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Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is very big on AI. In a recent interview snippet from Zalkar Saliev, Newell calls AI a "cheat code" that will affect "pretty much every single business."
This follows another section of the same interview, expected to be released in full sometime today, July 21, which saw Newell predict a "funny situation" where "people who don't know how to program" could use AI to become "more effective developers of value" than people who have been "programming for a decade."
"There was pre-computer and then there was post-computer," he begins. "There was pre-internet and there was post-internet. I think it's incredibly obvious that machine learning systems, AI systems, are going to profoundly impact pretty much every single business. So if I had to point to a technology transition to get in front of, it's to figure out how to use AI to do anything better.
"If you want to be an accountant, learn AI. If you're going to be an attorney, learn AI. If you're going to be a programmer, make sure that you know how to use the tools that are comfortable with those programming concepts. And that all seems super obvious."
Newell's comments on AI in relation to programming, specifically, seem a bit softer here compared to his previously released thoughts on AI expertise outweighing programming experience in some cases. Here, he zeroes in on using the right tools for the job, whereas some AI devotees have championed the tech as a catch-all replacement, and Newell's previous remarks were interpreted by some as leaning more toward that extreme.
Other Valve folks, notably a Deadlock designer, have also supported the power of AI systems like ChatGPT as a tool, but concerns across – and not exclusive to – the games industry remain over the accuracy and reliability of generative AI, as well as the risk that premature overinvestment in AI could lead to layoffs and mistakes.
Games have had several run-ins with AI already, from the only recently suspended SAG-AFTRA strike over AI protections and better wages, to specific examples like a Persona artist who trained an AI model to imitate his style and found that it wasn't worth it. Countless devs have also argued against the theft and unoriginality baked into generative AI art. "I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds," said Balatro creator Localthunk.
Newell, in his soft retirement as a Steam billionaire, will of course have a radically different perspective on the real-world impact of AI. His emphatic recommendation doesn't end there, either.
"You know, there are a lot of people who are incredibly successful simply because they were the first person in finance at their company to learn how to use Lotus 1-2-3, right?" Newell continues, referring to an old Lotus Software spreadsheet system. "Everybody else was still doing accounting in traditional ways. You could look like a super genius just because you knew how to use a desktop computer and a spreadsheet.
"Similarly, on the internet, there were the companies and individuals who saw the opportunity and took advantage of those opportunities to create more value, either as an individual or as a corporation, and they zoomed ahead of everybody else.
"So essentially, AI is going to be a cheat code for people who want to take advantage of it."
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