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

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

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 1001 posts

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

#331

Post by proof_by_vibes »

bowsamic wrote: post #148
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 honestly just think it’s that before there was so little to do at home that you were just bored as hell if you didn’t go out. Now there’s just infinite entertainment of all kinds

Finally I find this argument. Agreed, and I'm baffled that people think that AI is what's going to "solve loneliness." Loneliness has already been solved by YouTube/Twitch. The brain is easily tricked into thinking that it is "being social" when it is subject to the effects of the parasocial relationships that are formed by these platforms. People's afternoons are rapidly becoming consumed by hours of YouTube where they come out of it with a brain telling them: "boy, that's enough social interaction for today!" Introversion has become an epidemic as a result.

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

#333

Post by vincnetas »

dv_dt wrote: post #257
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…

Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls

When mall is called a public space... Public space situation is really sad.

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

#334

Post by Aurornis »

abeppu wrote: post #322
Aurornis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go out and do different activities that involve socialization. There are more people than ever going to the climbing gyms, meeting at the hiking trailhead, hanging out in the ski lift lines, and so on. All of the social places I’ve been going and activities I’ve been doing since a teenager are more crowded than ever, at a rate far faster than the local population growth. Many of the people doing these activities di…

You're basically saying that people who aren't social mistakenly view the rest of the world as not social because of their specific experience, but doesn't that effect also cut the other way? You're seeing people being social because you're going to those situations. But there are time use surveys etc which provide a quantitative view of a lot of people. Because they're voluntary, they can't be a perfect representati…

> You're seeing people being social because you're going to those situations.

No, I’m saying the same social activities are more popular now than they were 10-20 years ago.

I’ve been doing some of the same activities and going on some of the same hikes, bikes, runs, trails, and parks on and off for two decades. The popularity of these activities has exploded.

Even previously hidden trails and hikes are now very busy on Saturdays and Sundays because so many people are discovering them via social media.

If you’re just staying home and consuming doomerism news you’d think everyone else was doing the same.

> Over this 16-year period, the portion of free time people spent alone increased, on average, from 43.5 percent to 48.7 percent, representing an increase of over 5 percentage points.

That’s hardly equivalent to the claim above of a collapse of socialization.

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

#335

Post by Nathanba »

egypturnash wrote: post #295

It's not going to solve loneliness. It's just going to provide a weak substitute for actual socialization. Talking with actual humans but only over the internet is not enough, I have been there and it was a terrible trap, it provided just enough to make it possible for me to avoid physical socialization, while not giving me enough to actually thrive; we need to get out and be in the same place with other people, doin…

Real humans are also fake and they are also traps who are waiting to catch you when you say something they don't like. Then they also use every word and piece of information as ammunition against you, ironically sort of similar to the criticism always levied against online platforms who track you and what you say. AI robots are going to easily replace real humans because compared to most real humans the AI is already a saint. They don't have an ego, they don't try to gaslight you, they actually care about what you say which is practically impossible to find in real life.. I mean this isn't even going to be a competition. Real humans are not going to be able to evolve into the kind of objectively better human beings that they would need to be to compete with a robot.

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

#336

Post by haswell »

anal_reactor wrote: post #276
dv_dt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls

Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

> Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

It doesn’t make much sense to me to put loneliness against efficiency.

What does it matter if it’s “inefficient” to maintain friendships of the easily is a lonely life without social connections?

People are prioritizing the wrong things IMO.

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

#337

Post by soulofmischief »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #307
newsclues wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does working at McDonalds for $17 pay the rent/bills and still give you enough spending money to live a decent lifestyle? I make $20/h as a cleaner but after bills etc, I don’t have the money for fun events, dining out or socializing beyond hanging out on discord and playing games.

Thank you so much for this comment, because it perfectly highlights the point I was trying to make. When I was a young person in the mid 90s, I (and most of my friends) made the equivalent or less of what you make now. But we also didn't have discord or Internet multiplayer games, so we were basically forced to go hang out in person and find other cheap stuff to do.

You have to take into account the fact that rent and other necessities have exploded in relative cost.

In the eighties I might save up months or even 1-2 years for a nice television set, but my rent/mortgage, food, etc. was relatively inexpensive. Now, I can go buy 15-20 decent televisions a month for the same amount it costs me to pay my rent or mortgage here on a 0-2 bedroom place, and I live in a shithole backwoods state, not San Francisco.

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

#338

Post by exe34 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #276
dv_dt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls

Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

> Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to.

In the UK, most councils have made parks alcohol-free zones. Also, the parks are only nice about 3 months a year. The rest of the time it's damp and miserable.

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

#339

Post by HPsquared »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #318
gonzobonzo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even just...call a friend for a chat. Few people are interested in that these days. A few decades ago, you'd even see media where people were chatting on house phones so much that different people in one house would fight over the phone. "Get off the phone" used to mean "stop talking to your friend on the phone." Here's an article from 1999[1]: > Although you may think your parents are unreasonable when they tell…

There's a weird anti-induced demand. Now that I can talk to anyone for free at any moment, I have no desire to What would I even talk about? We have little in common

That's another thing. People have less in common with each other than they used to. People consume different media, pursue different specialized careers, and so on.

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

#340

Post by mindwok »

We, humanity, are on the verge of a question we’ve never had to answer before: what does it mean to be human, and do we even want to be? Because for the first time in history, we might be able to answer “no”.

In many major facets life we’re about to transcend the boundaries that have limited us since we started talking to each other. Health with ozempic and CRISPR, relationships with AI companions, entertainment with social media and AI generated content.

It’s a very interesting time to be human.

Post reply on HN