Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of Tinybuild, said in a recent Develop Brighton presentation that the company is using artificial intelligence to monitor its employees, identify employees who are toxic or suffering from burnout, and act accordingly. The suggestion seemed to stir up a hornet's nest. Nichipolczyk has since stated that his presentation has been taken out of context online and that he was describing a hypothetical scenario aimed at illustrating the potential good and bad uses of AI.

As reported by Whynow Gaming, Nichiporchik said in his presentation that employee communication through online channels such as Slack and Google Meet is based on "I , Me analysis," which can be processed through ChatGPT, he said.

"There is a direct correlation between the number of times someone uses 'I' or 'me' in a meeting and the amount of words they use overall, leading to a person's probability of burnout," Nichipolczyk said in his talk.

He made similar comments about "time vampires" who "talk too much during meetings" or "type [their thoughts] too much and cannot condense them," and said that if such people were no longer in the company, "meetings would last 20 minutes and we would get five times more done."

Nichipolchik said that by combining AI with traditional HR tools, game studios "can identify people who are burning out and who may be causing their colleagues who work with them to burn out" and solve problems before they become real problems. He stated that this may be possible. He called the whole thing "Black Mirror level stuff," and acknowledged that the whole thing is dystopian, but added that it "works," suggesting that studios have already used this system to find studio leaders who "were not in good shape."

"If we had waited a month, we probably wouldn't have a studio," Nichipolchik said. 'So I'm really glad it worked out the way it did.'

Predictably, nearly everyone who read Nichipolchik's comments was unhappy: "It's 'Minority Report' crap to be monitored by a machine that can take away your employment because you violated an unknown rule about talking too much." In comments sent to PC Gamer, however, Nichipolczyk said that the system he described was hypothetical and not one actually used in Tiny Build, and that the point of his talk was to contrast the "optimistic" view of AI tools as a way to speed up the process with the "dystopian" He stated that the contrast was to contrast the "optimistic" view with the "dystopian" view of AI tools as a way to accelerate the process.

"We have seen too many instances of distress and burnout in our industry. Often with remote work, you can't measure where people are. How are they really? Nichipolczyk says. 'The I/ME example is something we started using a couple of years ago as an observation in meetings. It usually means that the person is not confident enough in their performance at work and simply needs more feedback or confirmation that they are doing a good job.

Nichipolchik admitted that the "time vampire" slides he used in his presentation were "terrible in the context of this discussion," but said he believed such behavior could also be burnout. He continued that he conflated burnout and toxicity because he wanted to state that toxic behaviors are often just a manifestation of problems people have in the workplace, and that those problems can eventually lead to burnout. [17][18] "Burnout can cause toxicity, and if we can prevent it, we can have a better work environment. Toxicity] can result from an environment where people feel unappreciated or don't get enough feedback about their work." Being in such a situation may lead to burnout. Many people will think of burnout as being about being too busy at work, but there is more to it than that. Burnout is about working with people you love and knowing that you are making a big impact. Without a positive environment, burnout is easy. Especially in teams where people have never even met in real life, you need to establish a level of trust that goes beyond chat rooms and virtual meetings."

Referring to the studio lead mentioned in the presentation, Nichipolczyk said that the company used "the principles outlined in the presentation" rather than actual AI to determine that the employee in question was overworked, which led to low morale on the development team. The employee was not fired, but is currently "on extended leave" and will be moved to a new project upon his return, he said. [Hypothetically or not, people are naturally scared when they think that everything they say can be analyzed by a machine learning system to make assumptions about their mental state and abilities. Nichipolczyk says AI systems like the "Black Mirror" he described in his presentation are not the kind TinyBuild would use.

When asked how Tinybuild would actually integrate AI into its HR resources, he replied, "We don't use it. 'We don't use these tools for HR. I would not want to work in such a workplace."

Nichipolchik said on Twitter that a video of his presentation will eventually be uploaded to YouTube so you can see it in its entirety. We will update as soon as it is available.