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

Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 548 posts

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#131

Post by rcktmrtn »

softbt wrote: post #17

Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI, I honestly believe it will only many the majority of people lazier and dumber. I’m also incredibly shocked that no one is talking about AI as a friend/companion, that has to not be good for you in the long run. Humans need real human connection, AI is too artificial for that (duh). Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead…

More than interfaces. To quote McLuhan: "Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth."

The AI thing has been jarring but it's nothing new. All part of the same process.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#132

Post by criddell »

pc86 wrote: post #125
BizarreByte wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead of healthy home cooked meals growing up A person who is starving will do better with fast food than with no food at all. It's far from ideal, but for some people this will make their lives marginally more tolerable.

Nobody who is starving decides to just go through the drive through. Fast food is convenient, that's it.

Convenient, inexpensive, delicious.

You might personally disagree on any of those points but for enough people it’s true.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#133

Post by mahathu »

thumbuddy wrote: post #57
civilitty wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on a startup that’s training LLMs to be authentic so they can simulate human affection and it’s actually working really well! The key is humanity’s ability to pattern match: we’re actually pretty terrible at it. Our brains are so keen on finding patterns that they often spot them where none exist. Remember the face on Mars? It was just a pile of rocks. The same principle applies here. As long as the AI so…

Whew it's satire. Whew. I've literally seen posts on the internet that read like this sans the satire.

I've seen people on /r/singularity argue how LLMs are a better friend than actual friends or therapists because they are always available, non-judgemental and "listen better".

EDIT: Here, for example: https://i.redd.it/7qxb1ohvhada1.png

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#134

Post by Ekaros »

fullshark wrote: post #101
m1el wrote: post #14

I am not scared for AI overflowing the news sites with bullshit. We already have a fire hydrant worth of bullshit content produced for consumption. Lies and fakes have coexisted with humans forever. People did rumours, then we had books, press, radio, television, and now the Internet. "But it's easier to produce lies/deepfakes today" -- true. However, the absolute cost of producing a lie per consumer already was negl…

You can see this with information sources in our lifetime. Cable news networks and infotainment channels like the Discovery/History Channel turned to garbage so people stopped trusting them. The same will happen to the internet / social media sites.

I really think we are already there. Just look at how media is divided and how other side is treated by the other...

And then some fraction of middle hate it all...

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#135

Post by latchkey »

I went to CSUDH many many years ago (early 90's). I had a few interactions with Larry Rosen, mentioned in the article.

I started off working in the CS labs and eventually moved onto running the systems for extended ed. He was kind of anti-tech even back then and we butted heads a bit. I was just some punk kid with a big budget to buy all the latest Apple products and having tons of fun. He was kind of an old fart who struggled to make his Windows 3.1 winsock connect to 'the internet'.

"I get concerned about the fact that we just blindly believe the GPS."

Him coming out with the views like this are no surprise. Fear of GPS? Come on.

Wired is really digging to find some people who support their storyline.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#136

Post by Ekaros »

miohtama wrote: post #16

AI is unrelated to post truth. We have been living the era of the fake news since 2016, when Russian trolls started to peddle with elections and President Trump created his legendary alternative facts. AI may exaggerate these issues, but not much. Anything AI can do can be done by human liars as well. If humans are not mentally ready then shit has already hit the fan and blaming/pointing the AI and its research or re…

Or going back even before that. When media drove a invasion of different country on entirely lies. And no one involved has been prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#137

Post by pjc50 »

chasd00 wrote: post #113
civilitty wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on a startup that’s training LLMs to be authentic so they can simulate human affection and it’s actually working really well! The key is humanity’s ability to pattern match: we’re actually pretty terrible at it. Our brains are so keen on finding patterns that they often spot them where none exist. Remember the face on Mars? It was just a pile of rocks. The same principle applies here. As long as the AI so…

> simulate human affection LLM sexbots could be pretty useful

Every "AI chat" service either leans into or fights the "alignment problem" of whether it wants to be an AI sex chat bot service. See controversy over Replika.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#138

Post by dcsommer »

robviren wrote: post #130

I feel that you could replace "AI-Saturated Post-Truth World" with any number of technological changes over the last 100 years and find a similar article at that time. I am impressed by LLMs and these more powerful AI agents, but I also have confidence that over the course of time their capabilities will become utterly boring and commonplace to my growing kids. In a generation their place in society will be as unspec…

Smartphones have dramatically changed the way humans relate to each other, with incredibly profound impact on mental health and social interactions. The negative impact hasn't gone away just because part of the population hasn't seen a different world and can't imagine anything different.

The same may be true of LLMs and all the hallucinated information they share. I would respect and listen to what experts in psychology have to say here by default.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#139

Post by aero-deck »

Havoc wrote: post #53

The comment by Yuval Noah Harari seemed insightful to me. If you argue against a bot about a political matter, not knowing it’s a bot - you always lose on a long enough timeline. ie you can never pursuade the bot but it can wear you down / eventually find an argument that works. The only winning move is not to play. So I could see this having a chilling effect on all discourse Aside from the whole skynet thing the ab…

The chilling effect may actually be a good thing, given that discourse these days is overheated.

There's a weird magic trick that social media companies have played on people to convince them that the text and images consumed on their websites are socially/culturally/politically relevant. Once it becomes clear how easy it is to fake that text people will come to understand how cheap and irrelevant "opinion" has become and this magic trick will become weakened.

Re: Humans aren’t mentally ready for an AI-saturated ‘post-truth world’

#140

Post by itairall »

Havoc wrote: post #53

The comment by Yuval Noah Harari seemed insightful to me. If you argue against a bot about a political matter, not knowing it’s a bot - you always lose on a long enough timeline. ie you can never pursuade the bot but it can wear you down / eventually find an argument that works. The only winning move is not to play. So I could see this having a chilling effect on all discourse Aside from the whole skynet thing the ab…

It is a straw man to pretend that political discussion looks like an Intelligence Squared debate when almost all the time it looks like a food fight about nonsense.

The idea the world will be worst off with less flame wars is simply wrong IMO.

I would already rate the discourse I have had with chatGPT4 as the best of my life.

I win if I learn something. It strikes me as highly perverse to view that the only way to win is to not play the game because you can't brow beat the bot into submission.

THAT is though what we mean by "political discussion". A bullshit pie throwing contest until one side quits. A twitter flame war. Yes, hopefully AI completely destroys that.

Post reply on HN