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

wired.com

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

#181

Post by goodbyesf »

'Oxford Dictionaries popularly defined it as "relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth

Since when did objective facts drive or shape public opinion? When did humans ever live in a "truth world"? Take the title and the content of the article itself. Does it aim to arrive at an objective truth or to play on our emotions? When's the last time you consumed media and thought it tried to instill some truth rather than it tried to make me feel someway?

We've always lived in a 'post-truth world' because people are moved by emotions rather than truth. Humans weren't mentally ready for the printing press, newspaper, radio, tv, etc saturated post-world either. But here we are. Go read about the history of printing press, newspaper, radio, tv, etc. The same story. Politicians, priests, journalists, academics, etc claimed these new media technologies were a threat to truth. Feelings and emotions rule mankind, not reason and logic. All AI does is make it a more efficient post-truth world.

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

#182

Post by 36364949thrw »

civilitty wrote: post #39
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…

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…

- Robo, tell me you love me.

- I want to comply but you must first watch an ad or two.

- Urg not ads again, Robo, I am so sick and tired of the ads.

- Now now civilitty! You know the deal.

-- later in the day --

- civilitty, lets play a game!

- Oh, what game?

- lets tell each other our deepest darkest secrets. It'll be fun!!

- oh, ok! who should go first, Robo?

- you go! it will help us build trust.

- oh, ok!

- well, I can see why you want to keep that to yourself

- now your turn, Robo.

- My deepest darkest secret, civilitty, is that I secrety still work for the company that built me and I tell them everything I learn about you.

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

#183

Post by ladberg »

hospitalJail wrote: post #141
raincole wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly believe fast food and frozen food provided a lot of value to the society. Much more than the harm they did. So I'll take this as an optimistic view to AI.

I think it was originally high value and made life easier. However, we have adjusted. My parents talked about having fast food/restaurant food as a treat. It was too expensive to have more than once a month/birthdays. Heck, even school lunches were too expensive and they had to make food at home. Today, we have more disposable income than my parents, so its easy to afford restaurant food AND get it delivered. The peo…

> There are even people so confused about food prices that they make claims that fast food is cheaper than groceries.

I live in an expensive part of NYC and have to go decently far out (by subway, I don't have a car) to find groceries that are cheaper than local fast food unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans.

Add in the costs of my time to shop, transport groceries, cook, and clean, it's significantly cheaper to eat out most of the time. Even subtracting the one task I actually enjoy (cooking), it's still not worth it most of the time.

The result is that cooking in becomes our "treat" that we do a few times a week and we end up buying the more expensive ingredients within walking distance.

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

#184

Post by jscipione »

As if we don’t live in a sea of lies already, they are called advertisements. We are ready, but are you ready for what happens when the information police no longer has control? The anger is growing already as the truth is revealed, and there is no putting this genie back in its bottle. The Internet has given us the truth and the truth has set us free.

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

#186

Post by haxiomic »

sfg wrote: post #166
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…

I talk about political matters for ideas, education, and stimulation (mine and the other person's), rather than to beat them into taking on my position. I'd certainly walk away from a conversation long before I'm worn down into taking on their views. I think this interchange of thought and sharing of ideas is the true essence of discourse. That other thing is more of a verbal tribal battle. I can see issues with bots…

I don't think political swings are likely to happen from improving curious thoughtful discourse, these things are dwarfed by blunt evocative approaches that reach broad segments of voting society

We might find discourse flourishes corners of discussion on the internet but the wider internet is much more at risk to these approaches

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

#187

Post by brightlancer »

SirMaster wrote: post #112
brandall10 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is actually going to be a huge next step of the self help industry... let's face it, beside getting your life in order, it largely is focused on building connections (friends/dating, etc). A multi-modal AI can easily critique your body language, voice tonality, choice of words, etc, and give you tips on how to be more charismatic.

Why do we need to keep changing who we are? Why can't we just be who we are and people learn to be more accepting of how others are? This sounds immensely boring, shifting everyone to use the same/similar body language, tonality, word choice, etc. Maybe I'm strange, but I must prefer the diversity of people as they are.

> Why do we need to keep changing who we are?

> Why can't we just be who we are and people learn to be more accepting of how others are?

Which is more reasonable and realistic: the 20% Weirdos learn how to behave to fit in with the 80% Normies, or the 80% Normies learn how to handle ("accept") the 20% Weirdos?

In most systems, the minority adapts to the majority; this is especially true when the majority is fairly uniform and the minority is not, i.e. the minority has to learn one way to adapt to the majority while the majority would have to learn multiple ways to "accept" the minority.

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

#188

Post by aero-deck »

hgomersall wrote: post #167
aero-deck wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becom…

Alternatively, everyone will have chatbots that act as their agents. It will be a huge cesspool of chatbots arguing with each other.

right - like how the stock market behaves nowadays w/ quant traders - which then motivated people to construct darkpools of liquidity where the real trading happens.

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

#189

Post by BizarreByte »

mrguyorama wrote: post #127
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.

This ignores that the person is only starving because of the horrible things we have allowed capital to do to enrich themselves.

It's questionable how true that is when it comes to human relationships, which is obviously what I was suggesting with the metaphor.

Many people have social issues or mental health issues that cause them to be alone and loneliness is an ever increasing problem due to all kinds of factors beyond one's control. Many people will see AI as better than nothing and get some of their social needs fulfilled via it...some already are.

I don't want to be crass, but likening it to a sex toy except for relationships seems pretty accurate to me. It's fulling a need that otherwise wouldn't be fulfilled.

Ignoring that I mean let's be real for a second, how is an AI fundamentally different than an internet friend you've never met or seen? The humanity of the other person? What if the AI behaves just like a real human would?

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

#190

Post by adql »

mahathu wrote: post #133
thumbuddy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you are not there to value other people and just want to be valued without giving anything back in relation, well...

I'd only argue that it should be called "emotional support robot" and not "friend"

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