A wave of AI-decompiled mashup mods has taken over X/Twitter this week.
My main concern downloading these decomps / mods / etc is malicious software.
AI local or paying for tokens isn’t free. It still takes time to even get AI to “do it for me”. These are just flooding my feeds. What’s the catch?
The catch is that a data center drained half a lake processing it, loses money in the process but the „vibe modder“ gets to make revenue on Youtube with ads for the clips I guess. I bet many of these creativity vultures have a patreon too. If you‘re anything like me you chuckle at a Mario 64 in Elden Ring clip and keep moving on, though. Why would I want to play that when both games separately are much more fun?
The water usage thing was debunked and really needs to stop being used. It just invalidates the argument when used.
Fun fact: The California almond industry uses more water than AI datacenters.
Not debunked, misreported
There’s been lots of reports done on the subject. In the end, low estimates put it between 68-75 billion gallons annually, high estimates closer to 230 billion gallons. That seems like a lot, right? The USDA reports total agricultural usage at 26.4 trillion gallons. That means 0.88% of the water used for ag.
This is where the the argument usually breaks down because someone will argue that:
- Water is a scarce resource
- US-Ag provides something of substance
If it is a scarce resource, than why is only 0.88% of that resource important enough to save? That then transitions to providing something useful, but usefulness doesn’t magically remove the scarcity that they just claimed as the main issue. Is destroying the resource for almonds really a valid reason? It’s just counterpointing their own argument.
AI datacenter water consumption does have a footprint (especially when factoring in hydropower used not just cooling), but to say it’s “draining lakes” or destroying the environment while ignoring everything else is just bad faith.
These are slop, but it opens up to an interesting idea. Reverse engineering software isn’t exactly an easy or quick process. AI could greatly accelerate that work. I’m not thinking for mashing two games for a quick video, but more like for Icewind Dale 2 rebuilds (the original source code is missing so no true enhanced editions exist). Or remastering old titles like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura or even older games like Menzoberranzan and Stone Prophet.
I’m assuming the biggest hurdle to that would be lack of training against languages like Turbo Pascal and the esoteric game engines used to build the games. Still, if you had someone familiar with them (which helps ensure it doesn’t turn into vibe coding slop), that would be impressive.
