Personally I only really see AI as useful for image generation here. There's already a ton of name generators and tables to roll on for little character quirks for an NPC and I simply will never trust the current generative stuff to string together a useful narrative or dialogue.
Regardless of what the numbers actually are, responding to someone that says “Thing A is bad” by saying “Unrelated Thing B is just as bad” is a very silly argument.
While the specific example is bad because they're not comparable, people's moral stances vary wildly from person to person.
Personally, I dislike the power consumption complaint, because it's a lack of power overall that's at issue. Like telling people to turn off the lights when they leave the room, while using super low energy LED lights that use barely any power. Not using AI won't solve our power problems while people continue to rail against renewables that can be rolled out cheaply and quickly for example, but it's often the same people complaining about both things. The legal framework for plagarism definitely needs to be fixed when it comes to AI content, 100%, but the energy cost wouldn't be an issue if people stopped railing against things like reopening nuclear power, or deploying solar farms in the desert either. Our world runs on electricity now, including the cars and busses, and we need to rebuild for that reality and stop trying to "get the most out of old assets" like coal fired power.
Regarding D&D and AI, the argument for "Don't use it, it's evil" is the same problem in debate that people have with many new technologies. A technology that's been shown to make people's lives faster and more comfortable, will never be abandoned because people think it's damaging. Plastic is a perfect example. It's destroying the planet, yet use is accellerating even today.
AI being used by DMs is inevitable. People can hate that reality, but it is where the world is going as a whole, and D&D isn't a special niche who can avoid it. Like writing software however, it's insufficient to do it alone. You will need to treat it like a random generator that makes it's own random tables on the fly. It can be useful, but it's not a 90% fix for your own work. It's probably not even a 40% fix. It can spit out a bunch of 'ideas' many of which are nonsense.
You need to know your table. You need to know your world. AI can steal info on the existing worlds from things like the Forgotten Realms wiki, but so can you. All AI is really useful for at this point is as an English major. They can write prose, but they have no idea what it means or if it makes sense. That's completely on you as a user.
Your friend was right, you weren't learning. You were also burning through a small neighborhood use of power to not learn. I strongly encourage you to be upfront with your group saying "Hey, i am still learning, have patience while i puzzle this process out" and if they are a good group they will be understanding. Gen-Ai is not like the random name generators that have been around since the early days of the net, they use WAY more resources, and are trying to make you reliant on them, and not just 'coming up with an elven sounding name for an NPC who will be used once.'
I am going to expand a little, about specifically, Not learning, and how it isn't just an A.i. thing.
If you just found a bunch of encounters online and then plugged them into your adventure, but didn't take time to look at and puzzle out why it works, that is also a form of not learning, but it is much easier to start learning from. You need to start asking the question of, "why does this work?" and/or "Why didn't this work?" because despite being a math heavy game D&D is more than math. In old D&D, there was a list of random encounter tables that made absolutely no sense, and were just there to be there. You could get 4 litches showing up when a barbrawl happens and unless you are ready to do some really creative story surrounding why 4 litches were in a tavern, it was just absurd. it was a "Why didn't this work?" moment. A little thought of 'there is no reason for them to be in this tavern' is the answer to why it didn't work. You answer that, and then you start asking 'what would work?' and if it was level appropriate, but thematically inchoehrent then you know what to change. just change "litch" to "wizards" and maybe take off some of the undead specific stuff and replace it a little, then BAM. 4 very powerful wizards just happened to be in a tavern.
I will admit, that is an extremely simple example and the answer to 'why didn't this work' can be very complex, but it gives you an idea of how to start learning. Yes the math can be hard, yes the vibes and balance can be strange and inconsistent. But technology need not be absent from it. There are CR calculators that are not GenAI based and just a simple low power algorithm that can help with the math. if you have the formulas from the DMG, and you just use a calculator, then you are still learning the process.
I have a math disability. I know how much numbers can be a pain, but certain physics concepts that are very math heavy, i understand, even if i can't calculate them in my head. Here is the fun part. Most physists can't either. They use technology, just not the technology you are asking about. There are other technologies. There are other resources, there are other ways to learn the process without melting your mind.
You said you started relying on it to make encounters that fit your campaign OP, what aspects did you need help fitting better? If you tell us, we can help you find ways to do it yourself, ways for you to learn. and when you learn the rules, you then can learn when it is best to break them to wow your players.
Circling back to the Litches in a bar, you break that 'rule' and people ask 'why are they there?' and you can respond ' I am sure your character is just as confused. Perhaps they should find out?' and that can a hook for "The red Wizards of Thay are sending in spies to the area. They might be looking for something. We don't know what, but it is best they don't have it."
Edit: Rereading this, some people might think i am deflecting from the Gen-Ai thing, so i will clarify my stance. If said the words that accurately expressed my hatred for Gen-AI i would likely be incarcerated. My hatred for the thieving little plagiarism boxes that are the current Gen-ai models is intense, special, and not for polite company. It is a technology designed to steal from, then starve creatives. I think it is, without hyperbole, made with malice against the every creative aspect of the human soul.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
New research out of MIT shows we incur a 'cognitive debt' that is nonrecoverable when we have ChatGPT write things for us. Even when we simply use it to provide us with answers instead of going through the processes of actively searching for things.
The research used advanced neurological imaging to show that we are not using and exercising certain parts of brains when we use it that we would otherwise be using and exercising. The same research also found use of it erodes users' capacity for critical thinking. (Probably why we see so many of its proponents using it to generate incoherent or incorrect content and their then being incapable of seeing these problems.)
You can't argue with the science no matter how much those who will most benefit financially from its being used like to act as if it is going to save us. Telling us what are nothing more than the sort of 'prophecies' cults trade in when they tell us no matter how much it's harming the environment now... it's totally going to help us save the planet!
DM-ing is a creative endeavor. When we are small children we are perfectly capable of coming up with games of our own invention. I ran my first D&D game when I was still a child. I got into the hobby before I had even finished primary school. I used the books on my shelves and the illustrations within them as well as my favorite movies at the time to inspire me.
As for names for NPCs, I have been using the Albanian words or phrases for concepts as NPC names for years. Or, just rolling names up on one of the many random tables out there in one of the many great zines or on one the many great blogs others in the hobby have made available for us. The best of these are made up of names worthy of characters even the best authors of the genre might dream up. Why would I need a machine to make something up for me? Assuming that machine isn't just stealing what it gives me?
A large percentage of groups these days, run only the provided campaigns. They don't write their own stories, and they don't want to. They play the published campaigns, then complain when WotC doesn't provide them with new campaigns. These are not DMs that are 'learning' beyond their first campaign. They're reducing their workload by using a pre-built campaign, and just playing it as it's written.
Those people using AI to write their own campaigns are actually more creative than people just following a provided campaign.
