Why AI is Not a Panacea? After All, Nobody Believes in Magic...
Thank you for this formal and deeply analytical post. As a Visual Novel creator (writing under the Medow / MOS project), I highly appreciate your call to avoid echo chambers. I would love to add a counter-perspective to your thoughts, specifically regarding the "trapped" feeling of the dev community and the ethics of artistic survival.
Having a solid background as an IT instructor (from the days of IBM-XT, Basic, Symphony — a sort of digital proto-office — from... Wow, over 40 years ago), a webmaster for over 25 years (dorinm.ro), and a specialist with documented activity in emergency medicine, I cannot help but view this collective outrage through a purely clinical lens. It is time to stop putting cultural sterile dressings and moral bandages on what is, in essence, a severe case of adaptive necrosis and evolutionary stagnation.
Your analysis hits a very important point with the Microsoft Word analogy, whose current implementations are extremely aggressive, but I believe the situation with AI tools is even more widespread than we admit. We often point fingers at Renpytom, yet we overlook that industry-standard major utilities, such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, or even audio editing suites, have already deeply integrated generative and assistive AI into their core architecture. To draw a hard ethical line only at an engine developer using an LLM to eliminate the tedium of repetitive coding, while the entire digital production workflow relies on similar algorithms, seems like a selective standard.
This melodramatic narrative of "betrayal" regarding Renpytom's use of code assistants (LLMs) is built on a profound historical amnesia. This "infection" of algorithmic assistance didn't start suddenly in 2021 or 2023; it has been mutating within our software workflows for decades. Where were these code "purists" when early versions of Microsoft Visual Basic or Delphi introduced proto-AI mechanisms for syntax assistance and automated code generation? Where is the outcry against writing platforms like Hemingway or advanced editors that dynamically restructure an author’s syntax and recalculate text readability? We have been living in a symbiotic digital ecosystem for a very long time. Crying "anathema" now just because the tool received a marketing name like "Artificial Intelligence" is pure selective hypocrisy.
Let’s put the finger directly on the wound and clean the accumulation of pus in this discussion: the real issue here is inadaptation disguised as ethics. There is a foolish illusion floating around the community that AI is a "magic button" that replaces human intellect. The raw reality of production proves the exact opposite: an uneducated person, lacking deep practice, literary depth, or architectural logic, is utterly incapable of using AI to generate anything fluent, cohesive, and valuable. AI is not a creator; it is a competence amplifier. To manage an AI-augmented workflow that cumulates text, art, and code, one must transcend the condition of a mere technical executor and become a Narrative Architect.
My philosophy — which I call "Darwinian adaptation through technology" (visible in my VN project - MOS) — stands on the complete opposite side of the purist spectrum. I firmly believe that a creator’s greatest sin is the silence imposed by a lack of resources. For independent or solo creators, text often remains trapped on white pages because we do not possess the painter’s brush or because complex programming logic absorbs far too much of our finite lifetime.
In my universe, the story is 100% human — the heart, the emotion, and the architectural structure. But I use Artificial Intelligence as my own production department (art, sound, code assistance) to transform manuscripts into immersive visual experiences. Without these tools, these fragments of imagination would be lost forever in the abyss of "powerless" projects.
The panic we are witnessing comes from rigid programmers or niche artists who see their mechanical monopoly dissolving. As the pure technical "peak" (the linear writing of code or the mechanical drawing of an asset) is taken over by a layer that is increasingly profane in execution, the value shifts entirely to the overarching human vision and structure. In art, just like in biology, the law is absolute: adapt or perish. Using technologies as a production department to rescue complex narratives from the graveyard of projects blocked by a lack of resources is not cheating — it is pure Darwinian adaptation for the survival of your voice. Those who choose to waste their limited human lifespan doing repetitive tasks manually, out of a purist nostalgia, are free to do so, but they should not dictate the survival strategy for the rest of us.
While I respect your concerns regarding the ecological impact and the preservation of pure craft, I believe technology must serve to liberate creativity, not suffocate it. For many of us, adapting to these tools is the only way to ensure our voices are actually heard.
With respect,
Dorin Merticaru
