After Firing More Than 300 People, EA CEO Says That AI Is the Future of the Company

AJUMP23 said:
He is correct in his assessment.
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Absolutely. This is almost too obvious to make a statement out of it. AI is the future of this industry, and nobody really should want prices to just increase all the time until you sell like 1K copies to a couple millionaires. Video games are a mass market like movies and books. To keep prices in check, companies need to work on their efficiency, and AI is the key component in that equation.
 
xrnzaaas said:
Good or bad, there's always some creative process behind things created by humans. With AI you can bet it's going to be completely soulless, relying only on what it's been fed and not understanding what creativity means.
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I'm not so sure anymore. I've seen some recent A.I art that looks amazing. I mean look at this. Done with midjourney. I find it very impressive.
8Z9rOde.jpeg
 
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semiconscious said:
if it can be done digitally, it either can, or will eventually, be done by ai, just as with manufacturing & robots. what're people supposed to do to earn a living at that point? the same geniuses who enthusiastically came up with both these things apparently haven't come up with an answer to that one...
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Universal basic income. But they don't give a shit about that.
 
He's certainly not wrong, present AI still in its infancy has pretty much already surpassed master artists, with budget consumer hardware able to out-create 1000's of people every minute. There is no future in hiring armies of people to draw concept art or model incidental dressings, characters, and environments. Games will be made by small teams of high level creatives and quality control prompt wizards who can realize a vision and turn AI slop into coherent quality products. The danger for the mega corps is this technology being accessible to the plebs, with arm chair developers and basement indies being able to make games with the same or better production values than the AAA's.
 
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Parazels said:
Of course developers have to adjust and control game development! However, if you need to generate a realistic stadium for FIFA, what special creativity do you expect from a human?
Ok, what if you need to create a unique anime character? You can ask AI to generate 1000 pictures and then pick out the best. Or some of these pictures can inspire you to create what you need. Is it bad?
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Sure, I won't deny it may be useful in the situations you've mentioned. AI can be a good support tool, but I'm not a fan of implementing it as a cost cutting measure to replace actual jobs and hope that customers won't see / won't care about AI art or models in the final product.
 
Fafalada said:
Current AI makes for better CEO than engineer replacements. But I doubt Mr Wilson would give up any of his comp to fund "efficiency".
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People always say this like it's a big gotcha and it's really fucking stupid.

The AI is not a self-aware entity. It is, right now, a prompt tool. Someone would be writing those prompts. Without the questions, you don't have answers. Whoever knows how to ask the best questions or define parameters would be appointed to control that (AI) and essentially lead the company - ie, be the CEO.

But there's more to running a company than asking linguistic or numerical questions. And the questions that you can ask, you're probably not going to get specific answers applicable enough to any one of the dozens of teams, projects and administrative functions of a specific organization.
 
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cyberheater said:
I'm not so sure anymore. I've seen some recent A.I art that looks amazing. I mean look at this. Done with midjourney. I find it very impressive.
8Z9rOde.jpeg
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People call AI art slop, we're in literally the first iteration of AI ever. This is the worst it will ever be, and yet the latest roll out is generating AI art better than 99% of what's being created by artists.
 
Haint said:
He's certainly not wrong, present AI still in its infancy has pretty much already surpassed master artists, with budget consumer hardware able to out-create 1000's of people every minute. There is no future in hiring armies of people to draw concept art or model incidental dressings, characters, and environments. Games will be made by small teams of high level creatives and quality control prompt wizards who can realize a vision and turn AI slop into coherent quality products. The danger for the mega corps is this technology being accessible to the plebs, with arm chair developers and basement indies being able to make games with the same or better production values than the AAA's.
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The only question is if AI vendors know how valuable the tech is and whether they'll charge accordingly... that could be a real limiter on how openly "available" this is. You also have issues of copyright.

Also, while video is one thing, you have to imagine that real-time assets, physics simulation, rigging, optimization, etc is going to wind up being very expensive on the server level. When everyone was spamming Ghibli filters over pictures, OpenAI temporarily shut down the function and are introducing limits. Generating entire asset libraries from scratch, even just limited to the daily workflow of all the AAA/mid-level publishers today sounds somewhat unrealistic.
 
Loomy said:
Universal basic income. But they don't give a shit about that.
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I really hope this doesn't happen. Millions of ex-workers surviving on basic income. There has to be a better way.
 