It's the big difference I've seen since Basic/2nd Ed/3rd Ed, and the modern 5E game. (I didn't play 4E.) The over-reliance on someone else to provide the story. Back in the TSR/Early WOTC day, you'd use provide adventures in your game, throwing them in where it was appropriate and adapting them to fit. There were campaign settings, not campaigns. The publishers provided the world to reduce worldbuilding, so you could focus on writing the games. These days, the worldbuilding from WotC is getting thinner and thinner, like removing the lore from the Monster Manual, because they want to focus on providing people with the next Curse of Strahd best-seller.
When you bought the Menzoberran box set, it had two books of world, and an adventure to get you started. About the only "full campaign" I can remember was the Rod of Seven Parts, and that was their (somewhat lackluster) attempt at an epic campaign.
So if someone is debating "Run a pre-built campaign" vs "Use AI to help me build my own", I'd argue that the former is learning less (except for the first time DMs who are learning to run the game).
What you're arguing is a bit like arguing an actor delivering the absolute best performance the world has ever seen of the opening monologue of Richard III couldn't possibly be as creative an individual as some gormless and talentless individual who just asked ChatGPT to write them a monologue.
DMs learn best through practice. The best DMs I have ever encountered have been doing it for years. Not sitting in front of ChatGPT and asking it to do for them what their own brains should be perfectly capable of doing and then incurring that 'cognitive debt' I mentioned because they lack the patience and ingenuity it takes to really learn how to do something.
I don't run published campaigns, because I don't like the pace and scale of the things, and instead run adventures that are either of my own creation or by others but that fit perfectly into what is a world of my own creation. But I would still argue running a published campaign well requires an infinite deal more creativity than we see from those who need a machine to help them come up with their own.
The latter are engaging in a practice that research has now shown harms learning.
EDIT:
What about award-winning campaigns? Things like The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP? Or Masks of Nyarlathotep for CoC? A GM who even just reads through either of these is learning how to write good games better than someone who is just feeding ChatGPT prompts. (On this point, I have evolved as a DM more from reading good fiction than anything else.)
The thing I find most amusing about AI's most ardent of proponents is they are constantly talking about how 'soon' it will be able to do this and do that. So ensorcelled are they by the 'prophecies' of the Sam Altmans of our world.
I have seen firsthand what happens when people think that way—having to listen to someone insist about 16 months ago that problems encountered in content made using generative AI would 'soon' be a thing of the past only for these problems to now be exponentially worse than they were. Everyone where I work can see it except those with an unbridled enthusiasm for AI. Who are in denial. It's like watching members of a cult insist that everything is fine when it is no such thing.
A large percentage of groups these days, run only the provided campaigns. They don't write their own stories, and they don't want to. They play the published campaigns, then complain when WotC doesn't provide them with new campaigns. These are not DMs that are 'learning' beyond their first campaign. They're reducing their workload by using a pre-built campaign, and just playing it as it's written.
Those people using AI to write their own campaigns are actually more creative than people just following a provided campaign.
It's the big difference I've seen since Basic/2nd Ed/3rd Ed, and the modern 5E game. (I didn't play 4E.) The over-reliance on someone else to provide the story. Back in the TSR/Early WOTC day, you'd use provide adventures in your game, throwing them in where it was appropriate and adapting them to fit. There were campaign settings, not campaigns. The publishers provided the world to reduce worldbuilding, so you could focus on writing the games. These days, the worldbuilding from WotC is getting thinner and thinner, like removing the lore from the Monster Manual, because they want to focus on providing people with the next Curse of Strahd best-seller.
When you bought the Menzoberran box set, it had two books of world, and an adventure to get you started. About the only "full campaign" I can remember was the Rod of Seven Parts, and that was their (somewhat lackluster) attempt at an epic campaign.
So if someone is debating "Run a pre-built campaign" vs "Use AI to help me build my own", I'd argue that the former is learning less (except for the first time DMs who are learning to run the game).
My experience is the exact opposite. I played nothing but pre-written modules back in the AD&D days. In 5e, some DMs will drop in pre-written adventures as side quests in their homebrew campaign (I've done it myself), but even when running something like Curse of Strahd or the new Phandelver, they were putting their own spin on it and adding in plenty of extra content
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
A large percentage of groups these days, run only the provided campaigns. They don't write their own stories, and they don't want to. They play the published campaigns, then complain when WotC doesn't provide them with new campaigns. These are not DMs that are 'learning' beyond their first campaign. They're reducing their workload by using a pre-built campaign, and just playing it as it's written.
Those people using AI to write their own campaigns are actually more creative than people just following a provided campaign.
It's the big difference I've seen since Basic/2nd Ed/3rd Ed, and the modern 5E game. (I didn't play 4E.) The over-reliance on someone else to provide the story. Back in the TSR/Early WOTC day, you'd use provide adventures in your game, throwing them in where it was appropriate and adapting them to fit. There were campaign settings, not campaigns. The publishers provided the world to reduce worldbuilding, so you could focus on writing the games. These days, the worldbuilding from WotC is getting thinner and thinner, like removing the lore from the Monster Manual, because they want to focus on providing people with the next Curse of Strahd best-seller.
When you bought the Menzoberran box set, it had two books of world, and an adventure to get you started. About the only "full campaign" I can remember was the Rod of Seven Parts, and that was their (somewhat lackluster) attempt at an epic campaign.
So if someone is debating "Run a pre-built campaign" vs "Use AI to help me build my own", I'd argue that the former is learning less (except for the first time DMs who are learning to run the game).
I can't say i agree with that take. When you run a prebuilt module or something Gen-AI, you are just playing what is provided. When you had a setting sourcebook, you can reuse the world then do your own thing. When you had and adventure, you could repurpose parts. You played and grew.
Here is how it usually went. Run published adventure, get experience, start tweaking published adventure, get experience, Buy published adventure and take a hacksaw to it, cobble it together, get experience, next published adventure, scalpel this time, craft and kitbash adventure. Next Campaign, written from scratch. that is why i condemned the "just run published adventures without thinking" the thinking and learning is the big part of it. With A.I. that smashes something together, it might FEEL more creative in the moment, but.... you didn't use creative cognition to make it. You outsourced it to a server farm. You had something cobbled together for you, you didn't cobble it together yourself. Modules are like learning to ride a bike with training wheels, before taking them off to ride fully, AI is like riding cab. You didn't learn or do anything yourself. When you have a published adventure you can look over, or modify in the moment, you use creativity, modify to experiment. Most creative people can't help but rip it to pieces to learn. Published modules are only ever a problem when you don't deviate from them. In my experience that isn't a lot of people.
let me tell you something about 4E adventures. They were simple to run, simple to learn, but also.... simple to pull apart and experiment with. People were less intimidated to start ripping them to pieces for parts or to see how it worked. The encounters were very balanced and could be lifted and repurposed and in that repurposing you learn. 4E had problems, but their adventures were easy to learn from.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
The thing I find most amusing about AI's most ardent of proponents is they are constantly talking about how 'soon' it will be able to do this and do that. So ensorcelled are they by the 'prophecies' of the Sam Altmans of our world.
