Comment by ctoth
15 hours ago
> Actually, it might be closer to say this is similar to a child playing pretend alone with their toys, except perhaps a bit less challenging in that creative roadblocks or narrative building is instantly abdicatable to the machine.
Wouldn't the obvious analogue be a video game? Especially one where you can edit the asset files (making your weapons super-strong, for instance?)
No, actually. In a video game the rules of engagement and the content you're engaging with are authored by other people. It's interactive media, but it's still a form of communication with boundaries and intent behind it. You can break those bounds with cheats or tools in the same way you can mark up a novel and write in your own ending with whiteout and a pen, but you're still fundamentally engaging with someone's creation.
An LLM-authored interactive fiction is a sandbox with no author, with no boundaries and no intent. It's a canvas, and all limitations on content are self-imposed. It's closer to making a game than to playing one, but there is no game in the end that you can share. You're left with a transcript that only really appeals to you. It is not the game. The game fundamentally lives in the player's imagination, and the LLM is there to ease the realization of that imagination and, if I'm being uncharitable, do the hard part of synthesizing ideas and impulses into something semi-coherent, limiting the potential for the player to grow and develop creative skills.