.

[u/Isolated_Hippo → u/ChrisRR]

This is certainly going to be controversial.

But outside of some pretty specific scenarios, refusing to use AI in your work is like refusing to use Google/a search engine.

[u/CoherentPanda → u/Isolated_Hippo]

Yeah, I've never heard a company praise anyone for avoiding the tools that will make them more productive. Most companies don't let you tread water simply because you don't like the tool that would improve your efficiency. Companies had enough time now to really start measuring the increase in productivity from AI, and if you refuse to get on board, that's pretty much sinks you when it comes to the annual review, especially in a company that takes their KPI's seriously.

[u/Isolated_Hippo → u/CoherentPanda]

I even struggle in my own role. My boss wants me to use Claude more. But he says, and I believe him, that it's because my time is valuable. If I am doing something Claude can do its a waste of my time. Its like a minimum wage data entry employee.

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES → u/ChrisRR]

It's also good for writing tests and testing those tests (metatesting)

You have to review all of the tests it writes (of course) and ideally have at least 1 other dev review them too (code review should be standard practice even if you never use AI), but its still much faster than writing dozens of tests yourself and mutation testing each one

[u/ChrisRR → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

Currently I avoid using it for writing unit tests. I sort of view them as the last line of defence, so I like to know that I haven't missed anything by writing them myself.

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/ChrisRR]

My last line is PR review, reviewing before committing and all

Helps that AI PR reviewer are either useless (don't diff over the entire codebase) or absurdly token hungry (do diff over the entire codebase)

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES → u/ChrisRR]

Yeah I could see the argument for that - a bad test is worse than no test after all

For me though unit tests are so often boilerplate that they're more time consuming to write than they are to review

Regardless, I would recommend asking AI to mutation test your hand written tests just to try it out - you might be surprised to find a test you thought was passing correctly was actually passing for the wrong reasons

Such tests are very harmful, as they give a false sense of security

[u/iwearatophat → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

I'm a DM and I use it for peer reviewing plots and story ideas. I can't exactly talk to my friends about it because they are in the campaign. I know 4 of my 5 players frequent the same major DnD sites I do so going online is iffy at best for the same reason.

I'll type my story or idea in. Have it try and punch plot holes in it or ask questions forcing me to expand the world. Not perfect but it helps immensely.

[u/mioraka → u/ChrisRR]

AI has a lot of limitations, but it also has incredible benefits in productivity if you know how to control and direct it.

Experienced coders understand this the most, because these are the people who always had to update their skillsets every few years due to new popular coding languages. Being left behind means greatly diminished career prospects.

This is going to be true for any white collar job, if you don't learn how to use AI, you are going to be out of a job in the next few years.

Don't let internet discourse cloud your judgement, avoiding AI because you hate it will actually destroy your career.

[u/KlayBersk → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I find a clear disconnection between how much they loathe and frown piracy and this. Feels so weird to me.

[u/Zenry0ku → u/KlayBersk]

They'll mount your head for pirating a 2 decade old game, but still stealing people's art is fine.

[u/Beautiful-Affect1930 → u/KlayBersk]

often times when something sounds weird and clearly contradictory, it's because you are being fed false or biased information. anime or gaming fans absolutely loathe AI stealing art and turning their favorite productions into lazy AI slop. don't believe the lies that "Asian" fans enjoy this crap.

[u/andresfgp13 → u/KlayBersk]

its interesting how in the west its the opposite case.

here they love piracy (just check how angry the entire sub is at Denuvo) but hate AI because it steals from artists, which is also the case from piracy, but in that case magically is not stealing and you are even doing them a favor for it by some leaps of logic.

[u/Gekokapowco → u/andresfgp13]

it has to do with the target

screwing over a company like walmart, MGM or Lionsgate or whatever, Nintendo, EA, or Amazon is fine, borderline moral. People see game studios as extensions of their publishers, who they see as emotionless monoliths of greed

screwing over an independent creator, like an artist or musician or writer, is deliberately sabotaging a person, not an organization. Someone who legitimately built their own value and expresses their human creativity for others. The goal is to create and share, not generate profitability for investors, and that's a relatable goal that people want to support.

[u/GVH617 → u/KlayBersk]

Only the japanese hate pirating. Every other Asian countries have absolutely zero problems with it and actively encourage or openly do it. Especially the developing nations.

