> AI allows players to have decompiled and in turn ports of games to new platforms, enhanced versions of the game, etc.

To what end? The biggest benefit of tinkering with 40-year-old hardware is the experience of doing so. The knowledge and intuition you learn about how computers really work; the friendships you develop through collaboration with others, through asking for help with your projects and helping others with theirs; and the relaxing Saturday afternoons spent investigating and debugging and experimenting. The "benefit" of having a game that's been recompiled to a native executable for your PC or whatever is marginal compared to the benefit of the process to get to that point. That end goal is just a lighthouse to keep you on track, and when you get there maybe you'll play the recompiled game once to celebrate a job well done before moving on to another project.

If writing software is a means to an end, then there's value in anything that reduces the effort to get to that end. But as I see it, retro gaming projects are mostly an end to a means.

> Seems pretty egoistical when nobody's forcing you to use AI in any way, it provides an objective benefit to other people.

I have three fundamental claims:

- There is little to no positive benefit to using AI for hobby projects whose completion provides little to no intrinsic value.

- Choosing to do so has a negative impact on you, as it bypasses an incredibly valuable learning experience.

- Choosing to do so has a negative impact on others, as it takes away someone else's project opportunity (there are a finite amount of popular retro games, and many people prefer to work on novel projects rather than recreating something that has already been done).

I'm not sure what's "egoistical" about that, and I'd love if you could elaborate on that because I'm still wrestling with the ethics and implications of all this myself. The way I see it, it's better if I choose to forgo the use of AI on my projects, and I think others should choose the same.

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Many years back, one retro gaming community I'm a part of had a prolific contributor who was extremely knowledgeable about the game, but also incredibly abrasive. He was the most knowledgeable person in the community at the time, and held this over others; discrediting their achievements, discouraging their attempts to learn, constantly starting fights and driving many good people out of the community. Yet he was allowed to remain in the community for many years, because everyone thought we needed his expertise.

Eventually the community came to the realization that it's just a video game and we don't "need" anything at all. None of the long-term community members are really here for the game anymore; we're here for the experience and the camaraderie. So we should make decisions (like kicking out this member) that are technically suboptimal for the game (at least in the short term), but better for fostering the community.

In a similar vein, using AI within these sorts of hobby spaces may allow faster progress on such projects, but it takes away the value of completing the projects in the first place, to the detriment of both the individual and the community.