I have seen firsthand what happens when people think that way—having to listen to someone insist about 16 months ago that problems encountered in content made using generative AI would 'soon' be a thing of the past only for these problems to now be exponentially worse than they were. Everyone where I work can see it except those with an unbridled enthusiasm for AI. Who are in denial. It's like watching members of a cult insist that everything is fine when it is no such thing.
I think you missed my actual stance on using AI then.
It can be useful, but it's not a 90% fix for your own work. It's probably not even a 40% fix. It can spit out a bunch of 'ideas' many of which are nonsense.
You need to know your table. You need to know your world. AI can steal info on the existing worlds from things like the Forgotten Realms wiki, but so can you. All AI is really useful for at this point is as an English major. They can write prose, but they have no idea what it means or if it makes sense. That's completely on you as a user.
I never claimed that you can be a "gormless and talentless indvidual", but I think you're doing a MASSIVE disservice and insult to many DMs by characterizing it that way...
Your stance is that its use is more 'beneficial' than running published campaigns when it comes to creativity and to learning how to be a good DM.
Even though—as I have said—research now shows:
(a) we aren't using certain parts of our brains when we use it to produce things for us that we do use when we create things without its help and the effect this is having on users' brains is accumulative;
(b) using it impedes actual learning. I see this every day as someone who works in education.
When neurological imaging has shown us what someone's brain looks like on ChatGPT and it does not look good, but its proponents are still falling over themselves to defend its use ... well, it is as I said before: The same research also found use of it erodes users' capacity for critical thinking.
Have you ever read, if not run, published campaigns of the caliber of The Enemy Within or Masks of Nyarlathotep? The actual mentaleffort that requires compared to just getting ChatGPT to give you a bunch of 'ideas' to use in your campaign is comparable to reading the texts set by one's professor compared to just getting ChatGPT to help you write your thesis because you couldn't be bothered. It's infinitely less creative to get ChatGPT to churn out dreck than it is to read good writing and process it and appropriate it for something original. Less educational, as well.
We now know those who use ChatGPT to produce things for them or even just to give them answers to things are accumulating that 'cognitive debt.'
That is now undeniable. And this is also why—like I said—it's like a cult. It's like people don't care if they literally become stupider by having machines do thinking for them they should be perfectly capable of doing themselves. But they already lack the patience and ingenuity to do that much.
Read Dune by any chance?
As for your comments regarding the amount of energy AI consumes, ecologists are not talking about how we face 'a lack of power'; what they are talking about is how we need to see a shift in attitude when it comes to consumption. The only people talking about how we just need to generate 'more power' are governments and industries ruled by artifice. The manufacture alone and then the installation of a number of 'greener' sources of energy when industrialized to meet the needs of those who just can't give up needless playthings are themselves of gross detriment to the environment.
There are the ethical arguments against AI based on power consumption and contribution to climate change, plagiarization that steals from writers and other artists, the way AI models create and spread disinformation, etc. These arguments are all well and good and stand on their own merits.
But for D&D in particular, it's important to focus on the kinds of skills that are important for play and why cultivating those skills matters. I'll never bag on DMs who run published campaigns. You have to start somewhere, and learning from professionally crafted, published materials is one good place to start from. It's a good way to get familiar with what works in a D&D campaign and why it works. Run one good published adventure or campaign and you'll start getting an idea of what goes into crafting good adventures. Run several and you'll start seeing patterns about what makes for good worldbuilding, how to design appropriate encounters, what makes NPCs interesting, etc. Understanding these things sets up the framework for being able to build your own campaigns from scratch.
AI doesn't know how any of those things work. AI doesn't know anything, actually. It's an algorithm that dredges the Internet and mishmashes together responses to given prompts. When you ask it to give you story ideas it's going to steal things from other creators and worldbuilders without understanding what it is you really want or need. And it can't ever understand what it is you really want because it's an unreliable math formula more akin to a distorted autocorrect than an actual thinking machine.
What's more is, learning what mechanically makes good D&D campaigns work well is only part of what someone needs to be a proficient DM. Watch a bunch of TV and movies. Watch every episode of Make Some Noise on Dropout. Read poetry and comic books and epic literature and spicy romance novels. Listen to music. Listen to Carly Rae Jepsen and Daft Punk and Bethoven. Listen to a bunch of music you don't even like. Go on deep dives on TVTropes reading about the tropes in your favorite stories. Aimlessly browse Wikipedia learning about random things like the history of apple farming. Build within yourself a library of facts, ideas, and stories.
This is how I cobbled together a string of one-shot adventures pulling together elements inspired by Smokey and the Bandit, Gilmore Girls, The Magnificent Seven, Hart of Dixie, the Fantastic Four, Taylor Swift's Folklore album, and several poems by Robert Frost. And my players love these one-shots! Specifically, they love them because I pieced them together from things I'm familiar with that I know make good storytelling elements, and I know how it all fits together and why, which allows me to be flexible and creative in the moment when my players get really unpredictable.
Leaning on AI isn't going to help you learn any of that. You'll plateau without understanding why.
As long as you're not publishing it or profiting off of AI-generated content, the whole "plagiarism" argument goes away entirely. It's DnD...that's kind of just what nearly every DM does anyway. And the ones who don't do it call it "taking inspiration" even though their homebrew campaign is just another Lord of the Rings rehash. AI just cuts out a lot of the time invested in stealing said ideas and assets.
As far as quality goes, well, I'm pretty sure everyone here is on the same page that your results will be passable at best. But if you need to take the mental load off when it comes to generating NPCs on the fly or other unimportant details, AI is tough to beat.
Without taking a definitive stance for or against AI in D&D (or anywhere else), I have some bullets for you to consider:
Barring drastic and sweeping legislation, environmental upheaval or societal collapse, the technology is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.
Whatever your personal feelings about the tech may be, being able to efficiently prompt AI and receive detailed and useful output is likely to be an increasingly in-demand skill for both professional and personal use cases.
D&D (or any collaborative storytelling exercise really) offers a comparatively low-stakes opportunity to practice crafting and refining a wide variety of prompts in accordance with a similarly varied set of scenarios.
Whether those considerations outweigh one's personal misgivings regarding AI is left as an exercise for the reader.
Without taking a definitive stance for or against AI in D&D (or anywhere else), I have some bullets for you to consider:
Barring drastic and sweeping legislation, environmental upheaval or societal collapse, the technology is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.
Whatever your personal feelings about the tech may be, being able to efficiently prompt AI and receive detailed and useful output is likely to be an increasingly in-demand skill for both professional and personal use cases.
D&D (or any collaborative storytelling exercise really) offers a comparatively low-stakes opportunity to practice crafting and refining a wide variety of prompts in accordance with a similarly varied set of scenarios.
Whether those considerations outweigh one's personal misgivings regarding AI is left as an exercise for the reader.