Icymanipulator said:
It's not the same. If a person plagiarizes or copies something they can be held liable or sued. AI literally can't create anything new on its own. Have you seen those videos where people ask AI to generate an image of a full glass of wine? It can't. Because all the images of wine online are half full.
Anything created like this with AI is essentially theft. Companies are OK when they get to steal others hard work but heaven forbid some working class person downloads a movie or game. It's a hypocritical double standard.
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Some folks are blind to individuality or personality. Every illustration, piece of artwork and/or code blurs and meshes into the same grey thing to them. They're not creators. Somewhere deep down they might even envy them and are eager to prove how "obsolete" they are through some slapdash AI imagery without even knowing what image set it originated from.

Good thing AI imagery can't be copyrighted by law atm. At least, in the US. Else you'd have a flood of these MBA types falling over themselves to replace their creative teams with "professional" prompt engineers in no time. If anything, artists should start jacking up their prices to make it irritating for these people to use or take advantage of their work (in any format) in model training. It would counter balance their eagerness.

You know what, on second thought, I actually want to see these AAA publishers adopt AI. That way you'd be able to distinguish the overtly generic from those who actually did do some honest work.
 
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Mattyp said:
People call AI art slop, we're in literally the first iteration of AI ever. This is the worst it will ever be, and yet the latest roll out is generating AI art better than 99% of what's being created by artists.
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Correct, and the same will soon apply to 3D models. You need not be a soothsayer to foresee the obvious.

ProtoByte said:
The only question is if AI vendors know how valuable the tech is and whether they'll charge accordingly... that could be a real limiter on how openly "available" this is. You also have issues of copyright.

Also, while video is one thing, you have to imagine that real-time assets, physics simulation, rigging, optimization, etc is going to wind up being very expensive on the server level. When everyone was spamming Ghibli filters over pictures, OpenAI temporarily shut down the function and are introducing limits. Generating entire asset libraries from scratch, even just limited to the daily workflow of all the AAA/mid-level publishers today sounds somewhat unrealistic.
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AI processors just outright generating everything on the fly is way further out than AI code bots hyper efficiently solving all those problems in traditional code with a prompt (which they can very nearly do right now).
 
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I scanned through the linked article. Looks like the headline is a bit sensationalized. Seems like the standard "AI will be useful and help game development" talk that the website has now somehow tied to the recent layoffs.

Across most industries - and on any social media platform you see - people are sharing how AI is helping them write and QC code faster, create prototype assets etc. the game industry won't be an exception to this.
 
For games like FC and their sports franchises I think AI is perfectly fine, those games are just by the numbers upgrades every year it is not like it needs that much human creativity
 
Everything I've read so far tells me that these companies definitely still need actual human coders. It's shortsighted and I bet it'll blow up in ea's face
 
AI still needs a substantial amount time in the oven before it can actually do what people think it's capable of today. But make no mistake, it will eventually reshape everything, just like cars replaced horses, the bow and arrow distanced combat, and the internet transformed communication. So while I think Andrew is a peace of shit, that peace of shit is right about AI.
 
cyberheater said:
I really hope this doesn't happen. Millions of ex-workers surviving on basic income. There has to be a better way.
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UI can be good in theory but it only works if everyone has a job, without meaningful things people are going to get more depressed than they already are.
 
CEOs don't know shit about AI, any software developer would laugh at their faces for saying stupid shit like that.

the firing doesn't have anything to do with AI, that's just a bullshit excuse to line up their pockets.
 
Icymanipulator said:
It's not the same. If a person plagiarizes or copies something they can be held liable or sued. AI literally can't create anything new on its own. Have you seen those videos where people ask AI to generate an image of a full glass of wine? It can't. Because all the images of wine online are half full.
Anything created like this with AI is essentially theft. Companies are OK when they get to steal others hard work but heaven forbid some working class person downloads a movie or game. It's a hypocritical double standard.
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It's exactly the same, with the same problems.
Human can only create something by compiling previous knowledge and experiences, no creation comes from a thin air.
And humans, and it was proven numerous times, are bound by the same mistake as full glass - if all their knowledge is that glass always half full, they will stick to it even if asked about full glass. Even if explained what full glass and even if pushed hardly for it, even ignoring reasonable explanation (like half of a forum believes that gaas is oversaturated to the point of ignoring real data). And maybe one in a thousand may try something out of the box and most these results will be wicked creation on par what AI do. Because basically our mind is a neural network that work on pretty much the same basis as artifical ones, with the same problems underneath (like it's super hard for extremely low-weighted path to activate even if it's a correct path - NN wil stick to "what it knows and what it believes in")
Take a look at Balatro - no matter how original it is, it's really nothing new, it's blending (and AI for sure has no problem with blending) of two well-known formulas - poker and rogue-like. If you look at how progress are done - it's just repeated checking of probable combinations, and when good combinations run out - just check out every possible combination, maybe something will stick and move progress.

