Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages • Hacker News Board

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#31

Post by krisoft » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #12

This is awesome, clear and concise explanation. I was talking to my wife and debating whether I should build a model of each of us and store it somewhere in case something tragic happens to either of us. But we decided not to because something about it felt wrong but maybe I’ll make it just in case I regret not doing later on.

> maybe I’ll make it just in case I regret not doing later on

Maybe. But please consider the question of consent. If I agree with my partner that we are not doing this and then he/she does it behind my back I would feel violated.

What is probably a lot better idea is to store the conversations securely for the future.

Lot less icky to get consent to. Protects against all the mundane forms of data loss, like dropped phones, fire, flood, global entity blocking your accounts, etc etc. And! You still have the option to build a model at any point. Presumably an even better one, since the tech is likely to improve in the future.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#32

Post by mahathu » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

obblekk wrote: post #10

Great write up, thanks for posting. I’ve been thinking of doing this for myself. One thought that’s haunting: how long before AI friends are more interesting and stimulating than any real person would be, leading people to prefer AI over humans to befriend… Super stimulus to end all super stimuluses?

>how long before AI friends are more interesting and stimulating than any real person would be

why would this ever happen?

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#33

Post by aarong11 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

circuit10 wrote: post #21

xwdv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly won’t regret it. If you need to get information out of your wife and she won’t cooperate you can coerce the LLM of your wife into having it divulge private information that your wife won’t reveal. This can be very useful for something like a divorce case. Best to find a way to keep the LLM regularly training on new data as well. Edit : stop downvoting ideas you don’t like, that’s not what it’s for.

Not sure if this is a joke but this in case it isn’t, no, that’s not how it works, it will just make up random plausible-ish guesses

Isn't that what humans do?

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#34

Post by hirundo » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

ryanianian wrote: post #16

Very reminiscent of the Be Right Back episode of Black Mirror [1]. A family member recently died unexpectedly, and I have a small collection of texts, emails, and blog posts by them saved on my machine in the small (perhaps delusional) hope that they'll be a useful training set for a them-flavored chatbot. Perhaps even one that's trained to help me with the grief of their loss. Not a huge amount of training data, tho…

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/high-tech-headstones-speak...

People already buy headstones that let the dead speak a pre-recorded message from the grave. It's a natural extension to put an AI trained with their thoughts behind it that can engage in actual conversation. That isn't for me, but I have gone to my father's grave to speak to him, and I can sympathize with the wish to have him speak back.

I am looking forward to conversing with prolific writers among the dead, from Hitchens to Lincoln to Aristotle.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#35

Post by amelius » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

ryanianian wrote: post #16

Very reminiscent of the Be Right Back episode of Black Mirror [1]. A family member recently died unexpectedly, and I have a small collection of texts, emails, and blog posts by them saved on my machine in the small (perhaps delusional) hope that they'll be a useful training set for a them-flavored chatbot. Perhaps even one that's trained to help me with the grief of their loss. Not a huge amount of training data, tho…

Another interesting thing would be people wearing a GoPro camera all day, recording each other. Then you can train a model on people based on their interaction with one person, but also wrt other people. And then you can have the experience of virtually talking to a person as if you were another person.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#36

Post by krzrak » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

ryanianian wrote: post #16

Very reminiscent of the Be Right Back episode of Black Mirror [1]. A family member recently died unexpectedly, and I have a small collection of texts, emails, and blog posts by them saved on my machine in the small (perhaps delusional) hope that they'll be a useful training set for a them-flavored chatbot. Perhaps even one that's trained to help me with the grief of their loss. Not a huge amount of training data, tho…

On a side note, I thought a little bit about that concept. For me, recreating deceased loved one with AI would be reigniting the grief all over again. I would want to avoid that.

Maybe, just maybe, I would be able to use it, for example, to see my grandparents who died ~30 years ago, as a curiosity, but still I'm not sure if I'd want to.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#37

Post by chasd00 » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

obblekk wrote: post #10

Great write up, thanks for posting. I’ve been thinking of doing this for myself. One thought that’s haunting: how long before AI friends are more interesting and stimulating than any real person would be, leading people to prefer AI over humans to befriend… Super stimulus to end all super stimuluses?

People already take RealDolls out on dates and buy them engagement rings. Im sure that company is all over LLM based AI and incorporating home assistant tech (like Alexa) into their products.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#38

Post by sharemywin » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

circuit10 wrote: post #21

xwdv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly won’t regret it. If you need to get information out of your wife and she won’t cooperate you can coerce the LLM of your wife into having it divulge private information that your wife won’t reveal. This can be very useful for something like a divorce case. Best to find a way to keep the LLM regularly training on new data as well. Edit : stop downvoting ideas you don’t like, that’s not what it’s for.

Not sure if this is a joke but this in case it isn’t, no, that’s not how it works, it will just make up random plausible-ish guesses

this reminds me of the time I got in trouble for shit I did in a dream of my wife's.

not really in trouble but you know.

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#39

Post by meowface » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #12

This is awesome, clear and concise explanation. I was talking to my wife and debating whether I should build a model of each of us and store it somewhere in case something tragic happens to either of us. But we decided not to because something about it felt wrong but maybe I’ll make it just in case I regret not doing later on.

I really don't understand this sort of thing at all. Even a hypothetical distant future AI that had a human level of sentience and intelligence and could perfectly emulate you in every way still would not be you (even if it could hypothetically be indistinguishable from you in communication), and it's especially odd now with the crude simulacrum it would provide.

If you're gone, you're gone. Some model of your brain or body isn't going to bring you back, and I don't see how it would help anyone recover from grief. It would just make me feel way worse, and very creeped out.

Why not skip the AI part and just create an archive of writings and communications and such so they can recall memories of you if they wish?

Re: Replacing my best friends with an LLM trained on 500k group chat messages

#40

Post by MayeulC » Wed, Apr 12, 2023, 2:54 PM UTC

dantetheinferno wrote: post #3

One wonders if eventually - historians will plug all the content from a person's personal notes, their diary, their chat logs, into an LLM, and perform research by talking to the AI about the person's life? If you trained an LLM against all the recorded discussions of Einstein - is it that different from talking to Einstein himself?

In theory, you may be able to ask the LLM about the person's life, as if it was the person, but you won't get more facts out than you provide as input. It may still make up credible info.

Regarding your last question, it wil lack an enormous ammount of data that make up a person's experience. Moreover, talking to sound like isn't the same as thinking like .

It reminds me of the later part of the book Accelerando, where synthetic personalities made up from historical records (could be anyone from Cleopatra to Newton) keep being reincarnated in a near, post-singularity future. They are handed out an FAQ that tries to bring them up-to-date on the current state of affairs.