Additionally, the technology is already enmeshed in most digital experiences these days, whether people want it or not. And given corporate views, this will not be stopping, and will become better and harder to identify.
Usage is inevitable when it's advantageous. I did some reading on the 'study' about losing critical thinking. Aside from the limited scope and study group, mentioned it its own limitations, there are dozens of studies and journal articles talking about how AI can be used to enhance critical thinking.
The simple answer "AI makes you dumber" is a bad clickbaity headline. The real effect is both still being explored and, like any new technology, far more to do with how you use it.
So with regards to D&D the response to the OP is, use it if you feel it enhances your game to generate more fun with less effort for your table. If you can offload the crunchy research while maintaining your own creative enjoyment and your table enjoys the fun you create through whatever means, then you're successfully bringing fun to the table.
If you feel that you're getting less creative using it, stop using it. If you feel that it's helping you give your friends an enjoyable experience, more than you could alone, use it. But maintain the driver's seat, don't let it drive you, or you won't be able to tell when it's going off the road into a ditch.
Additionally, the technology is already enmeshed in most digital experiences these days, whether people want it or not. And given corporate views, this will not be stopping, and will become better and harder to identify.
Usage is inevitable when it's advantageous. I did some reading on the 'study' about losing critical thinking. Aside from the limited scope and study group, mentioned it its own limitations, there are dozens of studies and journal articles talking about how AI can be used to enhance critical thinking.
The simple answer "AI makes you dumber" is a bad clickbaity headline. The real effect is both still being explored and, like any new technology, far more to do with how you use it.
So with regards to D&D the response to the OP is, use it if you feel it enhances your game to generate more fun with less effort for your table. If you can offload the crunchy research while maintaining your own creative enjoyment and your table enjoys the fun you create through whatever means, then you're successfully bringing fun to the table.
If you feel that you're getting less creative using it, stop using it. If you feel that it's helping you give your friends an enjoyable experience, more than you could alone, use it. But maintain the driver's seat, don't let it drive you, or you won't be able to tell when it's going off the road into a ditch.
Interestingly, that very first article you cited outlines specifically that the use of offloading cognitive burdens onto AI (much like what a DM would be using AI for) does in fact reduce cognitive ability as described in the literature review of the very article you cited, with six in-text citations to support this and other so-called 'downsides' to AI in education. Said a different way: the articles you dismissed as having limited scope are articles that your first cited article supports the findings of with other literature, further expanding the body of evidence that AI can deeply damage cognitive ability. So which is it? Is this article right or wrong? Because if it is correct, then that means the articles I linked to are also correct.
The section of this paper where it describes how AI can be used to improve critical thinking extends far beyond the scope of this discussion as well. Specifically, where cognitive load is not transferred to an external source like AI, but instead where AI is used to gauge individual learning ability and adapting lessons to fit individual limitations to foster growth. Other areas where it can potentially improve critical thinking is to question the information that AI offers (AI literacy and an understanding of AI hallucinations) and to create complex problems for the students to solve. Can you tell me how a DM would be using AI in this way?
I get the sense that you punched into Google some buzzwords like 'AI improves critical thinking' and did not really read these articles beyond a paragraph or two from any one of them that supported your rhetorical goals. That is confirmation bias. Given what I found in the first article, can I expect the same read from the others?
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert from Dune
While I do not believe that all A.I. is categorically bad, the people controlling most of A.I. development, funding most of A.I. research don't primarily care about the wellbeing of humanity; they are doing it to control large numbers of people and for short-term personal gain. Computers are useful but a limited tool that trains people to think in terms of binary options because computer code exists only as binaries (every bit is only a 1 or a 0). The advent of smartphones has been popular because it has placed a plethora of tools at our disposal, but has been managed poorly such that gacha games are made to be addicting and newer generations of people are incapable of even basic navigation without a smartphone. This is not an anti-technology rant, but my opinion (backed up by some facts) that we gain and lose at the same time with newer technologies. What's really damaging about rampant use of A.I. right now is not that robots will initiate Skynet and wipe out humanity (they are not nearly creative enough to do so), but that many public space has become a lot more quiet now that a lot more people just stare at their smartphones. Social skills have declined, dating has become more challenging in part because of this. It's no wonder that more people have mental/emotional disorders: human beings evolved to communicate through a lot of means. Heck reading isn't even a skill we evolved with at all. This is not to knock reading, but communication needs to re-incorporate visual cues, needs to consider how touch itself has been a major aspect of communication for millenia. Political extremism and paranoia is increasing in part because communication has changed too quickly on too broad of a scale. We have been the subjects of a human experiment through social media and rampant smartphone adoption before the consequences were studied.
A.I. in the hands of a select few very wealthy people who mostly want to get even wealthier is a very bad direction to go because it's training people to rely on machines that they themselves largely no longer control, whereby we can be tricked, manipulated, and have our worst tendencies (those based on fear and anger) accelerated.
The fact that WotC has chosen to simplify the 2024 edition of D&D to make it more compatible for VTTs is part of this trend. They will try to minimize finicky creative decision-making at every opportunity while creating "product" that we as "consumers" (not human beings with a wide variety of gifts, desires, strengths, vulnerabilties, and needs) are expected to buy to support their drive for maximum player engagement, which will be a game that is made more palatable for programmers to program, by the reduction of creative choice. We are getting tricked into sowing the seeds for the destruction of creative thinking. "Play in Virtual reality, not in the real world" but with a catchier slogan will be how they get us, if we let them.
Additionally, the technology is already enmeshed in most digital experiences these days, whether people want it or not. And given corporate views, this will not be stopping, and will become better and harder to identify.
Usage is inevitable when it's advantageous. I did some reading on the 'study' about losing critical thinking. Aside from the limited scope and study group, mentioned it its own limitations, there are dozens of studies and journal articles talking about how AI can be used to enhance critical thinking.
The simple answer "AI makes you dumber" is a bad clickbaity headline. The real effect is both still being explored and, like any new technology, far more to do with how you use it.
So with regards to D&D the response to the OP is, use it if you feel it enhances your game to generate more fun with less effort for your table. If you can offload the crunchy research while maintaining your own creative enjoyment and your table enjoys the fun you create through whatever means, then you're successfully bringing fun to the table.
If you feel that you're getting less creative using it, stop using it. If you feel that it's helping you give your friends an enjoyable experience, more than you could alone, use it. But maintain the driver's seat, don't let it drive you, or you won't be able to tell when it's going off the road into a ditch.
Interestingly, that very first article you cited outlines specifically that the use of offloading cognitive burdens onto AI (much like what a DM would be using AI for) does in fact reduce cognitive ability as described in the literature review of the very article you cited, with six in-text citations to support this and other so-called 'downsides' to AI in education. Said a different way: the articles you dismissed as having limited scope are articles that your first cited article supports the findings of with other literature, further expanding the body of evidence that AI can deeply damage cognitive ability. So which is it? Is this article right or wrong? Because if it is correct, then that means the articles I linked to are also correct.