The main problems that AI had is that it hardly pass down knowledge, the pivotal in human progress, and there are no self-critic part of the process so someone else should do the filtering and find a gem (Balatro) in a vast sea of failed attempts (sea of trash 1-man indies filled Steam to the brim). Both points now in process of incorporation to AI, DeepSeek for example has both distillation ("stealing" other AI experience, reducing work) and "internal discussion" for better results.
 
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Cheaper labor is what it comes down to. But there's a flip side to those few pennies made by people doing AI/design for companies. The real artists out there; those humans who can pick up a pencil, pen, brush, sculpt, play an instrument, write a book or interesting article, sing with their own voice, solve mathematics without the need for a calculator, those are the people whom will become most sought after and valued when the phase of AI is over. And in that, the humans will remain the true masters of this domain, Earth.
 
Solarstrike said:
Cheaper labor is what it comes down to. But there's a flip side to those few pennies made by people doing AI/design for companies. The real artists out there; those humans who can pick up a pencil, pen, brush, sculpt, play an instrument, write a book or interesting article, sing with their own voice, solve mathematics without the need for a calculator, those are the people whom will become most sought after and valued when the phase of AI is over. And in that, the humans will remain the true masters of this domain, Earth.
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Or AI will decide that humans not needed anymore =)
 
Felessan said:
Or AI will decide that humans not needed anymore =)
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You nailed it. Let's all hope not. Not sure if anyone remembers but on X when Elon Musk said something along the lines of "upload your medical records to Grok.." Surely it was for something good? (I'm highly doubting that)
 
And coal mining will be the future for the coders. From the desk to actual back breaking work. I love it.
 
I'm probably one of the bigger EA hater but this is article is trash.
The article is forged to try to make of relation between the two by implying the cause to effect of both layoff and Ai.
But they are wrong.
Layoff happened like many other industries currently and Ai will be a tool of the future for EA.

Trash article by trash site.
 
K' Dash said:
CEOs don't know shit about AI, any software developer would laugh at their faces for saying stupid shit like that.

the firing doesn't have anything to do with AI, that's just a bullshit excuse to line up their pockets.
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Some folks here got a rock hard erection just thinking about removing those pesky stupid programmers and developers from the equation though. Don't go bursting their bubble there, mate.
 
Loomy said:
Universal basic income. But they don't give a shit about that.
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This is the obvious and only solution to increased automation. It's absurd how much time people spend worrying about AI taking jobs and how little they spend thinking about how to sustainably introduce UBI.
 
SHAKEZ said:
No sense of humor eh?
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Tell it like 80% of the thread who are so concerned about job security.

Bonfires Down said:
This is the obvious and only solution to increased automation. It's absurd how much time people spend worrying about AI taking jobs and how little they spend thinking about how to sustainably introduce UBI.
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Why didn't it work with horse riders who were so entitled to UBI with rize of auto....
Those who create value will always be against subsidizing freeloaders. And there always be a "fair" line who is fair to get freebies, like handicapped, and who should work to get it themselves.
 
Parazels said:
Neither can a human. Any human's invention is nothing, but a compilation of existing data.

And remember: billions of people had been born and died, before a one of them invented a wheel. The other billions only copied that.
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Yes but someone had the idea first, a feat AI can never do
 
I mean... we do need AI in video game development, but you also need people to be able to use it to help develop the games.

Firing a bunch of people for AI won't increase productivity as now the rest of the people have MORE work to do.
 
Felessan said:
It's exactly the same, with the same problems.
Human can only create something by compiling previous knowledge and experiences, no creation comes from a thin air.
And humans, and it was proven numerous times, are bound by the same mistake as full glass - if all their knowledge is that glass always half full, they will stick to it even if asked about full glass. Even if explained what full glass and even if pushed hardly for it, even ignoring reasonable explanation (like half of a forum believes that gaas is oversaturated to the point of ignoring real data). And maybe one in a thousand may try something out of the box and most these results will be wicked creation on par what AI do. Because basically our mind is a neural network that work on pretty much the same basis as artifical ones, with the same problems underneath (like it's super hard for extremely low-weighted path to activate even if it's a correct path - NN wil stick to "what it knows and what it believes in")
Take a look at Balatro - no matter how original it is, it's really nothing new, it's blending (and AI for sure has no problem with blending) of two well-known formulas - poker and rogue-like. If you look at how progress are done - it's just repeated checking of probable combinations, and when good combinations run out - just check out every possible combination, maybe something will stick and move progress.

