Would you roleplay with AI?

[IoleRae]

Yeah, I didn’t take this as a “RP with AI as it is now”, it can’t lol. It’s not even AI. When the tech is better though, having it take over bit parts in stories will add a lot. I wouldn’t want it to do the other PCs, that’s not why we are here, but background noise could really bring a world to life.

[GF]

@IoleRae said in Would you roleplay with AI?:

It’s not even AI.

I’m really trying to not be the kind of person who quibbles about definitions, but seriously: it’s not AI. We don’t even know if AI is physically possible; if code could ever be written that can simulate intelligence and if hardware could ever exist that would be capable of computing at the necessary speed.

So if the question is, “Would you invite Lt. Commander Data to a D&D game,” then sure. If the question is, “Would you RP with ChatbotGPT,” then I’d try anything once but I doubt I’d try that twice.

[Tez]

This seems topical:

ChatGPT plays TTRPGs #dnd #cofd #ttrpg Demon: The Descent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1ZOLL0vvBA

It’s about 10 minutes. This 100% tracks with my experiencing of trying to get ChatGPT to help me make character sheets for CoD NPCs. GOD IT WAS USELESS.

[Pavel]

@Tez Shh, don’t ruin it. We can all just tell our resident Mummy fan that it can play Mummy with them. >_>

[Polk]

@GF I don’t even know what to think of the definition of AI. The team at the MIT AI Lab started as a dedicated place for researching AI in 1960, and it’s been a first-class research area since before then.

The software they developed just in operating systems and programming was so revolutionary half the lab would get hired away to do THAT stuff.

For a long time I used to think what we have NOW was impossible: a computer generating new natural language text in response to prompts.

In fact for a long time, many of the AI wizards would call computer vision or natural language understanding “AI-hard” meaning you had to have an AI to solve those problems.

Well, we now are starting to have those things. So, by the definitions that we used to have, we now are starting to have AIs.

They’re not the science fiction form of AI that is “self-aware” in some impossible-to-define way, but that’s usually just a plot point anyway.

[Arkandel]

I think one of the major issues might be to maintain a degree of internal consistency for any given recurring characters.

For example I could see the AI already being capable of more or less roleplaying a convincing bartender. But would they remember you or would you be a stranger to them every time let alone reference that time when they saw you shoot a monster in the face in that PrP?

One of the downsides of AI too is how easily the immersion can backfire if it becomes repetitive or nonsensical. Like those wandering Skyrim guards talking about taking an arrow to the knee; at some point it becomes more of a running meme than a useful feature to flesh out the world.

[Pavel]

@Arkandel Well, in the fantasy experiment land you described in your initial premise, the AI (which doesn’t exist yet) could do everything you’re asking about. It’d be specialised and probably only capable of being an NPC simulator. So it’d be a specific kind of virtual intelligence rather than a general artificial intelligence.

[Rucket]

Would I RP with AI? Sure, why not. I’ll keep the nice AI focused on RP instead of trying to wipe out all of humanity.

In more serious terms, AI GMing is probably a good first step. Imagine kids who wanna play D&D but don’t want to find a group to be a “newb”, could be some interesting applications for onboarding younger people into tabletop gaming or something.

[Faraday]

@Polk said in Would you roleplay with AI?:

So, by the definitions that we used to have, we now are starting to have AIs.

In a purely technical sense, AI has traditionally meant human-like intelligence. We are nowhere near that. The apps we have currently (ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, etc.) are highly specialized task bots. Impressive, to be sure - I’m not discounting the technical achievements here. But they can only do that one thing, in an extremely derivative fashion, and (IMHO anyway) nowhere near to human-like capability.

That said, the definition has evolved somewhat, with AI being more viewed as a broad field of applications, and Machine Learning (like ChatGPT/etc.) being a subset. Here’s one source explaining the distinction.

Video games have been talking “NPC AI” for years (heck, I even have a +combat/ai command in FS3) but it’s not AI in the original sense of the word there either. It’s just a decision-making algorithm.

English is a fluid language, and definitions adapt - especially where new technology is concerned.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in Would you roleplay with AI?:

It’s just a decision-making algorithm

So am I, let’s be fair.

[Vulgar Boy]

Al’s an okay guy and a decent RPer.

[farfalla]

If AI worked and was ethically sourced, I would play with one for sure. If I can’t tell the difference, it’s all the same to me. Sounds great, we will always have the same timezone.

[Roz]

@farfalla said in Would you roleplay with AI?:

Sounds great, we will always have the same timezone.

lmao best take

[Polk]

At some point, in a few years, someone’s gonna launch an Ares with a few AI players on async, and see how long it takes for someone to notice.