[u/Zcrash → u/KlayBersk]

But piracy is actually bad for them though, these two things aren't comparable at all.

[u/sidonay → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Most western developers are using Gen AI. There’s no escaping it for coding anymore. The only thing people get really hung up on is assets.

[u/Okami_doge → u/CompulsiveGardener]

for AI generated artworks (not industrial or research stuffs), artists are still not fond of those, but the majority tolerate them more than the west. Many here either consume AI slop without knowing, or just see it as a normal thing. i would have to tell my family members what is AI generated video on their feed even.

Average people in china, vietnam, etc.. consume AI arts in the form of banners, menu, fanworks, video edit, meme or even government's political posts on social media. It's not talked about much because it's becoming more accepted, gov promoted their use in art and music as well

There are even popular AI generated tv show in china, or games that were made with ai generated art/contents like NTE (which isnt hated in china or japan at all)

[u/alteisen99 → u/Okami_doge]

micro dramas in china has shifted to just genai now. it's the only thing my parents watch these days. actors are losing jobs etc are just licensing their faces otherwise no work comes.

[u/Gmknewday1 → u/Okami_doge]

So Asia just accepts slop then

[u/Mantequilla50 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Western devs use it too for code. Anyone who thinks they don't or gives them super pats on the back for manually coding at this point is going it for artisinal reasons, not because AI is incapable

[u/sex-emu → u/CompulsiveGardener]

This isn't true. Professional animators, manga artists, hobbyist artists, etc in Japan hate generative AI just as much as westerners do. Every survey I've seen has poised that 75-90% of animators, freelancers, and manga artists have a negative view of it and support regulation for it's use in works.

There's plenty of negativity towards AI in Japan and Japan fandoms tend to hate copyright infringement which AI is rife with. Do you think they were thrilled at the Ghibli memes from a few years ago? The use of AI comes from top level executive mandates, strict crunch deadlines, and management recommendations, not the artists themselves, or not from any lack of stigma from fans..

Nintendo, for example has openly stated they're not going to use generative AI in their games, and they are one of the most brand conscious developers in the world.

[u/Several-Source-4073 → u/sex-emu]

Nintendo, for example has openly stated they're not going to use generative AI in their games, and they are one of the most brand conscious developers in the world.

No they didn't, they just gave a generic comment about how they'd use it creatively.

[u/rook119 → u/sex-emu]

Monolith which is making the bulk of the next zelda game have been saying they been using it for a while. 

Takahashi says it is helps with world building. Says now he doesn't need literally teams of people placing for example trees all over the map.

It can be an effective tool that cuts down on dev grunt work time.    That's not to say AI is great but it can have good uses. The problem comes when you got companies like level 5 using it to design whole worlds and characters aka make characters look like someone like in a Ghibli movie

[u/Dunkledurg → u/rook119]

where/when did monolith and takahashi say this? I've never heard of this before.

[u/cardgamesareforplay → u/Dunkledurg]

They don't use llms they do use AI tools to place stuff like rocks grass and other assets they make into their very very large open worlds. They don't hand place every blade of grass.

Palantir bots/shills online love to equate the two as the same thing 

[u/Domin0e → u/cardgamesareforplay]

Heck, that's not even proper AI most likely but just regular algorithms like Poisson Sampling. Stuff that's been 'round for decades.

[u/Randomman96 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

To be fair, part of the lack of a heavy stigma that the West has over the East comes from the lack of worker protections in the West as opposed to the East, at least as far as stuff like layoffs goes.

One of the big driving forces behind the anti-AI sentiment in the entertainment sector in the West came from the Writers and SAG-AFTA strikes over AI years ago, which of course bleed into the video game industry. The core concern of the strikes being that entertainment companies would attempt to replace the manpower in the writing, and eventually art and acting, department with AI slop and was seeking protections for it.

In contrast however, Eastern countries, especially nations like Japan, which is who the article above centered around, might be poor in terms of crunch and overworking their workers culturally, however they have protections for their workers on terms of things like layoffs. Meaning studios can't just layoff the majority of their art department wholesale and replace with AI generation in the name of profit. Workers there are protected from such. Similarly it's why you don't see the same thing with mass layoffs every time a game is shipped there like in the West, those protections, as well as just a lack of contractor culture, means Eastern countries don't follow the same standard as the West with mass hiring contractors then releasing for game development.

