Rockstar co-founder compares AI to 'mad cow disease,' and says the execs pushing it aren't 'fully-rounded humans'

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser—freed from the mysterious and press-sceptical chains of his former company—has once again manifested on a podcast. Or, actually, on national UK radio, which is what they used to call podcasts back during the war.

Houser popped up on Virgin Radio UK to chat with host Chris Evans (not that Chris Evans) about his new book. Along the way, though, the inevitable topic of AI and what it means for human labour and creativity reared its head. It sounds like Houser isn't quite as starry-eyed about the tech as so many other people who continue to occupy corporate C-suites.

Asked if AI is going to lead us to the sunlit uplands so many tech 'visionaries' are promising, Houser is unequivocal: "I personally don't think it will, because I think that AI is gonna eventually eat itself, because as far as I understand it—which is really superficial—the models scour the internet for information, but the internet's going to get more and more full of information made by the models. So it's sort of like when we fed cows with cows and got mad cow disease."

Which, I have to admit, is a pretty good simile for the AI craze. That's not to say Houser thinks gen-AI will have completely evaporated a few years from now, more that "It will do some tasks brilliantly, but it's not going to do every task brilliantly." Very sober of him.

Houser's a little more damning in his assessment of the breathless execs currently pushing AI like the second coming. "Humanity is being pulled in a direction by a certain group of people, who maybe aren't fully-rounded humans," Houser told Virgin Radio.

"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. So they're sort of saying, 'We're better at being human than you are.' It's obviously not true."

Houser's chatted about his AI-scepticism before on the media circuit he's currently on, but I gotta say it is pretty heartening to hear someone with 'Rockstar co-founder' stature point out that the emperor has no clothes here, given so many other people with highfalutin positions and paycheques are still pushing the tech. But maybe even that won't last: more and more, people—in well-remunerated people—seem unable to mention the term 'AI' without mentioning 'bubble' in the same breath.

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