I've noticed that most speakers don't actually convey any information, instead just exploring some very basic idea in way too much depth. Just lots of fluff really.
Also agree with others though, that conferences have their uses for meeting people which does result in knowledge exchange.
To all the mentioned faults I would also add that most of Schönefeld has serious accessibility issues. I've seen a few times people with disabilities completely at a loss. And both airports have problems with staff being rude.
People mentioned in the article seem to doubt about applicability in the real world. If nothing else, I think it brings video game development closer to being an automated process. A game could simulate various conditions and design an infinite number of complex environments. Am I way off?
I saw an interesting talk about proc gen which was basically saying a lot of studios are moving from hand crafting to procedural tools. For example if you want to fill a park with trees you don't place them by hand, you just specify the density and type of trees and let the computer place them. The advantage is that if you want to reshape the park later you can just click and drag. Then when you are happy you go though and hand craft more content on top.
They were saying there is a critical mass where procedural tools feed into procedural tools and a lot of the pipeline is automated, then it becomes extremely cheap to make more content.
So back to your point: I think this is where we will see AI more in game dev, it will be as smart tools to empower creators to make stuff more easily. I don't think the AI will make the game, I think it will assist the humans with the creation of it.
I would see this being used more for automating many aspects of testing games, then down the line - level design. But for automating game development, you would require creativity - unless you're into sudoku style games.