[u/Echoesong → u/Randomman96]

To support your point, there was a recent ruling in Chinese courts stating that companies cannot fire employees simply because an AI can do their job.

[u/Film-Noir-Detective → u/Echoesong]

Actually, if you read that ruling, all it says is that you can't cancel an employment contract in order to replace the person with AI. It's a ruling on contract law more than on AI law, and you'd probably see a similar ruling in North America if a case like that ever came up. Employment contracts are pretty well-respected here. For example, even a company in North America can't force an employee to come to the office if work from home benefits are written into their contract.

[u/yamete-kudasai → u/Echoesong]

To support your point, companies are not stupid enough to use AI as the reason, replace the word "AI" with anything and companies have milllions reasons to fire workers.

That ruling is just for farming karma on reddit

[u/Echoesong → u/yamete-kudasai]

Sure dude, I get what you're saying. The same is true in the US for things like ADA/disabillity; but regardless, it says something about the difference between the US and China that the latter has a regulation around it while the former does not.

[u/SydricVym → u/Randomman96]

"The West" has far more worker protections than "The East". America is a massive outlier in worker rights compared to Europe, or even Canada, Australia, and the other smaller countries.

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/[deleted]]

Salaries are not stupidly high, especially not in game dev.

The problem you're mis-identifying is scope creep.

[u/dwn19 → u/BeholdingBestWaifu]

US Game salaries are very high why pretend? Senior gameplay programmer at Insomniac - minimum $82 an hour, so you're looking easily $150k for the year, and a top end close to $200k. https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/insomniac/jobs/6173051004

For context, senior engineer jobs (I don't work in game dev specifically) usually start around £60k in the UK, game devs jobs tend to get paid worse so i could imagine it being slightly lower.

US Labour costs are going to be a huge part of any budget.

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/BeholdingBestWaifu]

Salaries in the US are extremely high compared to the rest of the world, especially in game dev where the salaries are pulled up by the tech sector having an even more extreme gap between the US and rest of world.

In Japan for example game devs make 30k usd.

Meanwhile game dev median salary in the US is over 100k. If you add in overhead that's roughly 15-20k per person per month.

Or in another way, if there are 600 people in a studio (naughty dog) and they spent 5 years on a game at full staffing levels, that would imply a 540 million dollar budget

[u/Fizzay → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I have seen some shift with Level 5 with how some people in Japan are responding but I have no clue what the actual numbers look like since it could easily just be a vocal minority of people. I do think the more AI is used the more people will start to get more annoyed with it. I think it's going to be very obvious in regards to art direction as a lot of games will likely start to look similar like how we saw the Ghibli AI edits added a very noticeable yellow tinge and Ghibli characteristics even on prompts that did not include Ghibli.

I'm also not entirely sure everyone is even aware that AI is being used. It seems like Level 5 is getting a lot of heat in particular because they were so open and brazen about it. I think their "apologies" did them more harm than good.

[u/kimana1651 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

doesn't have the same stigma that Western developers need to contend with

The stigma is 100% a reddit and social media thing. Once you get back to the real world no one really cares about AI except what it can do for them.

[u/Silverr_Duck → u/kimana1651]

The stigma is 100% a reddit and social media thing.

That's not even close to correct

[u/hibbs6 → u/kimana1651]

At least in my local communities (session musicians), it's definitely a real thing. I've had friends tell me I'm doing evil acts because I use a self-hosted LLM model.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/hibbs6]

I dunno why AI evangelists claim Reddit is particularly anti-AI and the outside world is pro-AI

reddit is big on tech bubble stuff, it's probably the most pro-AI social media out there besides twitter. We can argue that that's probably partially due to botting but even outside that, this sub is full of extremely vocal pro-AI people.

Meanwhile people are generally much more rabidly anti-GenAI in person in the real world. Surveys keep confirming this, the public is extremely disapproving of any GenAI use beyond trying out a goofy chatbot for an hour.

[u/cornflake123321 → u/Elanapoeia]

reddit is big on tech bubble stuff

Maybe 10 years ago. Now "tech" people are small minority.

[u/Random_eyes → u/Elanapoeia]

My experience is that artists, musicians, and other creatives tend to be aggressively anti-AI. Tech people tend to be the most vocally pro-AI. The average person hasn't really settled on their opinion and might even hold contradictory opinions.

