Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser: AI is a "mad cow disease" that will "eventually eat itself"

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser shared his views on AI on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio UK, comparing it to the spread of mad cow disease eventually eating itself, and said that people pushing AI lack basic humanity.

Houser left Rockstar Games in 2020 after spending nearly two decades at the company. He came on the show to talk about his first novel, A Better Paradise Volume One: An (Almost) Complete History.

The novel is a sci-fi thriller about developers who create a video game whose AI goes rogue. The developers abandoned the project, and years later, the AI hunts them down.

Chris Evans talked about how the book’s eerie AI premise is similar to current trends in AI hype. Houser didn’t hold back when Chris mentioned this and explained:

I personally don’t think it will because AI is going to eventually eat itself. The models will scour the internet for information, but the internet is 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. I can’t see how information will get better if they’re running out of data.

However, Houser did acknowledge some of AI’s benefits, like performing “some tasks brilliantly.” But, he explained that AI still has limitations and gets things “wrong a lot of the time.” Houser became increasingly critical of AI when discussing proponents of the technology pushing for its use in creative industries such as storytelling and gaming. Fields that Houser had helped redefine through Rockstar Games' blockbuster franchises like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto.

Houser explained, “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,’ and it's obviously not true.”

Houser further added, “That’s one of the other things we’re trying to capture, is that humanity is being pulled in a direction by a certain group of people who maybe aren’t fully rounded humans.”

Current Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick echoed similar sentiments earlier in October. He frowned upon AI, calling it “a combination of metadata with a parlor trick,” which is “a great thing for business,” but “not creative and never will be.”

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