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What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

nytimes.com

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Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#81

Post by youngNed »

kbelder wrote: post #69
throwaway2037 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are implying here that the financial connection/dependence is the problem. How is this any different than (hetero) men who lose their jobs (or suffer significant financial losses) while in a long term relationship? Their chances of divorce / break-up skyrocket in these cases. To be clear, I'm not here to make women look bad. The inverse/reverse is women getting a long-term illness that requires significant care.…

Funny. Artificial Boyfriends were a software problem, while Artificial Girlfriends are more of a hardware issue.

In a truly depressing thread, this made me laugh.

And think.

Thank you

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#82

Post by Terr_ »

quitit wrote: post #21
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

There are plenty of reasons why having a chatbot partner is a bad idea (especially for young people), but here's just a few: - The sycophantic and unchallenging behaviours of chatbots leaves a person unconditioned for human interactions. Real relationships have friction, from this we develop important interpersonal skills such as setting boundaries, settling disagreements, building compromise, standing up for oneself…

> chatbots are responding to the user's contribution only

Which is also why I feel the label "LLM Psychosis" has some merit to it, despite sounding scary.

Much like auditory hallucinations where voices are conveying ideas that seem-external-but-aren't... you can get actual text/sound conveying ideas that seem-external-but-aren't.

Oh, sure, even a real human can repeat ideas back at you in a conversation, but there's still some minimal level of vetting or filtering or rephrasing by another human mind.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#83

Post by youngNed »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #8
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

NYT did a story on that as well and interviewed a few people. Maybe the scary part is that it isn't who you think it would be and it also shows how attractive an alternative reality is to many people. What does that say about our society.

Maybe the real AI was the friends we lost along the way

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#85

Post by p1necone »

Me1000 wrote: post #56
leoh wrote: post #12

Anthropic was founded by exiles of OpenAI's safety team, who quit en masse about 5 years ago. Then a few years later, the board tried to fire Altman. When will folks stop trusting OpenAI?

Claude has a sycophancy problem too. I actually ended up canceling my subscription because I got sick of being "absolutely right" about everything.

I've had fun putting "always say X instead of 'You're absolutely right'" in my llm instructions file, it seems to listen most of the time. For a while I made it 'You're absolutely goddamn right' which was slightly more palatable for some reason.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#86

Post by chubot »

stavros wrote: post #33
sunaookami wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-5 was so good in the first week, just a raw chatbot like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 were in the beginning and now it has this disgusting "happy" and "comforting" personality and "tuning" it doesn't help one bit, it makes performance way worse and after a few rounds it forgets all instructions. I've already deleted memory, past chats, etc...

Even when you tell it to not coddle you, it just says something cringeworthy like "ok, the gloves are off here's the raw deal, with New Yorker honesty:" and proceeds to feed you a ton of patronizing bullshit. It's extremely annoying.

I have definitely experienced the sycophancy ... and LLMs have sometimes repeating talking points from real estate agents, like "you the buyer doesn't pay for an agent; the seller pays".

I correct it, and it says "sorry you're right, I was repeating a talking point from an interested party"

---

BUT actually a crazy thing is that -- with simple honest questions as prompts -- I found that Claude is able to explain the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement better than anyone I know

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Associatio...

I have multiple family members with Ph.D.s, and friends in relatively high level management, who have managed both money and dozens of people

Yet they somehow don't agree that there was collusion between buyers' and sellers' agents? They weren't aware it happened, and they also don't seem particularly interested in talking about the settlement

I feel like I am taking crazy pills when talking to people I know

Has anyone else experienced this?

Whenever I talk to agents in person, I am also flabberghasted by the naked self-interest and self-dealing. (I'm on the east coast of the US btw)

---

Specifically, based on my in-person conversations with people I have known for decades, they don't see anything odd about this kind of thing, and basically take it at face value.

NAR Settlement Scripts for REALTORS to Explain to Clients

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTI...

https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs'

They might even say say something like "you don't pay; the seller pays". However Claude can explain the incentives very clearly, with examples

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#87

Post by rpq »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #72
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

In my experience, the types of people who use AI as a substitute for romantic relationships are already pretty messed up and probably wouldn't make good real romantic partners anyways. The chances you'll encounter these people in real life is pretty close to zero, you just see them concentrate in niche subreddits.

This kind of thinking pattern scares me because I know some honest people have not been afforded an honest shot at a working romantic relationship.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#88

Post by mavhc »

ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

Is it worth getting disturbed by a subreddit of 71k users? Probably only 71 of them actually post anything.

There's probably more people paying to hunt humans in warzones https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3epygq5272o

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#90

Post by fragmede »

mavhc wrote: post #88
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

Is it worth getting disturbed by a subreddit of 71k users? Probably only 71 of them actually post anything. There's probably more people paying to hunt humans in warzones https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3epygq5272o

Now I'm double disturbed, thanks!
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