Rockstar Cofounder Says AI Is Like When Factory Farms Did Cannibalism and Caused Mad Cow Disease

Dan Houser, the cofounder of Grand Theft Auto publisher Rockstar Games, cast AI in gruesome terms last week by likening it to when farmers in the United Kingdom inadvertently spread bovine spongiform encephalopathy — commonly known as mad cow disease — by feeding meal tainted with the flesh of diseased cows to healthy heifers.

“AI is going to eventually eat itself,” said Houser during an interview last week at the “Chris Evans Breakfast Show” on Virgin Radio UK while promoting his science fiction novel “A Better Paradise.” “The [AI] models scour the internet for information, but the internet’s 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.”

Houser’s pointed remarks are striking in the context of the larger video game industry, where huge numbers of workers have been laid off while CEOs have gone full hog into AI to cut cost, boost profits, and capture the next generation of gamers; case in point, Tim Sweeney, CEO at Epic Games — which makes the smash hit Fortnite — has bet big on AI and even became publicly irate that gaming platform Steam is labeling games that contain AI-generated assets.