The section of this paper where it describes how AI can be used to improve critical thinking extends far beyond the scope of this discussion as well. Specifically, where cognitive load is not transferred to an external source like AI, but instead where AI is used to gauge individual learning ability and adapting lessons to fit individual limitations to foster growth. Other areas where it can potentially improve critical thinking is to question the information that AI offers (AI literacy and an understanding of AI hallucinations) and to create complex problems for the students to solve. Can you tell me how a DM would be using AI in this way?
I get the sense that you punched into Google some buzzwords like 'AI improves critical thinking' and did not really read these articles beyond a paragraph or two from any one of them that supported your rhetorical goals. That is confirmation bias. Given what I found in the first article, can I expect the same read from the others?
I think you missed the point then. I actually looked for more than one study about it damaging critical thinking, and found a whole pile of studies outlining that there were bad ways to do it, and good ways to do it, and a lot of it comes down to how.
Which was the point I'm making.The conclusion of the first journal article is literally "We need to use it properly and things will be better, but if we don't it will be worse". It outlined how it can be done badly, which seems to be about as far as you got. If you got to the end, it points out that AI will be crucial in the future, and understanding it properly, and being able to think critically about it's use, as well as understanding it's limitations and benefits is essential. It has the potential to improve critical thinking, if used correctly. If has the potential to be harmful if not used correctly.
Which is my point. Writing it off as "AI Bad, Don't touch", is as useful as the horse riders demanding that cars be banned.
Your cars analogy is good. Because cars have been 'real good' for the environment too ...
We don't need to go back to riding gee-gees to and from work but sensible governments prioritize public transport and cycling and using those appendages called legs over building their cities around the dominance of privately owned vehicles. Not unlike how some of us prioritize using what are perfectly functioning brains over using machines whose rates of consumption are indefensible.
What are the disciplines of those who authored the articles you linked to? Education? A field in which we are seeing people intone cultish 'prophesies' about how AI will 'revolutionize' schooling? With no sign of science to back up their 'prophecies'? What are their thoughts on how ChatGPT routinely makes things up? Do their crystal balls tell them it won't do this before long or do they just not care and see nothing wrong with the proliferation of misinformation? Academics who don't take seriously the problems inherent in things like 'AI tutors'? That will not only give children information that is objectively false? But worse? Is that why they trade in misinformation as they carry water for Big Tech? I'd say the desperation alone with which its proponents rush to defend its use is pretty solid evidence for claims made about how those who spend too much time using ChatGPT see erosion in their capacity to think critically. Earlier your response to its impact on the environment—which cannot be overstated— was that we should just generate more power but do it as 'greenly' as possible. You are out of your depth talking about the environment. And now you are racing off to Google—or ChatGPT—to get it to give you some articles about how 'wonderful' AI is. This is the sort of display of confirmation bias I see at work every day from those who can't even entertain the idea it might be harmful. As if there isn't more to lose if it is.
Read Hao's book on OpenAI. Read Bender and Hanna's book that obliterates the deluge of hype about how "AI is the future." How "revolutionary" it is. Or even that LLMs are really AI. How easily duped people are by those who couldn't care less whether or not it does harm us cognitively or will harm children exponentially more so than has social media because all they care about is feeding their messiah complexes and making money.
Read Zitron's critiques of the industry.
As far as using it for D&D goes, I personally think using it for D&D is nothing short of an admission to being void of the creativity I expect from any good DM.
The number of visual artists and other creatives speaking out about its use and how it is an affront to human creativity ain't nothing, either. As a writer, I think anyone who has it write anything for them is mentally lazy. At best.
Common sense tells us if you are using it you are not going through certain cognitive processes you would without it.
It outlined how it can be done badly, which seems to be about as far as you got.
Probably because 'the ways it can be done badly' are exactly the ways OP wants to it, 95-plus percent of people use it, and which the industry is actively encouraging people to use it
Signed, someone who tags their Google searches with '-ai' at the end to eliminate the AI summary I never asked for, because I would just have to look up anything it tells me to verify it anyway
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
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Personally I only really see AI as useful for image generation here. There's already a ton of name generators and tables to roll on for little character quirks for an NPC and I simply will never trust the current generative stuff to string together a useful narrative or dialogue.
While the specific example is bad because they're not comparable, people's moral stances vary wildly from person to person.
Personally, I dislike the power consumption complaint, because it's a lack of power overall that's at issue. Like telling people to turn off the lights when they leave the room, while using super low energy LED lights that use barely any power. Not using AI won't solve our power problems while people continue to rail against renewables that can be rolled out cheaply and quickly for example, but it's often the same people complaining about both things. The legal framework for plagarism definitely needs to be fixed when it comes to AI content, 100%, but the energy cost wouldn't be an issue if people stopped railing against things like reopening nuclear power, or deploying solar farms in the desert either. Our world runs on electricity now, including the cars and busses, and we need to rebuild for that reality and stop trying to "get the most out of old assets" like coal fired power.
Regarding D&D and AI, the argument for "Don't use it, it's evil" is the same problem in debate that people have with many new technologies. A technology that's been shown to make people's lives faster and more comfortable, will never be abandoned because people think it's damaging. Plastic is a perfect example. It's destroying the planet, yet use is accellerating even today.
AI being used by DMs is inevitable. People can hate that reality, but it is where the world is going as a whole, and D&D isn't a special niche who can avoid it. Like writing software however, it's insufficient to do it alone. You will need to treat it like a random generator that makes it's own random tables on the fly. It can be useful, but it's not a 90% fix for your own work. It's probably not even a 40% fix. It can spit out a bunch of 'ideas' many of which are nonsense.
You need to know your table. You need to know your world. AI can steal info on the existing worlds from things like the Forgotten Realms wiki, but so can you. All AI is really useful for at this point is as an English major. They can write prose, but they have no idea what it means or if it makes sense. That's completely on you as a user.
I am going to expand a little, about specifically, Not learning, and how it isn't just an A.i. thing.
If you just found a bunch of encounters online and then plugged them into your adventure, but didn't take time to look at and puzzle out why it works, that is also a form of not learning, but it is much easier to start learning from.
You need to start asking the question of, "why does this work?" and/or "Why didn't this work?" because despite being a math heavy game D&D is more than math.
In old D&D, there was a list of random encounter tables that made absolutely no sense, and were just there to be there. You could get 4 litches showing up when a barbrawl happens and unless you are ready to do some really creative story surrounding why 4 litches were in a tavern, it was just absurd. it was a "Why didn't this work?" moment. A little thought of 'there is no reason for them to be in this tavern' is the answer to why it didn't work. You answer that, and then you start asking 'what would work?' and if it was level appropriate, but thematically inchoehrent then you know what to change. just change "litch" to "wizards" and maybe take off some of the undead specific stuff and replace it a little, then BAM. 4 very powerful wizards just happened to be in a tavern.