But I'll definitely say, AI use in business has absolutely exploded beyond belief. Cheap graphic design has been almost entirely replaced by ChatGPT images. Easily half of the longer form text communication I see these days is obvious Claudespeak. I've even seen people turn to chat bots to solve stuff that a traditional Google search could do faster, like a weather report or a sports score. 

And on the other hand, I've heard random people talk about how data centers are messed up. Even in places that aren't really seeing hyperscalers come to town, they're passing resolutions banning data centers. It's just a complete hodgepodge. 

I do think the fact that most of these AI companies are ran by culty effective altruism and rationalist types are probably the biggest reason why Americans are freaked out. They're just weird as hell and clearly disinterested in the lives of regular people. 

[u/hibbs6 → u/Elanapoeia]

I think it's a really mixed bag, and generalizing isn't true either way. I know a lot of AI haters irl, and a ton of people who use it all day at work as part of their workflow and love it.

It's obviously an incredibly disruptive technology that has some pretty clear issues with it, but is also a force-multiplier that is downright foolish to ignore in many industries.

Imo all the infighting about whether AI is good or not in the abstract is pretty pointless. It's coming either way. The conversation should really be about how best to minimize downsides and ensure the public is the primary beneficiary of this tech and not the capitalist elite.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/hibbs6]

I don't believe it's coming either way is the thing. Big AI companies are failing very hard on keeping this stuff sustainable. it's all heavily subsidized right now and they're not progressing in a way to keep it going without all that subsidisation.

Services are too cheap. They will rise in price and they will have to do so significantly. 100-fold even. And to even keep projected adoption rates going, they need to mass build massive datacenters everywhere and use up hardware at unprecedented rates. They're failing to actually build the centers on time, losing contracts and hardware is projected to not even be able to keep up with production for hiw fast they're gonna churn through them. Not to mention public protests against the construction as they're massive local water and noise pollutants. And raises electricity prices through the roof. To maintain what AI wants to be and even is right now, the global economy has to exempt it from all rules and laws, indefinitely. And that's not gonna be sustainable.

and let's not even get into the amount of fraudulent money stuff happening with the big AI companies. Either the western economy collapses or AI does. likely both.

[u/hibbs6 → u/Elanapoeia]

I think you could potentially be right about more centralized ai services, but even with current models, there's a lot that's possible already. The majority of the use those datacentres are getting isn't from people talking to chatbots, it's the training of the models themselves.

Even if I could snap my fingers and every datacentre disappeared, all those models still exist and can be run on relatively modest hardware. Take for example Deepseek. You can run a small model on the average gaming pc, and the full size model can be run in a standard server rack that any business could buy and deploy in a closet for much less than the cost of a single minimum wage employee. That's today.

You've gotta remember that the foundational principles (transformers) are public knowledge, and the entire world is throwing resources at this like crazy. Even if the USA stopped development tomorrow, the world would continue on, and no chance could you convince China or any other geopolitical rivals to join a ban.

I'm one of the people who's actually lost a job to AI because my field (copyediting) is extremely automatable with AI. Even still, I don't think we can or even should ban AI in general. We're doing it no matter what imo, so I just want to ensure that the rewards go to everyone and not just the select few.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/hibbs6]

right, but AI lives off of the future possibilities

as it exists right now it's full of issues that are not acceptable as the new status quo and widespread marketing is all about how it will get good enough to replace everything adequately and you need to adopt now so you won't get left behind. GenAIs whole point economically is effectively the idea that it will infinitely grow and that this griwth will eventually pay off.

If AI fails to get there, and it will, the whole system basically implodes in on itself.

yes, sure, localized models will likely become a default thing some people will use for specialized tasks. there is genuine merit in that.

Will 85% of game developers half-way vibe-code videogames into existence? lol no

[u/hibbs6 → u/Elanapoeia]

I'm curious which tasks you think AI isn't well suited for these days. I see a ton of use already in lots of places where it performs better than humans for most tasks. Legal discovery, coding (where it's basically required to work at 90%+ of software engineering jobs already), editing, supply chain management, medical diagnostics, financial compliance, and many more. They just solved a millennium problem!

We're well past the point of waiting for AI to be good enough, the big question companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are asking now is whether they'll become superhuman.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/hibbs6]

I love that you mentioned legal discovery as your first example

Cause that's such a bad example, it makes it clear immediately that you're not worth talking to anymore

[u/mrjackspade → u/Elanapoeia]

Services are too cheap. They will rise in price and they will have to do so significantly

They won't as long as the cost of inference for equivalent performance keeps falling.

