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What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

nytimes.com

91–100 of 548 posts

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

#91
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't there necessarily be correlative effects in professional settings a la programming?

Not necessarily: transactional, impersonal directions to a machine to complete a task don't automatically imply, in my mind, the sorts of feedback loops necessary to induce AI psychosis. All CASE tools, however, displace human skills, and all unused skills atrophy. I struggle to read code without syntax highlighting after decades of using it to replace my own ability to parse syntactic elements. Perhaps the slow shif…

I think this is true but I don't feel like atrophied Assembler skills are a detriment to software development, it is just that almost everyone has moved to a higher level of abstraction, leaving a small but prosperous niche for those willing to specialize in that particular bit of plumbing.

As LLM-style prose becomes the new Esperanto, we all transcend the language barriers(human and code) that unnecessarily reduced the collaboration between people and projects.

Won't you be able to understand some greater amount of code and do something bigger than you would have if your time was going into comprehension and parsing?

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

#92
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?

I am (surprisingly for myself), a left-wing on this issue.

I've seen a significant amount (tens) of women routinely using "AI boyfriends",.. not actually boyfriends but general purpose LLMs like DeepSeek, for what they consider to be "a boyfriend's contribution to relationship", and I'm actually quite happy that they are doing it with a bot rather than with me.

Like, most of them watch films/series/anime together with those bots (I am not sure the bots are fed the information, I guess they just use the context), or dump their emotional overload at them, and ... I wouldn't want to be at that bot's place.

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

#93
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?

Wow that's a fun subreddit with posts like I want to breakup with my ai boyfriend but it's ripping my heart out.

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

#94
This is ridiculous. The NYT, who is a huge legal enemy of OpenAI, publishes an article that uses scare tactics, to manipulate public opinion against OpenAI, by basically accusing them that "their software is unsafe for people with mental issues, or children", which is a bonkers ridiculous accusation given that ChatGPT users are adults that need to take ownership of their own use of the internet.

What's the difference than an adult becoming affected by some subreddit, or even the "dark web", or 4chan forum, etc.

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

#95
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?

When valid reasons are given. Not when OpenAI's legal enemy tries to scare people by claiming adults aren't responsible for themselves, including their own use of computers.

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

#97
post #82
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

The mental corruption due to surrounding oneself with sycophantic yes men is historically well documented.

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

#98
post #86
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people conduct very few real estate transactions in their life, so maybe they just don’t care enough to remember stuff like this.

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

#99
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?

Anthropic emphasizes safety but their acceptance of Middle Eastern sovereign funding undermines claims of independence.

Their safety-first image doesn’t fully hold up under scrutiny.

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

#100
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?

When valid reasons are given. Not when OpenAI's legal enemy tries to scare people by claiming adults aren't responsible for themselves, including their own use of computers.

This argument could be used to support almost anything. Gambling, fentanyl, slap fighting, TikTok…
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