I will admit, that is an extremely simple example and the answer to 'why didn't this work' can be very complex, but it gives you an idea of how to start learning. Yes the math can be hard, yes the vibes and balance can be strange and inconsistent. But technology need not be absent from it. There are CR calculators that are not GenAI based and just a simple low power algorithm that can help with the math. if you have the formulas from the DMG, and you just use a calculator, then you are still learning the process.
I have a math disability. I know how much numbers can be a pain, but certain physics concepts that are very math heavy, i understand, even if i can't calculate them in my head. Here is the fun part. Most physists can't either. They use technology, just not the technology you are asking about.
There are other technologies. There are other resources, there are other ways to learn the process without melting your mind.
You said you started relying on it to make encounters that fit your campaign OP, what aspects did you need help fitting better? If you tell us, we can help you find ways to do it yourself, ways for you to learn. and when you learn the rules, you then can learn when it is best to break them to wow your players.
Circling back to the Litches in a bar, you break that 'rule' and people ask 'why are they there?' and you can respond ' I am sure your character is just as confused. Perhaps they should find out?' and that can a hook for "The red Wizards of Thay are sending in spies to the area. They might be looking for something. We don't know what, but it is best they don't have it."
Edit: Rereading this, some people might think i am deflecting from the Gen-Ai thing, so i will clarify my stance. If said the words that accurately expressed my hatred for Gen-AI i would likely be incarcerated. My hatred for the thieving little plagiarism boxes that are the current Gen-ai models is intense, special, and not for polite company. It is a technology designed to steal from, then starve creatives.
I think it is, without hyperbole, made with malice against the every creative aspect of the human soul.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
New research out of MIT shows we incur a 'cognitive debt' that is nonrecoverable when we have ChatGPT write things for us. Even when we simply use it to provide us with answers instead of going through the processes of actively searching for things.
The research used advanced neurological imaging to show that we are not using and exercising certain parts of brains when we use it that we would otherwise be using and exercising. The same research also found use of it erodes users' capacity for critical thinking. (Probably why we see so many of its proponents using it to generate incoherent or incorrect content and their then being incapable of seeing these problems.)
You can't argue with the science no matter how much those who will most benefit financially from its being used like to act as if it is going to save us. Telling us what are nothing more than the sort of 'prophecies' cults trade in when they tell us no matter how much it's harming the environment now... it's totally going to help us save the planet!
DM-ing is a creative endeavor. When we are small children we are perfectly capable of coming up with games of our own invention. I ran my first D&D game when I was still a child. I got into the hobby before I had even finished primary school. I used the books on my shelves and the illustrations within them as well as my favorite movies at the time to inspire me.
As for names for NPCs, I have been using the Albanian words or phrases for concepts as NPC names for years. Or, just rolling names up on one of the many random tables out there in one of the many great zines or on one the many great blogs others in the hobby have made available for us. The best of these are made up of names worthy of characters even the best authors of the genre might dream up. Why would I need a machine to make something up for me? Assuming that machine isn't just stealing what it gives me?
I will add onto the "not learning" thing.
A large percentage of groups these days, run only the provided campaigns. They don't write their own stories, and they don't want to. They play the published campaigns, then complain when WotC doesn't provide them with new campaigns. These are not DMs that are 'learning' beyond their first campaign. They're reducing their workload by using a pre-built campaign, and just playing it as it's written.
Those people using AI to write their own campaigns are actually more creative than people just following a provided campaign.
It's the big difference I've seen since Basic/2nd Ed/3rd Ed, and the modern 5E game. (I didn't play 4E.) The over-reliance on someone else to provide the story. Back in the TSR/Early WOTC day, you'd use provide adventures in your game, throwing them in where it was appropriate and adapting them to fit. There were campaign settings, not campaigns. The publishers provided the world to reduce worldbuilding, so you could focus on writing the games. These days, the worldbuilding from WotC is getting thinner and thinner, like removing the lore from the Monster Manual, because they want to focus on providing people with the next Curse of Strahd best-seller.
When you bought the Menzoberran box set, it had two books of world, and an adventure to get you started. About the only "full campaign" I can remember was the Rod of Seven Parts, and that was their (somewhat lackluster) attempt at an epic campaign.
So if someone is debating "Run a pre-built campaign" vs "Use AI to help me build my own", I'd argue that the former is learning less (except for the first time DMs who are learning to run the game).
What you're arguing is a bit like arguing an actor delivering the absolute best performance the world has ever seen of the opening monologue of Richard III couldn't possibly be as creative an individual as some gormless and talentless individual who just asked ChatGPT to write them a monologue.
DMs learn best through practice. The best DMs I have ever encountered have been doing it for years. Not sitting in front of ChatGPT and asking it to do for them what their own brains should be perfectly capable of doing and then incurring that 'cognitive debt' I mentioned because they lack the patience and ingenuity it takes to really learn how to do something.
I don't run published campaigns, because I don't like the pace and scale of the things, and instead run adventures that are either of my own creation or by others but that fit perfectly into what is a world of my own creation. But I would still argue running a published campaign well requires an infinite deal more creativity than we see from those who need a machine to help them come up with their own.
The latter are engaging in a practice that research has now shown harms learning.
EDIT:
What about award-winning campaigns? Things like The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP? Or Masks of Nyarlathotep for CoC? A GM who even just reads through either of these is learning how to write good games better than someone who is just feeding ChatGPT prompts. (On this point, I have evolved as a DM more from reading good fiction than anything else.)
The thing I find most amusing about AI's most ardent of proponents is they are constantly talking about how 'soon' it will be able to do this and do that. So ensorcelled are they by the 'prophecies' of the Sam Altmans of our world.
I have seen firsthand what happens when people think that way—having to listen to someone insist about 16 months ago that problems encountered in content made using generative AI would 'soon' be a thing of the past only for these problems to now be exponentially worse than they were. Everyone where I work can see it except those with an unbridled enthusiasm for AI. Who are in denial. It's like watching members of a cult insist that everything is fine when it is no such thing.
My experience is the exact opposite. I played nothing but pre-written modules back in the AD&D days. In 5e, some DMs will drop in pre-written adventures as side quests in their homebrew campaign (I've done it myself), but even when running something like Curse of Strahd or the new Phandelver, they were putting their own spin on it and adding in plenty of extra content
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I can't say i agree with that take. When you run a prebuilt module or something Gen-AI, you are just playing what is provided.
When you had a setting sourcebook, you can reuse the world then do your own thing. When you had and adventure, you could repurpose parts. You played and grew.
Here is how it usually went.
Run published adventure, get experience, start tweaking published adventure, get experience, Buy published adventure and take a hacksaw to it, cobble it together, get experience, next published adventure, scalpel this time, craft and kitbash adventure. Next Campaign, written from scratch.
that is why i condemned the "just run published adventures without thinking" the thinking and learning is the big part of it.
