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A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

mazzzystar.github.io

371–380 of 400 posts

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#371
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more: attacking people who are familiar and comfortable to you rather than the people causing your actual problems. As a manager in tech, people who were on performance management rarely attacked me, they would find someone on the team to harass instead. Same thing with blaming a downturn in the economy on women painting their hair blue or mini skirts. Anything but blaming the powerful.

Pure conjecture on my part, but I wonder how much of this is risk-based status-mongering. Challenging the powerful is obviously risky. But knocking someone weaker down a few pegs can solidify your status in the hierarchy at a much lower risk. From that perspective, it's arguably rational behavior to maintain your status within a group when you feel vulnerable. (Pardon my reach here, I watched Chimp Empire not too lon…

maybe, if you are in a closed system (like a small tribe). When most bullies Ive worked with went looking for other jobs they were treated like pariah, so it hit them when they left the closed system or someone from outside came in.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but instead of giving up, i would rather we work on a proper long term solution. I am not against people using tools whichever way they see fit, but i am against the emerging trend of turning this stop gap solution into a permanent arrangement by exploiting these people’s emotional state. It is everyone’s sacred right to live life as they see fit but taking advantage of others is not. Therefore i th…

> I see your point, but instead of giving up, i would rather we work on a proper long term solution. This is extremely hand-wavey. What long term solutions should we be working towards exactly? Today, there are many people who statistically will never be able to have a romantic relationship. And regardless of whatever vague potential societal changes you're alluding to, there will always be a subset of the population…

I dont think commercially exploiting people’s mental health issues is the path forward. We should instead focus on addressing root causes. It’s quite sad though that some are of the opinion that instead we should push them toward fake “relationships” and further exacerbate the underlying issues.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#373
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire

We aren’t far from people believing God is talking to them through AI generated text and voice, and commanding them…

There was a HN commentator who believed that. In his case, the output of a RNG. Poor guy was brilliant. Wrote a whole OS around his idea. He had a tragic life.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren’t far from people believing God is talking to them through AI generated text and voice, and commanding them…

There was a HN commentator who believed that. In his case, the output of a RNG. Poor guy was brilliant. Wrote a whole OS around his idea. He had a tragic life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#375

> But, does humanity really need an AI friend? This reminds me of the Fredrick Pohl line "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." So I wonder what the traffic jam is going to look like given that the car seems to already be parked outside with the engine running. Faster depopulation across the developed world? Probably, but maybe there's something even more impo…

I think the pleasure trip is just porn. We have that already and it's possible to discuss the effects of widespread porn on people. I think the next step is, what does it mean to have an emotional relationship with someone in your pocket who is for all definitions perfect - can provide perfect advice and does so with judgement, ridicule, pity or anger? What will be my bar for human relationships, those imperfect mess…

AI can never replace human relationships exactly because it is too available. The AI can do nothing but please you. Like in Hegel's master-slave dialectic, the slave's acceptance immediately becomes worthless to the master because the slave is not an equal and it happens only at the threat of death. Porn and AI girlfriends are only a substitute to people who are already limited to enjoyment in the Imaginary order. It is a consequence of the breakdown of the social contract and not the other way around, as a result of feminist politics and capitalist commodification of dating. Development of better AI accelerates this breakdown of society only insofar as it allows to banish even larger swathes of undesirable men to living in the proverbial sewer without them taking up arms against you; it is just enough to keep the starving man alive but nothing more than that.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see your point, but instead of giving up, i would rather we work on a proper long term solution. This is extremely hand-wavey. What long term solutions should we be working towards exactly? Today, there are many people who statistically will never be able to have a romantic relationship. And regardless of whatever vague potential societal changes you're alluding to, there will always be a subset of the population…

I dont think commercially exploiting people’s mental health issues is the path forward. We should instead focus on addressing root causes. It’s quite sad though that some are of the opinion that instead we should push them toward fake “relationships” and further exacerbate the underlying issues.

If the root cause is "too ugly, uninteresting and poor for anybody to want them romantically", what is the solution to that?

You keep expressing your displeasure, but have yet to propose an actual solution.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#377
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they deserve that? To be more explicit, why do some men deserve an "artificial intelligence girlfriend" that they "own and control", that "serves them"?

I guess one of the problems might be that populations of young and upset men can be quite anti-social and lead to societal issues and harm which are otherwise hard to address, just look at what's occasionally happening in America. Therefore, one could argue that it's better to keep them preoccupied with something (work, sports, other hobbies) as much as possible, though mathematically many of them might never find a…

The fun thing about a local LLM is you can tell it you love it and would do anything for it and then you can turn it off and laugh that was just something you did cause you were horny and having a fantasy and nobody is around to even witness it. It's just your own internal mindfuck that's between you and your sexy GPU.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think commercially exploiting people’s mental health issues is the path forward. We should instead focus on addressing root causes. It’s quite sad though that some are of the opinion that instead we should push them toward fake “relationships” and further exacerbate the underlying issues.

If the root cause is "too ugly, uninteresting and poor for anybody to want them romantically", what is the solution to that? You keep expressing your displeasure, but have yet to propose an actual solution.

The solution is that folks have to put effort into themselves instead of being given a no-effort solution that helps trap them in a depressed state by making that depressed state slightly more comfortable. I say this as an ugly, uninteresting (not poor though to be fair) person with depression.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren’t far from people believing God is talking to them through AI generated text and voice, and commanding them…

There was a HN commentator who believed that. In his case, the output of a RNG. Poor guy was brilliant. Wrote a whole OS around his idea. He had a tragic life.

Terry Davis was systematically bullied to death by a dedicated mob online. Some extraordinarily cruel people realized they could manipulate him into going further off the deep end, and thought it was just an absolute blast to do so. RIP Terry - you suffered much more than you deserved.

Re: A failed AI girlfriend product, and my lessons

#380
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well why don’t you explain what you do mean, then?

Why don't you re-read what I wrote? I don't think it was a particularly difficult question to understand

I read it, I thought it was needlessly rhetorical and deliberately argumentative. Not at all constructive conversation, more of a reddit 'gotcha' than anything. In short, I don't think you're being very honest with your intentions, it's a bad look and I'm sure you can do better :)
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