Take-Two’s ex-AI chief warns generative AI hype could kill traditional AI
▼ Summary
– Take-Two laid off its entire AI team in April, despite many companies embracing generative AI; most of the team did not work with generative AI.
– The team originated at Zynga in 2019 and was expanded after Take-Two acquired it in 2022, predating the public rise of ChatGPT.
– Former team head Dr. Luke Dicken believes there is a moral obligation to manage generative AI, but its excesses require pushback.
– Dicken advocates for a broader view of AI beyond generative AI, noting that current hype has made companies more receptive to traditional AI techniques.
– He worries that the hype around generative AI is “poisoning the well” and that a bubble burst could cause the entire field of AI research to be abandoned.
The relationship between generative AI and the broader field of artificial intelligence in game development is growing increasingly strained. While the industry buzzes with excitement over large language models and text-to-image tools, a former executive from one of the biggest publishers in the world warns that this hype may actually be doing long-term damage to more proven, traditional AI techniques.
Take-Two Interactive, the corporate parent of Rockstar Games and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, once housed a dedicated research unit focused on practical AI applications. That division, however, was quietly disbanded in April, with the entire team reportedly let go. The timing raised eyebrows, especially as many studios are racing to integrate generative tools into their workflows. But as it turns out, that team wasn’t really working on generative AI in the first place.
Dr. Luke Dicken, the former head of that group, spoke with GamesIndustry.biz about the unit’s origins and its unexpected fate. The team originally began at mobile developer Zynga, which Take-Two acquired in 2022, and later expanded its mandate to serve the entire company. Dicken explained that the skunkworks operation was founded in 2019, years before ChatGPT launched and set off the current generative AI frenzy.
“Generative AI is not something that I have ever been particularly passionate about,” Dicken said. He acknowledged the moral obligation to manage such powerful tools responsibly, but also noted that for a major corporation today, completely ignoring generative AI would be the wrong move. “No generative AI is the wrong answer that will get a lot of people’s backs up,” he added.
Dicken pointed out that while the topic is polarizing, “some of the excesses of genAI are so egregious that you need to make sure you’re able to push back.” His real interest lies in a more holistic approach to AI, one that doesn’t fixate solely on generative models. He recalled a time five years ago when proposing an algorithm to accelerate level generation in a mobile title would earn puzzled looks. “Back then, people looked at us like we had two heads,” he said.
Now, the landscape has shifted dramatically. “The hype of AI has created an environment where I could tell you that AI is going to be the thing that moves your game to quantum computing, and people will nod and say: ‘Yeah, we want AI in the game,’” Dicken observed. On the positive side, this enthusiasm has made studios more open to hearing about traditional techniques that could have helped them years ago. “They are more inclined to believe things like that can exist,” he added.
The danger, however, is that the current wave of hype is unsustainable. Dicken fears that if the generative AI bubble bursts, the entire field of AI research could suffer a backlash. “My worry is that generative AI is poisoning the well,” he warned. “I don’t think there is enough sophistication and nuance to retain the traditional stuff. For LLMs, we have already stumbled into the trough of disillusionment.”
(Source: Eurogamer.net)