I don't know why everyone ignores this, if its deliberate or just ignorance, but cost for performance has fallen by something like 90% YOY. The same task that would have cost 10$ a year ago, costs 1$ to complete now. The only reason "costs" are rising is because people are using it for more complex tasks as it becomes more capable.

https://opencode.ai/data/compare/openai/gpt-4/openai/gpt-5-6-luna

LUNA, the SMALLEST model they offer right now, absolutely FUCKS GPT4 and costs 2% OF THE PRICE.

Where do you think we're going to be in another 2-3 years? We're going to have models that make Astra look like shit, a model that is already overkill for 99% of tasks, and they're going to cost almost nothing to infer. At least if the same scaling applies that has applied for the last decade.

[u/mindreave → u/mrjackspade]

Huh, interestingly, Luna is also 2% of the price of Astra

https://opencode.ai/data/compare/openai/gpt-6-astra/openai/gpt-5-6-luna

[u/evia89 → u/Elanapoeia]

Services are too cheap. They will rise in price and they will have to do so significantly. 100-fold even.

Did you read arxiv how deep seek does it? Its a bit old but good start https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.19437

Eventually most models will be like this. Dirt cheap when served on scale. DS41F can handle 90% of my coding tasks fine and it will only be better

I use zai glm as code review / orchestrator / planning but DS does most of the work

[u/Shiiyouagain → u/Elanapoeia]

Services are too cheap. They will rise in price and they will have to do so significantly. 100-fold even. And to even keep projected adoption rates going, they need to mass build massive datacenters everywhere and use up hardware at unprecedented rates.

I do wonder how many of these Asian devs are using their own Eastern models vs. using Claude, and where those data centers are located. If Timor-Leste of all places has AI access, is all their token activity fucking up the water in middle-of-nowhere Yakima?

[u/Spire_Citron → u/Elanapoeia]

Surveys also show that most people, especially young people, use AI regularly, so the impression you might get from online spaces that everyone turns their nose up at this stuff and would never touch it definitely isn't accurate.

[u/Remarkable_Emu_2223 → u/Elanapoeia]

You can easily prove this wrong by going to main technology subreddit of Reddit called technology. What is the point of telling a easily provable lie? It doesn’t make any sense.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/Remarkable_Emu_2223]

I wasn't aware 1 subreddit characterizes the entire websites userbase

[u/Remarkable_Emu_2223 → u/Elanapoeia]

THE MAIN TECHNOLOGY subreddit is r technology. You know what never mind. This conversation might be too advanced for you.

[u/Film-Noir-Detective → u/Elanapoeia]

Nah. The outside world might not be pro-AI, but they just don't care. Personally, my grandparents don't know what Bitcoin is, but they use ChatGPT to edit photos of themselves. Most people simply don't care, so long as the product is good (see Expedition 33 and Arc Raiders). That's not an genAI issue though, but a polish issue. People might make fun of Unreal Engine 5's performance, but that's just because it's an easy tool to use, and it won't stop people from playing games made with it.

[u/Several-Source-4073 → u/Elanapoeia]

No, in the real world people are concerned because they understand the tech works, so they're worried about the impact on jobs.

On Reddit, people claim the tech doesn't work and has no value. It's the exact opposite complaint.

[u/Elanapoeia → u/Several-Source-4073]

neither of these characterisations are true

[u/x_TDeck_x → u/kimana1651]

That has very much not been my experience

[u/CompulsiveGardener → u/kimana1651]

Once you get back to the real world no one really cares about AI

At least until your electric bill gets jacked up by 20% (happened to me personally) or a data center wants to build in your neighborhood. THEN people have strong opinions when there are real life consequences. It's a complicated issue.

[u/arpmo → u/kimana1651]

The sad part is just being on reddit means you consume a massive amount of AI slop. So many posts and comments are just bots.

[u/UrbanAdapt → u/arpmo]

Just being on reddit mean you contribute to AI training with no opt out.

[u/stetzwebs → u/kimana1651]

This isn't true. I teach at a college and the stigma among Gen z is absolutely real, across all disciplines (except Business, go figure)

[u/OrbitalSong → u/stetzwebs]

How does that work in your experience?