With A.I. that smashes something together, it might FEEL more creative in the moment, but.... you didn't use creative cognition to make it. You outsourced it to a server farm. You had something cobbled together for you, you didn't cobble it together yourself. Modules are like learning to ride a bike with training wheels, before taking them off to ride fully, AI is like riding cab. You didn't learn or do anything yourself.
When you have a published adventure you can look over, or modify in the moment, you use creativity, modify to experiment. Most creative people can't help but rip it to pieces to learn.
Published modules are only ever a problem when you don't deviate from them. In my experience that isn't a lot of people.
let me tell you something about 4E adventures. They were simple to run, simple to learn, but also.... simple to pull apart and experiment with. People were less intimidated to start ripping them to pieces for parts or to see how it worked. The encounters were very balanced and could be lifted and repurposed and in that repurposing you learn.
4E had problems, but their adventures were easy to learn from.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
I think you missed my actual stance on using AI then.
I never claimed that you can be a "gormless and talentless indvidual", but I think you're doing a MASSIVE disservice and insult to many DMs by characterizing it that way...
Your stance is that its use is more 'beneficial' than running published campaigns when it comes to creativity and to learning how to be a good DM.
Even though—as I have said—research now shows:
(a) we aren't using certain parts of our brains when we use it to produce things for us that we do use when we create things without its help and the effect this is having on users' brains is accumulative;
(b) using it impedes actual learning. I see this every day as someone who works in education.
When neurological imaging has shown us what someone's brain looks like on ChatGPT and it does not look good, but its proponents are still falling over themselves to defend its use ... well, it is as I said before: The same research also found use of it erodes users' capacity for critical thinking.
Have you ever read, if not run, published campaigns of the caliber of The Enemy Within or Masks of Nyarlathotep? The actual mental effort that requires compared to just getting ChatGPT to give you a bunch of 'ideas' to use in your campaign is comparable to reading the texts set by one's professor compared to just getting ChatGPT to help you write your thesis because you couldn't be bothered. It's infinitely less creative to get ChatGPT to churn out dreck than it is to read good writing and process it and appropriate it for something original. Less educational, as well.
We now know those who use ChatGPT to produce things for them or even just to give them answers to things are accumulating that 'cognitive debt.'
That is now undeniable. And this is also why—like I said—it's like a cult. It's like people don't care if they literally become stupider by having machines do thinking for them they should be perfectly capable of doing themselves. But they already lack the patience and ingenuity to do that much.
Read Dune by any chance?
As for your comments regarding the amount of energy AI consumes, ecologists are not talking about how we face 'a lack of power'; what they are talking about is how we need to see a shift in attitude when it comes to consumption. The only people talking about how we just need to generate 'more power' are governments and industries ruled by artifice. The manufacture alone and then the installation of a number of 'greener' sources of energy when industrialized to meet the needs of those who just can't give up needless playthings are themselves of gross detriment to the environment.
In addition to the above article, here is the article 7thlevelspecialist was citing.
AI makes your brain lazy.
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AI is the kind of crutch that's best left unused.
There are the ethical arguments against AI based on power consumption and contribution to climate change, plagiarization that steals from writers and other artists, the way AI models create and spread disinformation, etc. These arguments are all well and good and stand on their own merits.
But for D&D in particular, it's important to focus on the kinds of skills that are important for play and why cultivating those skills matters. I'll never bag on DMs who run published campaigns. You have to start somewhere, and learning from professionally crafted, published materials is one good place to start from. It's a good way to get familiar with what works in a D&D campaign and why it works. Run one good published adventure or campaign and you'll start getting an idea of what goes into crafting good adventures. Run several and you'll start seeing patterns about what makes for good worldbuilding, how to design appropriate encounters, what makes NPCs interesting, etc. Understanding these things sets up the framework for being able to build your own campaigns from scratch.
AI doesn't know how any of those things work. AI doesn't know anything, actually. It's an algorithm that dredges the Internet and mishmashes together responses to given prompts. When you ask it to give you story ideas it's going to steal things from other creators and worldbuilders without understanding what it is you really want or need. And it can't ever understand what it is you really want because it's an unreliable math formula more akin to a distorted autocorrect than an actual thinking machine.
What's more is, learning what mechanically makes good D&D campaigns work well is only part of what someone needs to be a proficient DM. Watch a bunch of TV and movies. Watch every episode of Make Some Noise on Dropout. Read poetry and comic books and epic literature and spicy romance novels. Listen to music. Listen to Carly Rae Jepsen and Daft Punk and Bethoven. Listen to a bunch of music you don't even like. Go on deep dives on TVTropes reading about the tropes in your favorite stories. Aimlessly browse Wikipedia learning about random things like the history of apple farming. Build within yourself a library of facts, ideas, and stories.
This is how I cobbled together a string of one-shot adventures pulling together elements inspired by Smokey and the Bandit, Gilmore Girls, The Magnificent Seven, Hart of Dixie, the Fantastic Four, Taylor Swift's Folklore album, and several poems by Robert Frost. And my players love these one-shots! Specifically, they love them because I pieced them together from things I'm familiar with that I know make good storytelling elements, and I know how it all fits together and why, which allows me to be flexible and creative in the moment when my players get really unpredictable.
Leaning on AI isn't going to help you learn any of that. You'll plateau without understanding why.
As long as you're not publishing it or profiting off of AI-generated content, the whole "plagiarism" argument goes away entirely. It's DnD...that's kind of just what nearly every DM does anyway. And the ones who don't do it call it "taking inspiration" even though their homebrew campaign is just another Lord of the Rings rehash. AI just cuts out a lot of the time invested in stealing said ideas and assets.
As far as quality goes, well, I'm pretty sure everyone here is on the same page that your results will be passable at best. But if you need to take the mental load off when it comes to generating NPCs on the fly or other unimportant details, AI is tough to beat.
Without taking a definitive stance for or against AI in D&D (or anywhere else), I have some bullets for you to consider:
Whether those considerations outweigh one's personal misgivings regarding AI is left as an exercise for the reader.
Additionally, the technology is already enmeshed in most digital experiences these days, whether people want it or not. And given corporate views, this will not be stopping, and will become better and harder to identify.
Usage is inevitable when it's advantageous. I did some reading on the 'study' about losing critical thinking. Aside from the limited scope and study group, mentioned it its own limitations, there are dozens of studies and journal articles talking about how AI can be used to enhance critical thinking.
The simple answer "AI makes you dumber" is a bad clickbaity headline. The real effect is both still being explored and, like any new technology, far more to do with how you use it.
So with regards to D&D the response to the OP is, use it if you feel it enhances your game to generate more fun with less effort for your table. If you can offload the crunchy research while maintaining your own creative enjoyment and your table enjoys the fun you create through whatever means, then you're successfully bringing fun to the table.
