Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

izzy.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 371 posts

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

#231

Post by AlchemistCamp »

I've heard several people doing this and chatting with simulacra of their friends, but you can always just send your friends a message and chat with the real version.

My first inclination was always to try a conversation with a virtual me (yay recursion!) I've always thought that would be fascinating. Or scanning in my old journals from when I was a teenager and training it on that. Once this technology improves a bit more, it could be an incredible vehicle for reflection and personal discovery.

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

#233

Post by SanderNL »

softfalcon wrote: post #190
SanderNL wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think intelligence is something more than data storage and retrieval and being able to successfully apply it to situations outside your training set. Even very small signs of that ability are worthy of celebration. Why do you feel the need to put it down so hard? Why the need to put down your father, to “enlighten” him? What is missing? Soul? Sentience?

I do think intelligence is something more than data storage and retrieval. I believe it is adaptive behavior thinking about what data I have, what I could obtain, and how to store/retrieve it. I could be wrong, but that's my hypothesis. We humans don't simply use a fixed model, we're retraining ourselves rapidly thousands of times a day. On top of that, we seem to be perceiving the training, input, and responses as w…

I understand better now, thanks for the explanation.

I have some experience in the other direction: everyone around me is hyperskeptical and throwing around the “stochastic parrot”.

Meanwhile completely ignoring how awesome this is, what the potential of the whole field is. Like it’s cool to be the “one that sees the truth”.

I see this like a 70’s computer. In and of itself not that earth shattering, but man.. the potential.

Just a short while ago nothing like this was even possible. Talking computers in scifi movies are now the easy part. Ridiculous.

Also keep in mind text is just one form of data. I don’t see why movement, audio and whatever other modality cannot be tokenized and learned from.

That’s also ignoring all the massive non-LLM progress that has been made in the last decades. LLMs could be the glue to something interesting.

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

#234

Post by Erwin »

Remember Replika and how people got quite attached to that chatbot?

I imagine in the near future you'll be able to sell your and your friends' chat history to a company building a more advanced, realistic chatbot. Do you want to have a group of friends to hang out with? Buy an organically fabricated and pre-trained chatbot.

Or maybe there's enough emptieness in your life that you go deep assume one of those friends' identity. Go visit that restaurant "you" always adored; the other guys will not come but will send you hilarious messages saying how they got delayed and tips on what to order.

This feels like something right out of Philip K Dick -- both Blade Runner and Total Recall had realistic false memories.

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

#235

Post by 1123581321 »

chasd00 wrote: post #175
Steuard wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels very dark to me: I think it would make it enormously harder to actually process the grief. (The thought "You could make one to mimic your ex" passed through my head just long enough for me to recoil in absolute horror.)

yeah i was thinking to myself i could train an LLM on my wife's social media history because it's extensive. But i concluded one wife is enough.

I could see someone doing that to practice bringing up a difficult suggestion like moving to another state, or trying a sexual fantasy. I’m not proposing this actually be done, mind you. It doesn’t seem healthy. But LLM usage is hardly about advancing healthy behavior so far, despite their emphasis on safety.

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

#236

Post by kenjackson »

1attice wrote: post #222
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could Google, or any other company out there, build a digital copy of you that answers questions exactly the way you would? "Hey, we're going to cancel the interview- we found that you aren't a good culture fit here in 72% of our simulations and we don't think that's an acceptable risk." If a company is going to snoop in your personal data to get insights about you, they'd just do it directly. Hiring managers would…

> If a company is going to snoop in your personal data to get insights about you, they'd just do it directly. Hiring managers would scroll through your e-mails and make judgment calls based on their content. This is like saying, "look, no one would be daft enough to draw a graph, they'd just count all the data points and make a decision." You're missing two critical things: (1) time/effort (2) legal loophole. A targe…

> And, until/unless there are good laws in place, it provides a fantastic chess-knight leap over existing privacy legislation. "Oh, no we don't read your emails, no that would be a violation; we simply talk to an LLM that read your emails. Your privacy is intact! You-prime says hi!"

That seems as poor as saying, "We didn't read your emails -- we read a copy of your email after removing all vowels!"

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

#237

Post by CamperBob2 »

softfalcon wrote: post #190
SanderNL wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to think intelligence is something more than data storage and retrieval and being able to successfully apply it to situations outside your training set. Even very small signs of that ability are worthy of celebration. Why do you feel the need to put it down so hard? Why the need to put down your father, to “enlighten” him? What is missing? Soul? Sentience?

I do think intelligence is something more than data storage and retrieval. I believe it is adaptive behavior thinking about what data I have, what I could obtain, and how to store/retrieve it. I could be wrong, but that's my hypothesis. We humans don't simply use a fixed model, we're retraining ourselves rapidly thousands of times a day. On top of that, we seem to be perceiving the training, input, and responses as w…

Going from "oh my goodness, this is intelligent" fade to "oh, it's just predicting text responses"

Eventually your father will reach the third stage: "Uh, wait, that's all we do." You will then have to pry open the next niche in your god-of-the-gaps reasoning.

The advent of GPT has forced me to face an uncomfortable (yet somehow liberating) fact: we're just plain not that special.

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

#238

Post by Jcowell »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #196
oidar wrote: post #23

In Caprica, the Battlestar Galaticia, spinoff - a dead character was embodied in a robot and trained on social media content... But in the real world, who owns your LLM dupe output after you die?

Thanks for the reminder. FOr some reason I had to put that down a couple episodes in. May re-watch it again from the beginning. Hope I haven't shelved it due to woke cringiness as I still don't tolerate that.

Tangent but what was woke about the 2004 adaption of Battlestar Galatica?

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

#239

Post by isaacremuant »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #89
isaacremuant wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean but "laws" don't matter in a world where the government can decide There's a "dangerous emergency" and basically supress all rights and between the bought for media and tech they will supress any pushback against it. I know it's not popular to try and remove the blindfold of propaganda but the 2020 to 2022 and covid authoritarian, anti human rights, policies were an awesome example. But if you ar…

Compare the response of the Chinese government and the US government, then return here and tell us all about the "blindfold" we Americans are wearing wrt the government's COVID response.

I didn't even talk specifically about the US but that is just pathetic as a defense.

Comparing with the bottom of the barrel to make yourself look good? That's like a country using the US healthcare situation to claim their own healthcare is good.

It's a poor car salesman trick.

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

#240

Post by Jeff_Brown »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #85
mabbo wrote: post #49

While I love all these stories of turning your friends and loved ones into chat bots so you can talk to them forever, my brain immediately took a much darker turn because of course it did. How many emails, text messages, hangouts/gchat messages, etc, does Google have of you right now? And as part of their agreement, they can do pretty much whatever they like with those, can't they? Could Google, or any other company…

> Could Google, or any other company out there, build a digital copy of you that answers questions exactly the way you would? "Hey, we're going to cancel the interview- we found that you aren't a good culture fit here in 72% of our simulations and we don't think that's an acceptable risk." If a company is going to snoop in your personal data to get insights about you, they'd just do it directly. Hiring managers would…

It's less accurate but far cheaper. In even half-rational actors (and I think companies qualify as half rational) costs, not just benefits, matter.
Post reply on HN