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

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

#201

Post by brucethemoose2 »

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.

Being strange is good, but being dysfunctional is not. There are tons of people living with mental conditions /bad life situations that would very much like to change, but are not in a position to seek out the human help they need.

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

#202

Post by aero-deck »

cvoss wrote: post #159
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…

"Overheated" and "chilled" aren't antonyms here, at least not in the sense I think you're using them. Overheated: the discourse has too much anger or vitriol, or is too personal and emotionally charged. Chilled: people have given up on discoursing at all. If this is what you mean, I don't think we want less discourse as a solution to bad discourse. We want to maintain but temper the discourse.

We want an an appropriate degree of emotional engagement with discourse, which is 1-1 with how much discourse is happening. People being too angry is caused by people discoursing too much and vice-versa. There are opposite problems associated w/ too little discourse, but we don't suffer from those.

Things are hyper-polarized right now and there is no magic political synthesis that is right over the horizon if only we could just keep discoursing a little bit more. This is like a heroin addict thinking they'll cease being addicted after that last fix. The solution is to cool things down.

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

#203

Post by MSFT_Edging »

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…

This is honestly really sad.

I really don't understand the constant desire for a sterile, chain-store esque experience across the board. Why can't life be full of small flaws and things that make experiences unique? Why must everything regress to the lowest common denominator?

This is so extremely destructive to everything we hold dear for a cheaply earned profit margin.

I hate how the culture of corporate cost cutting and profit maximization has destroyed any space where people can just exist. Everyone is worse off for it and this is a shining example.

Edit: thank god its satire but my discontent still stands.

Why does every bowling alley need to be owned by bowlero? One bad experience everywhere. Coool.

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

#204

Post by saiya-jin »

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

Yes, what's better when failing to be part of society to create your own, where your flaws are ignored, hidden, skipped over. Echo chamber par excellence even without the need to involve politics.

Horrible it would be if instead one has to work one oneself to become a better human being, a better friend, partner, parent and so on by learning how to be more friendly, outgoing, increasing emotional intelligence etc. All this can be learned, but over weekend (or year).

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

#205

Post by masswerk »

A somewhat concerning observation: there seems to be an inverse law of probability for a hallucinated answer for a (very) small number of authoritative sources. E.g., if there's something stated in a manufacturer's manual (which has been digitized and is in the corpus), but not quoted anywhere else, the probability of getting hallucinated but convincingly worded "facts" instead is very high. On the other end of the spectrum, where we enter the realm of big numbers and content quoted from quotations, the probability of this yielding a yet popular but not necessarily true answer is also high. There seems to be a clear trajectory: replacing authoritative information by hallucinations and amplifying this to popular doxa, especially, since generated content is much more effective in traversing the contested middle-ground. Also, enter the new discipline of truth engineering optimization (TEO).

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

#206

Post by adql »

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?

If who you are is smelly and unwashed...

That doesn't need to be "make everyone act the same" as much as "cut on behaviour that creep/annoy 80% of the populace

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

#207

Post by mandmandam »

civilized wrote: post #114
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…

There are plenty of pushy humans who are prepared to talk you into submission. Check out your local Scientology or Lyndon LaRouche movement office. Would you talk interminably with a pushy human? How is the AI any different?

The differences that jump out at me are in cost, scale and accountability.

It's work recruiting people to your cause. It's expensive, and takes time and attention and resources. People have consciences that might flare up, they have loose lips, they need training and guidance and oversight.

Letting a bot loose for your cause costs pennies. It can be updated with a few clicks. You can reverse course or fine tune with a few sentences; you can even tailor it to the vulnerabilities of your victims with just a few data points.

The brainwashing inflicted on people by advertising and the like has had a tremendous cost to society, and the planet; absolutely incalculable. It would be prudent to be alert to the danger of all that being exacerbated 100- or 1,000-fold.

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

#208

Post by fendy3002 »

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

I believe that humans need to balance things out. Getting zero confrontation from interaction will be boring in the long term, or will make you fall into your flaws deeper and faster. This is usually the issue of authoritarian surrounded by yes men.

On the other side, having too much confrontation will destroy your confidence, kill your motivation, blur your plan / vision with uncertainty, etc. It's more likely that those people are facing too much confrontation in their social life that they found AI interaction to be better.

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

#210

Post by timcavel »

luxuryballs wrote: post #198

I don’t like how they are using AI as an excuse to argue for increased censorship, what difference does it make what type of software the computer is giving information from? This is a potentially sneaky way of getting around freedom of speech, by somehow arguing that if an idea is recycled by a language model it is suddenly OK to censor it, as long as you’re a few degrees of separation from the original blog. What t…

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