If you feel that you're getting less creative using it, stop using it. If you feel that it's helping you give your friends an enjoyable experience, more than you could alone, use it. But maintain the driver's seat, don't let it drive you, or you won't be able to tell when it's going off the road into a ditch.
Interestingly, that very first article you cited outlines specifically that the use of offloading cognitive burdens onto AI (much like what a DM would be using AI for) does in fact reduce cognitive ability as described in the literature review of the very article you cited, with six in-text citations to support this and other so-called 'downsides' to AI in education. Said a different way: the articles you dismissed as having limited scope are articles that your first cited article supports the findings of with other literature, further expanding the body of evidence that AI can deeply damage cognitive ability. So which is it? Is this article right or wrong? Because if it is correct, then that means the articles I linked to are also correct.
The section of this paper where it describes how AI can be used to improve critical thinking extends far beyond the scope of this discussion as well. Specifically, where cognitive load is not transferred to an external source like AI, but instead where AI is used to gauge individual learning ability and adapting lessons to fit individual limitations to foster growth. Other areas where it can potentially improve critical thinking is to question the information that AI offers (AI literacy and an understanding of AI hallucinations) and to create complex problems for the students to solve. Can you tell me how a DM would be using AI in this way?
I get the sense that you punched into Google some buzzwords like 'AI improves critical thinking' and did not really read these articles beyond a paragraph or two from any one of them that supported your rhetorical goals. That is confirmation bias. Given what I found in the first article, can I expect the same read from the others?
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“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert from Dune
While I do not believe that all A.I. is categorically bad, the people controlling most of A.I. development, funding most of A.I. research don't primarily care about the wellbeing of humanity; they are doing it to control large numbers of people and for short-term personal gain. Computers are useful but a limited tool that trains people to think in terms of binary options because computer code exists only as binaries (every bit is only a 1 or a 0). The advent of smartphones has been popular because it has placed a plethora of tools at our disposal, but has been managed poorly such that gacha games are made to be addicting and newer generations of people are incapable of even basic navigation without a smartphone. This is not an anti-technology rant, but my opinion (backed up by some facts) that we gain and lose at the same time with newer technologies. What's really damaging about rampant use of A.I. right now is not that robots will initiate Skynet and wipe out humanity (they are not nearly creative enough to do so), but that many public space has become a lot more quiet now that a lot more people just stare at their smartphones. Social skills have declined, dating has become more challenging in part because of this. It's no wonder that more people have mental/emotional disorders: human beings evolved to communicate through a lot of means. Heck reading isn't even a skill we evolved with at all. This is not to knock reading, but communication needs to re-incorporate visual cues, needs to consider how touch itself has been a major aspect of communication for millenia. Political extremism and paranoia is increasing in part because communication has changed too quickly on too broad of a scale. We have been the subjects of a human experiment through social media and rampant smartphone adoption before the consequences were studied.
A.I. in the hands of a select few very wealthy people who mostly want to get even wealthier is a very bad direction to go because it's training people to rely on machines that they themselves largely no longer control, whereby we can be tricked, manipulated, and have our worst tendencies (those based on fear and anger) accelerated.
The fact that WotC has chosen to simplify the 2024 edition of D&D to make it more compatible for VTTs is part of this trend. They will try to minimize finicky creative decision-making at every opportunity while creating "product" that we as "consumers" (not human beings with a wide variety of gifts, desires, strengths, vulnerabilties, and needs) are expected to buy to support their drive for maximum player engagement, which will be a game that is made more palatable for programmers to program, by the reduction of creative choice. We are getting tricked into sowing the seeds for the destruction of creative thinking. "Play in Virtual reality, not in the real world" but with a catchier slogan will be how they get us, if we let them.
I think you missed the point then. I actually looked for more than one study about it damaging critical thinking, and found a whole pile of studies outlining that there were bad ways to do it, and good ways to do it, and a lot of it comes down to how.
Which was the point I'm making.The conclusion of the first journal article is literally "We need to use it properly and things will be better, but if we don't it will be worse". It outlined how it can be done badly, which seems to be about as far as you got. If you got to the end, it points out that AI will be crucial in the future, and understanding it properly, and being able to think critically about it's use, as well as understanding it's limitations and benefits is essential. It has the potential to improve critical thinking, if used correctly. If has the potential to be harmful if not used correctly.
Which is my point. Writing it off as "AI Bad, Don't touch", is as useful as the horse riders demanding that cars be banned.
Your cars analogy is good. Because cars have been 'real good' for the environment too ...
We don't need to go back to riding gee-gees to and from work but sensible governments prioritize public transport and cycling and using those appendages called legs over building their cities around the dominance of privately owned vehicles. Not unlike how some of us prioritize using what are perfectly functioning brains over using machines whose rates of consumption are indefensible.
What are the disciplines of those who authored the articles you linked to? Education? A field in which we are seeing people intone cultish 'prophesies' about how AI will 'revolutionize' schooling? With no sign of science to back up their 'prophecies'? What are their thoughts on how ChatGPT routinely makes things up? Do their crystal balls tell them it won't do this before long or do they just not care and see nothing wrong with the proliferation of misinformation? Academics who don't take seriously the problems inherent in things like 'AI tutors'? That will not only give children information that is objectively false? But worse? Is that why they trade in misinformation as they carry water for Big Tech? I'd say the desperation alone with which its proponents rush to defend its use is pretty solid evidence for claims made about how those who spend too much time using ChatGPT see erosion in their capacity to think critically. Earlier your response to its impact on the environment—which cannot be overstated— was that we should just generate more power but do it as 'greenly' as possible. You are out of your depth talking about the environment. And now you are racing off to Google—or ChatGPT—to get it to give you some articles about how 'wonderful' AI is. This is the sort of display of confirmation bias I see at work every day from those who can't even entertain the idea it might be harmful. As if there isn't more to lose if it is.
Read Hao's book on OpenAI. Read Bender and Hanna's book that obliterates the deluge of hype about how "AI is the future." How "revolutionary" it is. Or even that LLMs are really AI. How easily duped people are by those who couldn't care less whether or not it does harm us cognitively or will harm children exponentially more so than has social media because all they care about is feeding their messiah complexes and making money.
Read Zitron's critiques of the industry.
As far as using it for D&D goes, I personally think using it for D&D is nothing short of an admission to being void of the creativity I expect from any good DM.
The number of visual artists and other creatives speaking out about its use and how it is an affront to human creativity ain't nothing, either. As a writer, I think anyone who has it write anything for them is mentally lazy. At best.
Common sense tells us if you are using it you are not going through certain cognitive processes you would without it.
We don't even need science to tell us that.
But it does.
Probably because 'the ways it can be done badly' are exactly the ways OP wants to it, 95-plus percent of people use it, and which the industry is actively encouraging people to use it
Signed, someone who tags their Google searches with '-ai' at the end to eliminate the AI summary I never asked for, because I would just have to look up anything it tells me to verify it anyway
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