Dan Houser: “Some of these people trying to define the future of humanity, creativity using AI are not the most humane or creative people”

Rockstar veteran Dan Houser has spoken out again about the use of artificial intelligence in the creative fields.

Speaking to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio UK, the Grand Theft Auto co-creator made some observations about the people who are making or pushing AI within the creative fields, arguing that they might be the least qualified to be doing this.

“Some of these people trying to define the future of humanity, creativity or whatever it is using AI are not the most humane or creative people,” Houser said.

“They’re saying we’re better at being human than you are and it’s obviously not true. That’s one of the other things is that humanity is being pulled in a certain direction by a group of people who maybe aren’t fully rounded humans.”

His comments echo recent criticisms of AI boosters like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman, with octogenarian writer and social media star Joyce Carol Oates recently having a high-profile clash with Elon Musk after saying he “seems totally uneducated, uncultured”.

Houser once again was cautious about AI as a technological field, saying that the current iteration has some severe limitations. The development vet cited model collapse – aka the Habsburg AI theory – which refers to large language models becoming poisoned by their own output.

“I think that AI is eventually going to eat itself,” Houser said.

“As far as I understand it, which is really a superficial understanding, the models scour the internet for information, but the internet is going to get more and more full of information made by the models. So it is sort of like when we fed cows with cows and got mad cow disease. They are already running out of data. It will do some tasks brilliantly, but it’s not going to do every task brilliantly.”

This is the third time that Houser has been in the news recently for his views on AI as part of the media tour promoting his debut novel, A Better Paradise, which is set in a world where a powerful artificial intelligence has gone rogue.

Previously, the development vet argued that artificial intelligence is “not as useful as some companies would have you believe” before stating in another interview that the tech’s output is “generic”.