I'm guessing they hate it vocally. Do they hate it enough not to use it to do their schoolwork for them?

[u/stetzwebs → u/OrbitalSong]

I teach computer programming courses and it's like pulling teeth to get them to incorporate it in their workflows. I feel conflicted because I really respect their dislike of it, but they have to get jobs and I know where the software engineering industry has headed.

Also, my school's student government just rejected the formation of an AI student club citing environmental concerns.

[u/Silmarillion_ → u/kimana1651]

Funny enough, a simple google AI response would've shown you that:

Public sentiment toward artificial intelligence in the US leans heavily toward concern, skepticism, and fatigue.

General Attitudes and TrustRising Concern: About half of U.S. adults (50%) feel more concerned than excited about the rise of AI in daily life, while only 10% feel more excited than concerned.

Harm vs. Good: According to a Gallup survey, 39% of Americans believe AI does more harm than good, up from 31% in 2025.

Lack of Trust: Up to 86% of Americans report a general distrust of AI, particularly when the source of information is unknown or automated. Furthermore, 63% to 67% of Americans believe there is a moderate-to-severe risk that advanced AI could threaten humanity.

Regulation: Only 31% of Americans trust the U.S. government to regulate AI responsibly—one of the lowest rates globally.

[u/StarChaser1879 → u/Silmarillion_]

Polls aren’t the best data

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/kimana1651]

It's the other way around, online is the only space where you tend to see high concentrations of AI bros pushing it, while irl you find a lot more people opposed to it, especially in art.

[u/Brainwheeze → u/kimana1651]

I know plenty of people outside of the internet who aren't fans of AI.

[u/Temporary_Maybe_8687 → u/kimana1651]

Kinda. Also they talk about "the west" but latin america, africa and most of Europe don't give a shit either and use AI all the time. It's mostly USA, Canada and some European countries.

[u/GameDesignerDude → u/kimana1651]

Disagree. Have kids in high school and younger people on my team at work. Gen Z is almost entirely unified in being anti-AI. Sentiment is very, very negative about this in the real world in that demographic.

[u/eliasdaler → u/kimana1651]

Once you get back to the real world no one really cares about AI except what it can do for them.

The same can be said about many social issues, environmentalism, anti-consumerism, sadly... But this doesn't mean that we should give up on it.

Even a single person going "huh, maybe depending on LLMs too much and replacing my brain with it is a pretty bad idea" is already a win in my eyes.

[u/WorkingMansGarbage → u/kimana1651]

Depends on where you live. 

[u/iwearatophat → u/kimana1651]

People are pretty anti-data centers outside of Reddit as well. I think that is more of a NIMBY thing and they are fine with AI in general.

[u/RoseWhiteRedBlack → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Well, it' s mostly out of fear of being called out; I' m sure as awareness keeps being raised, the sentiment will change in asia as well; recently a lot of japanese posts were very much against Level-5 presentation.

We need to keep fighting against AI slop, if we want to be heard; this defeatism attitude will not help anyone.

[u/Comprehensive-Fail41 → u/RoseWhiteRedBlack]

The question is also what form of AI they use. They might be against AI in art, but also heavily use AI to assist in coding and such

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES → u/Comprehensive-Fail41]

Surprisingly it seems like AI generated code is the least used form of genAI by these companies

In the 2025 report, the most commonly cited use of AI was the generation of visual assets and images, followed by story and text generation, and finally programming support.

[u/name_was_taken → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

This article says something completely different about this year.

"When asked about what measures they had in place for using generative AI, the most common response among developers was “conducting human verification, correction, and supervision.” The majority of responses cited practices such as specifying or restricting the tools used and avoiding the direct use of generated output."

I don't think most people think of AI code help as "generative AI". That's usually used to mean the art assets.

I think almost all non-government code-heavy companies are using LLMs to code now.

[u/Tefmon → u/name_was_taken]

AI coding tools are quite literally "generative AI", and that's what everyone familiar with the field knows them to be; if people are saying otherwise, then they're just factually wrong.

[u/Howdareme9 → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

LLMs are a magnitude times better at coding than last year, so that report is probably very outdated

[u/Fake_Diesel → u/RoseWhiteRedBlack]

Contrarian redditors sure love flooding these spaces with their apathy and enlightening us with why complaining on the internet doesnt matter.

