Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves'

https://lemm.ee/post/32015412

Stellaris gets a DLC about AI that features AI-created voices, director insists it's 'ethical' and 'we're pretty good at exploring dystopian sci-fi and don't want to end up there ourselves' - lemm.ee

The technology was created to replace voice actors. That’s the actual purpose. Its very existence hurts their profession and benefits studios. You can not be a studio, use this technology, and claim to care about ethics, anymore than Amazon can claim to care about the workers as it invests in the machines to replace them.

It doesn’t matter if you compensate or get their approval, because the fact is the existence of the technology in the industry effectively compels all voice actors to agree to let it use their voice, or they can’t get work. It becomes a false choice.

If there was no financial benefit, if it truly made no difference in how much a studio pays in labor or the amount the artists make, there would be no reason for studios to want to use it.

Technology making labour obsolete is the goal we should all be wanting.

Attack capitalism not the technology.

In practice, capitalism will use technology to subjugate others instead of allowing technology to free us from work.

Yes, as long as people keep focusing on fighting the technology instead of fighting capitalism, this is true.

So we can fight the technology and definitely lose, only to see our efforts subverted to further entrench capitalism and subjugate us harder (hint: regulation on this kind of thing disproportionately affects individuals while corporations carve out exceptions for themselves because ‘it helps the economy’)…

Or we can embrace the technology and try to use it to fight capitalism, at which point there’s at least a chance we might win, since the technology really does have the potential to overcome capitalism if and only if we can spread it far enough and fast enough that it can’t be controlled or contained to serve only the rich and powerful.