Indie game publisher CEO proposes Black Mirror-grade AI detection for employee burnout, says it's all "hypothetical" amid backlash
Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of Hello Neighbor publisher tinyBuild, recently proposed the potential for using AI models to help find "problematic team members" and identify employees at risk of burnout, and while the aim was purportedly to help employees, boy did everyone dislike that.
WhyNow Gaming reported on a presentation Nichiporchik gave at the Develop: Brighton conference on July 12, which was titled "AI in Gamedev: Is My Job Safe?" The summary blurb says the presentation would "go in-depth into how the publisher adopted AI in daily practices to exponentially increase efficiency. From a 10x increase in key art production efficiency to using AI to gather data and verify community sentiment, we're in the industrial revolution of the digital age. Those who embrace it already have an advantage."
In addition to how AI can be used as a tool for game dev disciplines like art and code, the session signup notes that "there will be a human resource reallocation that'll change and optimize how teams work." It's mostly this element that ignited such a fire, with discussion centered around the idea of using AI to single out employees rather than, I don't know, check in on how they're doing.
Slides from Nichiporchik's presentation propose an "I, Me analysis" measuring how many times employees refer to themselves as individuals rather than part of the team (with plurals like "we," etc.). This could be done by, for example, feeding Slack or other messaging app conversations, such as automatic transcripts from Google or Zoom calls, through AI like ChatGPT after trimming them of any identifying details. Nichiporchik reportedly joked about copyrighting this method during his talk, "because to my knowledge, no one has invented this."
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