Rockstar Co-Founder Dan Houser Calls AI 'Mad Cow Disease' and Says Tech Bros Aren't Real Humans
Finally, someone with actual clout in this industry said the quiet part out loud: the AI bubble is toxic, and the people selling it to us barely count as creative.
We are used to hearing corporate suits praise Generative AI as the "future of efficiency" (which is code for "firing everyone"). But Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games and one of the brains behind GTA and Red Dead Redemption, isn't buying it.
In a recent interview on Virgin Radio UK, Houser dropped one of the most brutal and accurate metaphors for the current state of AI I have ever heard.
The "Mad Cow" Analogy
When asked if AI is going to lead us to a creative utopia, Houser didn't mince words. He argued that AI will eventually "eat itself."
His reasoning? The models scrape the internet for data. But as the internet fills up with more AI-generated slop, the models start learning from other robots instead of humans.
"It's sort of like when we fed cows with cows and got mad cow disease," Houser said.
It is a perfect, grotesque image. We are watching the digital equivalent of a prion disease unfold in real-time, where the quality of information degrades until the whole system goes insane.
The Attack on the Suits
But Houser didn't stop at the tech. He went after the people pushing it. And this is the part that made me want to stand up and applaud.
He described the tech executives driving this push as "maybe not fully-rounded humans."
"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," he told the host. "So they're sort of saying, 'We're better at being human than you are.' It's obviously not true."
It is incredibly refreshing to hear a titan of the industry point out that the Emperor has no clothes. These aren't the new visionaries of our time, nah, they are calculators in expensive vests trying to automate the human soul because they don't understand it.
AI Isn't Evil, But the Application Is
Look, AI has uses. Houser admits it will do "some tasks brilliantly." But the current trend of shoving it into every single facet of development to cut costs and lay off artists? That is the "mad cow" part.
It is disgusting to watch the industry hollow itself out in the name of a bubble. Hearing the guy who wrote Red Dead Redemption 2 call it out gives me a tiny shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, actual creativity will survive the rot.
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