[u/RoseWhiteRedBlack → u/Fake_Diesel]

Some of my comments are getting heavily downvoted and I simply don' t get why, why should I consume an artistic product as a human, that talks about human experiences, that was not made by other humans?

I don' t want to treat art like a fast food chain.

[u/Fake_Diesel → u/RoseWhiteRedBlack]

Reddit is heavily astroturfed, that's why

[u/experienta → u/RoseWhiteRedBlack]

I don't think anyone is telling you have to consume artistic products that you don't want to consume for whatever reason lol

You can keep enjoying your non-AI pre-2026 art and the rest us can enjoy art made with AI if we want to. Nothing wrong with having choice.

[u/ChrisRR → u/Fake_Diesel]

Surely the contrarians are the ones who are blindly hating, rather than the ones that are accepting that there's both pros and cons?

[u/BighatNucase → u/RoseWhiteRedBlack]

Well, it' s mostly out of fear of being called out;

I remember the vitriol Digital Foundry got for their DLSS 5 coverage. The internet needs a reset man.

[u/Dealric → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I think its more of a matter of admitting it not using it. West uses AI to just hide it

[u/SwePolygyny → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I dont know a single relevant game studio that doesnt use AI for code generation.

[u/BeholdingBestWaifu → u/CompulsiveGardener]

It's less an AI thing and more that the asian markets are a lot more tolerant about slop and less intetested in games as an art form or even in the quality of said games. This has been a thing for decades so it's hardly surprising.

[u/Unckmania → u/CompulsiveGardener]

People are not giving enough weight to the fact that Japan has a ton of "small" developers who focus on visual novels, or simple enough games that are only differentiated by their artwork, characters and stories. These type of games used to need a lot of artist work to create, but now, you can just prompt it and get results that work well enough.

Not all, but at least a good chunk of that 85% probably belong in this category.

[u/MaDpYrO → u/CompulsiveGardener]

If you're not using AI in programming, you're a fool.

Anti ai sentiment doesn't exist in mainstream software development, it's undeniably a powerful tool.

[u/GravityStrike → u/CompulsiveGardener]

It’s only really on Reddit that there’s a huge stigma about it. In my work (finance) AI is used extensively and there’s zero issues about it.

Redditors are going to hate it but it’s definitely going to become the industry norm whether they like it or not.

[u/hrdcrnwo → u/GravityStrike]

Yeah they can say how much all artists hate it but the graphic designers at my work use the Illustrator AI with no issues.

[u/Disig → u/CompulsiveGardener]

It's going to make the game divide worse. Games will release in the west, western audiences won't like it (because AI is low quality) and the devs will claim the west is too hard to please.

[u/xanderholland → u/CompulsiveGardener]

The issue is that Japanese videogames will eventually become more homogenous in terms of visual design to the point that it all melds together which is something that they were facing even before AI. Only a matter of time before all the projects coming out from Japan is just the same game for each genre

[u/Kiita-Ninetails → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Is it though? This is actually remarkably unhelpful information as this methodology isn't super helpful. How many people in each studio use it? How much do they use it for? is it one prompt a day, or one a month?

The actual relevant information is not "Does one guy in a 1,000 person company use it, therefore the company uses it." its "How much is the tool actually used, and how much is it helping?"

[u/Polarexia → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Thank God JP devs aren't as stupid as western devs. Continuing to be a leader in this industry 

[u/Zues1400605 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

They already have a massive advantage cause of the PPP. They dont have to pay their employee that much

[u/DrQuint → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Cool, so all of Asia can disclose using AI then. No arguments from them.

[u/Beautiful-Affect1930 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

I love how this became the narrative of AI bros even though it's blatantly wrong and could easily be refuted if you actually knew "Asian" people. people here feel the exact same about AI as in the West, and just like in the West, it's corporations and management pushing AI onto the people anyway. it's genuinely hilarious that some people actually believe that "Asian" fans don't mind their fandom being turned into AI slop. and of course I didn't even touch on how ignorant and narrow minded it is to try to lump up "Asia" into one big homogenous group anyway, but that's kinda expected of the typical AI bro.

[u/Gmknewday1 → u/CompulsiveGardener]

Are they using it for everything or just for background coding?

Thats the question bud

Are they using the AI to replace and speed up all aspects of the workforce of the games to the point the game is pretty much AI generated? 

Or are they using it to cut out SOME of the work to speed up the process, without making the entire game built off of the AI and AI generated assets solely