AI Portland Presentation: Enhancing Game Narratives Using AI

I joined AI Portland on Thursday night for an event at Kiln, where seven presenters—including yours truly—talked about how they use AI tools to improve their lives. As your resident critical AI skeptic, you might wonder why I willingly signed up for this.

Beyond my admiration for the organizers Nicole and Megan—who do a fantastic job with this meetup—I feel that any group of enthusiasts discussing experimental technology, especially something as rapidly transformative (and potentially destructive) as LLMs, should have someone in the room smiling while asking, “Yeah, we can… but should we?”

This event was especially fun because I wasn’t talking about work at all. Instead, I shared a long-standing hobby of mine: sports text simulation games. These aren’t fantasy sports games you see on TV, which mirror real-life games, but rather simulations that allow you to explore scenarios—fictional or otherwise—over a season or even many seasons.

Much of my knack for prompt engineering stems from playing around with LLMs for hobbies like these. Over the years, I’ve used AI tools for various personal projects, including a Consequence Design “art” exhibition imagining wild scenarios. This was a way to learn tools like MidJourney in their early days, combining curiosity and creativity.

While those deep in the lore of Ron™ might know about my tennis coaching, Pesäpallo fandom, skeeball prowess, or tea collection, these topics rarely make it to the stage. They’re typically reserved for small groups at parties or bar hangs.

What struck me most was how thoughtful all the presenters were. With over 140 people crammed into the space, the energy was palpable—new year, new excitement, perhaps?

For the curious, I also got to experiment with Figma Slides for my presentation. You can view the deck here, though it won’t come with the same panache I delivered during my 10 minutes in the spotlight.

I’ll continue writing and speaking about the perils of leveraging unproven tech to disintermediate our everyday lives while leaving externalities for ill-equipped nonprofits and public sectors to handle. But for one night at least, it was refreshing to engage with people about their hobbies and passions and imagine a world where we can be just a little excited about how fast things are moving.