The main problems that AI had is that it hardly pass down knowledge, the pivotal in human progress, and there are no self-critic part of the process so someone else should do the filtering and find a gem (Balatro) in a vast sea of failed attempts (sea of trash 1-man indies filled Steam to the brim). Both points now in process of incorporation to AI, DeepSeek for example has both distillation ("stealing" other AI experience, reducing work) and "internal discussion" for better results.
Click to expand...

Humans are capable of original thought and ideas, AI can't create like that, it needs input.
The full glass example was just to show the lacking ability of AI and how it clearly only has the ability to pull from what's been put into it.
And while there may be some examples that are similar when it comes to a level of misunderstanding, it's not the same. A human could easily create this image.

Sure there are lots of examples where humans just iterate on existing ideas, but those ideas had to come from somewhere. AI can't do that.
Your other example of using AI to streamline searches or workloads isn't a creative process.
 
Zacfoldor said:
You are assuming that if AI takes over people's jobs that everything will stay the same. I understand the cynicism. You PROBABLY believe that AI would concentrate more money into the hands of the super rich and that poor people would not benefit much.

I think we don't need AI but rather an AI revolution. With this technology we could replace our workforce.

That doesn't mean our workforce would starve or even be poorer. To the contrary, AI would allow us nearly infinite work product without the labor needed. Thus humanity could be freed up to work on themselves and enjoy their time on this earth without having to work at all.

In Star Trek, the invention that changes their world into a Utopia is the replicator. A replicator, in star trek, is a matter generator. It turns energy into specific matter at the user's discretion.

If we invented them, by your logic, you might say, "No you can't have replicators because it will put us out of work, you will no longer need us to make things if you can simply replicate a chicken dinner or a Nintendo Switch 2 or money!" - That's not actually true though. If replicators were wide spread everyone could produce anything they needed at home. There would be no need for labor. One could peruse their own dreams. I submit that AI is simply a replicator that is limited to a certain kind of product and the potential is similar for mankind.
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Yeah, I'm sure that's totally how all of this will go.

Then we'll sit around the campfire and sing Kumbaya while holding hands.
 
Zacfoldor said:
To the contrary, AI would allow us nearly infinite work product without the labor needed. Thus humanity could be freed up to work on themselves and enjoy their time on this earth without having to work at all.
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That is never going to happen. The individuals and organizations leading the "AI revolution" are already more wealthy than most people and some countries.

They could already do so much to help their communities in meaningful ways, but instead, they're still focused on amassing wealth and hoarding it. You think they're going to give a shit about people being freed up to enjoy their time on earth?

EA could have kept those 300 people on and redirect their efforts and skills elsewhere. But they chose to get rid of them. That's the kind of mentality you can look forward to going forward. Not a fantasy Star Trek utopia.
 
N0S said:
AI sports its in the game
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After having the ai in nhl repeatedly score as many goals as they need to win no matter big of a lead I have with 3 minutes left in the 3rd period since about 2006 or so.
Guess theres no end in sight to this shit.
 
Felessan said:
Why didn't it work with horse riders who were so entitled to UBI with rize of auto....
Those who create value will always be against subsidizing freeloaders. And there always be a "fair" line who is fair to get freebies, like handicapped, and who should work to get it themselves.
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Well, I don't think particularly highly of the average person either. But I'm also not in the business of hindering technological progress for no reason.
 
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Loomy said:
Universal basic income. But they don't give a shit about that.
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why in the hell would the wealthy want to subsidize that? what's there for them to gain from it? a potemkin 'consumer economy', where everything just looks normal, but is fundamentally just them buying their own products?...
 
With all the AI hate all around, I kinda like that he speaks his mind.
It's easily 5 years away from actually being helpful but I don't think there is any denying that it will creep into nearly all jobs and it will improve them, even make some obsolete.

Trying to slow it down won't stop the inevitably, but needlessly limit it's progress.
 
semiconscious said:
why in the hell would the wealthy want to subsidize that? what's there for them to gain from it? a potemkin 'consumer economy', where everything just looks normal, but is fundamentally just them buying their own products?...
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Shouldn't be up to private companies to set up and run UBI. Governments should do that.
 
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