We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#181

Post by extropic-engine » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

ants_everywhere wrote: post #125

cornholio wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI makes it even easier to spin up fake personas to pretend to be human and advocate It's not only that. AI enables a never-before-seen level of individual targeting for political and commercial actors, campaigns of behavioral modification and radicalization, to the point where the entire intelectual foundations of democracy become questionable. When power actors addressed the people in traditional media they could…

Yeah for sure. But also Orwell was extrapolating from the reality on the ground in communist countries. The scale achieved there was also massive. Your neighbors would turn you in if you criticized the people in power, etc. This is also the reason the Soviets were ahead of the US in trying to train people like dogs (Pavlov's research) and why the communist forces ran brainwashing experiments on American POWs during t…

have you looked at the US lately? if you're concerned for democracy i don't think deepseek is the one you need to be most worried about

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#182

Post by ninalanyon » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #108

stdvit wrote: post #97

> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. They actually don't. Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities, and more so in effect and understanding. You can't convince (enough) people anymore that it is even important as many…

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In my case it seems that the problem is a combination of stomach capacity and the desire to taste all those lovely things.

What works for me is to keep myself occupied, to insist on eating only things that I really want because of the taste, and to eat little at a time but more often.

My GP concurs and claims that restricting one's intake by having several small meals instead of one large one results in the stomach effectively shrinking so that over time you find yourself feeling full after a relatively small meal. When I am at home I use a smaller plate at dinner than the rest of my family so that I just can't pile as much on.

After nearly a decade of this the result is that I simply cannot eat the same amounts as I used without feeling uncomfortable, so I don't.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#183

Post by phyphy » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #145

anovikov wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Your body is a machine that burns calories. Give it less calories and it will burn its calorie stores. You are right that there are a lot of scams that complicate this fact as much as possible to get money from you. But rest assured, if you calculate your TDEE (many simple calcs online), and food scale your calories ( everything you eat) to a diet -500 under your TDEE, you will lose weight (or you are a perpetual mot…

Confidently incorrect. Body builds what it thinks it needs. Lifting weights? It will think you need muscles. Living sedentarily? It will think you are conserving evergy and you need fat reserves. Running daily? It will think all the needs are met and you need cognitive strength.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#184

Post by dclowd9901 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #164

stdvit wrote: post #97

> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. They actually don't. Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities, and more so in effect and understanding. You can't convince (enough) people anymore that it is even important as many…

I'm a 44 yo Xenial, not too old, not young. That is, I'm part of the "walkman generation" . It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance. Society nowadays is pretty ugly. Younger generations seem very isolationist to me.

Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and flash mobs. All of which would probably make younger generations eye roll to death out of secondary cringe.

I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know. In a way, social interaction is kind of like a standoff in the dusty streets of an old west town. Someone has to make the first move to expose themselves, and it doesn't seem like anyone wants to be that person anymore.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#185

Post by brulard » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #159

AI is incapable of solving loneliness. It's a biological signal we have (thanks to evolution) to seek social connections with other humans , for things like reproduction and survival. Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model. All it can offer is a distraction and an illusion, because it has no humanity. Note: I don't even think dogs solve loneliness. They can…

It may be incapable to solve loneliness, but it may be very capable to be a bandaid so effective, that people just wouldn't bother to deal with another people.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#186

Post by dpassens » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #40

dpassens wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you, as a young person, nobody has ever commented on my birth rate when I went out.

No one implied they would, but the thread you're commenting on literally begins with an abstract discussion about using the law to coerce you into having a more "positive" birth rate.

But it doesn't, does it?

For one, the question was merely whether we'd observe an increased birth rate, not whether that is a reason to pass such a law.

Secondly, you're the one who's bringing up coercion. You can both not be on social media and not have kids. It's still your decision.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#187

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

gchamonlive wrote: post #153

IgorPartola wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to offer an alternative explanation than AI to this. Shit is just too damn expensive. If you want to go hang out with friends it will cost you $4-8 for a cup of coffee. A dinner starts at $50/person. A trip to an amusement park is over $100 easily. The median individual income in the US currently is just over $65k/year or about $32.50/hour. That means half the workforce makes less than that. When an 8oz cock…

I second that. Everybody is quick to jump the gun and blame the victim, while all this can be easily explained by the insane lifestyle we are forced to subscribe in order to survive in this crazy cut-throat productivist job market.

[deleted]

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#188

Post by quitit » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:18 PM UTC

AI could also help us to coordinate ourselves to meet our friends and/ or strangers which we might get along with. That also happens to be the shortest path to addressing loneliness rather than trying to replace humans.

This isn't a problem new to AI: Facebook started as a way to keep in touch with friends, but now is more centred around disconnecting you from your circle and replacing that attention with that from advertisers/influencers.

I don't think this model replicates well for AI. AI interactions are far more direct, we see immediately when it's not working - something that is harder to glean from dating apps and social media.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#189

Post by dclowd9901 » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #159

AI is incapable of solving loneliness. It's a biological signal we have (thanks to evolution) to seek social connections with other humans , for things like reproduction and survival. Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model. All it can offer is a distraction and an illusion, because it has no humanity. Note: I don't even think dogs solve loneliness. They can…

On your last point, I've noticed an uptick in folks treating their dogs in ways most people might treat their children. So while I think on paper what you say makes sense, at some point, I think people are in fact personifying their pets to a degree that they recognize them as adjacent to human beings.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#190

Post by FreeTrade » Sat, Aug 02, 2025, 3:21 PM UTC

notarobot123 wrote: post #99

glimshe wrote: post #59

I believe that AI can't ever replace direct human contact. But I'm not so sure if a good AI can't replace superficial online-only friendships. Looking at the bulk of my online interactions (outside forums like this one), they largely end in trivia (did you know...) or low effort agreement. An AI could play that role admirably.

Isn't that more of a comment about the quality of weak-tie networks that exist on internet scale web platforms? The rise of private group chats as the new lifeblood of social networking gives me hope that the state of the Web today isn't the end of the story. Authentic human connection across digital networks is still possible even if it isn't particularly common right now. We need new protocols.

Private group chats do not tend to be encrypted. If my theory on what governments are most concerned about (disrupting alternative political organizing) holds true - they never will be allowed to be fully private.