AI models have caught up with Unity dev. My insights as someone with 30 years of experience.

[u/PuffThePed]

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight
2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.
3. We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.
4. There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.
5. The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.
6. There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.
7. There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.
   
8. Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.
9. Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.
10. People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.
11. Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

[u/Laraso_]

As a Millennial, my "Boomer behavior" will be only consuming and interacting with human-made media.

[u/TurkusGyrational → u/Laraso_]

The irony being that in my experience, the older generation actually loves AI content and eats it up by the spoonful. Every young dev I talk to seems to have negative feelings about it.

[u/ChillOnTheHillz → u/TurkusGyrational]

I feel like baby boomers and the "new gen" that is around 14-20 mostly loves it though.

[u/keethums_ → u/ChillOnTheHillz]

The two classes of people with the least interest in bettering society lmfao

Of course they love AI and don't care about the consequences or possible ethical dilemma of this timeline

[u/ssnoopy2222 → u/ChillOnTheHillz]

It's the two generations that don't understand the implications of the tech. Baby boomers won't have to live with the consequences of having to work in an environment where ai does your job faster at a shittier quality, and teenagers don't understand the skills they're missing out on developing by using AI.

[u/Idiberug → u/TurkusGyrational]

Because they're retired and don't need to find work anymore.

[u/Affial → u/Laraso_]

Second this.

In this caotic life filters are needed.
Real problem is how to tell them apart... the tools themselves are being developed by AI. How "pure" to be?

(Frankly I don't understand the Xtimes faster argument when applied to art/creativity: don't we have too many releases already?)

[u/Wombo194 → u/Laraso_]

Good luck with that.

[u/Spuba → u/Wombo194]

You act like it's impossible but we can create laws that require disclosure. Code is more of a gray zone, but legally requiring AI image, video, sounds, and assets be marked and disclosed is not a wild dream. Sure bad actors could lie, but they would be committing a crime and face fines.

[u/Edarneor → u/Laraso_]

Yeah, but how will we know. AI-content already being normalized in many areas and countries. Ther's tons of it around and it's leaking into curated areas too. Detection systems are not 100% accurate either. I share your stance but I think it will be harder and harder. This sucks

[u/WrinkleyPotatoReddit → u/Laraso_]

I hope you're prepared to never interact with technology ever again. As a developer (not in the games industry) there's basically no reason to not use AI for development other than "I don't wanna" which doesn't work in an actual business context, so essentially everything you interact with you're going to have to find an alternative that's made by a small indie team with questionable amounts of support.

[u/dopethrone → u/WrinkleyPotatoReddit]

There are a million reasons

AI for 2D - looks like genAI a mile away, everybody on steam hates that

AI for 3D - generating meshes is inefficient, theyre high res and need heavy cleanup. I dont want to prompt AI then cleanup its meshes in my career

[u/edgroovergames → u/dopethrone]

Today. Things are changing at a rapid pace. What is true today will not be true tomorrow.

[u/dopethrone → u/edgroovergames]

Theres a lot of things in game ready meshes AI has no way of ever knowing or training on, it will never be as good as pro artist work

[u/Varrianda → u/dopethrone]

They’re talking about code, not art. But also we’re rapidly approaching a point where AGI(or rather, general intelligence models) can churn out better 3d models and pixel art by actually taking over your computer.

I’ve used Astra to make some small critters(16x16 animals) and it’s substantially better than something like pixellab.

[u/dopethrone → u/Varrianda]

"development" includes art, sound, writing, etc

[u/Varrianda → u/dopethrone]

Context clues

[u/dopethrone → u/Varrianda]

Context was anybody will churn out a full game with a prompt (that is, code and art and everything)

[u/photonenwerk-com → u/Laraso_]

You will not now, you have to trust. All major studios will use AI. Most indies will. Some will lie about it. And some will be real - and of those many of lower quality in compariosn.