Meanwhile Zuckerberg's vision for the future was that most of our friends will be AIs in the future...
when exactly did he say this? Seems pretty out there, even for him.
What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
191–200 of 548 posts
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there's a widespread and growing heroin epidemic that's already left 1/3 of society addicted, and a small group of people are able to get off of it by switching to cigarettes, I'm not going to start lecturing them about how it's a terrible idea because cigarettes are unhealthy. > Is it ideal? Not at all. But it's certainly a lesser poison. 1. I do not accept your premise that a retreat into solipsistic relations…
> If you want me to believe that, you're going to have to be more specific about what that "stuff" is. not the person you were talking to but I think for well over 50% of young men, dating apps are simply an exercise in further reducing one's self worth.
> not the person you were talking to but I think for well over 50% of young men, dating apps are simply an exercise in further reducing one's self worth.
It totally get that, but dating apps != dating. If dating apps don't work, do something else (that isn't a chatbot).
If tech dug you into a hole, tech isn't going to dig you out. It'll only dig you deeper.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want me to believe that, you're going to have to be more specific about what that "stuff" is. not the person you were talking to but I think for well over 50% of young men, dating apps are simply an exercise in further reducing one's self worth.
> not the person you were talking to but I think for well over 50% of young men, dating apps are simply an exercise in further reducing one's self worth. It totally get that, but dating apps != dating. If dating apps don't work, do something else (that isn't a chatbot). If tech dug you into a hole, tech isn't going to dig you out. It'll only dig you deeper.
> but dating apps != dating
tell that to a world that had devices put infront of them at a young age where dating is tindr.
> If tech dug you into a hole, tech isn't going to dig you out. It'll only dig you deeper.
There are ways to scratch certain itches that insulate one from the negative effects that typically come from the traditional IRL ways of doing so. For people already scarred by mental health issues (possibly in part due to "growing up" using apps) the immediate digital itch scratch is a lot easier, with more predictable outcomes then the arduous IRL path.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The sycophantic and unchallenging behaviours of chatbots leaves a person unconditioned for human interactions. To be honest, the alternative for a good chunk of these users is no interaction at all, and that sort of isolation doesn't prepare you for human interaction either.
Wouldn't they be seeking a romantic relationship otherwise? Using AI to fulfill a need implies a need which usually results in action towards that need. Even "the dating scene is terrible" is human interaction.
We do see - from 'crazy cat lady' to 'incel', from 'where have all the good men gone' to the rapid decline of the numbers of 25-year-olds who have had sexual experiences, not to mention from the 'loneliness epidemic' that has several governments, especially in Europe, alarmed enough to make it an agenda pointt: No, they would not. Not all of them. Not even a majority.
AI in these cases is just a better 'litter of 50 cats', a better, less-destructive, less-suffering-creating fantasy.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#195Earlier 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…
This. If you never train stick, you can never drive stick, just automatic. And if you never let a real person break your heart or otherwise disappoint you, you'll never be ready for real people.
Ah, 'suffering builds character'. I haven't had that one in a while.
Maybe we should not want to get prepared for RealPeople™ if all they can do is break us and disappoint us.
"But RealPeople™ can also elevate, surprise, and enchant you!" you may intervene. They sure than. An still, some may decide no longer to go for new rounds of Russian roulette. Someone like that is not a lesser person, they still have real™ enjoyment in a hundred other aspects in their life from music to being a food nerd. they just don't make their happiness dependant on volatile actors.
AI chatbots as relationship replacements are, in many ways, flight simulators:
Are they 'the real thing'? Nah, sitting in a real Cessna almost always beats a computer screen and a keyboard.
Are they always a worse situation than 'the real thing'? Simulators sure beat reality when reality is 'dual engine flameout halfway over the North Pacific'
Are they cheaper? YES, significantly!
Are they 'good enough'? For many, they are.
Are they 'syncophantic'? Yes, insofar as that circumstances are decided beforehand. A 'real' pilot doesn't get to choose 'blue skies, little sheep clouds in the sky', they only get to chosen not to fly that day. And the standard weather settings? Not exactly 'hurricane, category 5'.
Are they available, while real flight is not, to some or all members of the public? Generally yes. The simulator doesn't make you have a current medical.
Are they removing pilots/humans from 'the scene'? No, not really. In fact, many pilots fly simulators for risk-free training of extreme situations.
Your argument is basically 'A flight simulator won’t teach you what it feels like when the engine coughs for real at 1000 ft above ground and your hands shake on the yoke.'. No, it doesn't. An frankly, there are experiences you can live without - especially those you may not survive (emotionally).
Society has always had the tendency to pathologize those who do not pursue a sexual relationship as lesser humans. (Especially) single women that were too happy in the medevieal age? Witches that needed burning. Guy who preferred reading to dancing? A 'weirdo and a creep'. English knows 'master' for the unmarried, 'incomplete' man, an 'mister' for the one who got married. And today? those who are incapable or unwilling to participate in the dating scene are branded 'girlfailure' or 'incel' - with the latter group considered a walking security risk. Let's not add to the stigma by playing another tune for the 'oh, everyone must get out there' scene.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know. This reminds me of how people talked about violent video games 15 years back. Do FPS games desensitize and predispose gamers to violence, or are they an outlet? I think for essentially all gamers, games are games and the real world is the real world. Behavior in one realm doesn’t just inherently transfer to the other.
Unless someone is harming themselves or others, who are we to judge? We don't know that this is harmful. Those participating in it seem happier. If we learn in the course of time (a decade?) that this degrades lives with some probability, we can begin to caution or intervene. But how in God's name would we even know that now? I would posit this likey has measurable good outcomes right now. These people self-report as…
It seems we're not quite there, yes. But you should have seen the despair when GPT 5 was rolled out to replace GPT 4.
These people were miserable. Complaining about a complete personality change of their "partner", the desperation in their words seemed genuine.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#197Caelan Conrad made a few videos on specifically AI encouraging kids to socially isolate and commit suicide. In the videos he reads the final messages aloud for multiple cases, if this isn't your cup of tea there's also the court cases if you would prefer to read the chat logs. It's very harrowing stuff. I'm not trying to make any explicit point here as I haven't really processed this fully enough to have one, but I e…
I wish one of these lawsuits would present as evidence the marketing and ads about how ChatGPT is amazing and definitely 100% knows what it’s doing when it comes to coding tasks.
They shouldn’t be able to pick and choose how capable the models are. It’s either a PhD level savant best friend offering therapy at your darkest times or not.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#198One 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?
does it bug you the same when people turn away from interacting with people to surrounding themselves with animals or pets as well?
Honestly, it bugs me less. I think that interaction with people is important. But with animals and plants you are at least dealing with beings that have needs you have to care about to keep them healthy. With bots, there are no needs, just words.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
After having spoken with one of the people there I'm a lot less concerned to be honest. They described it as something akin to an emotional vibrator, that they didn't attribute any sentience to, and that didn't trigger their PTSD that they normally experienced when dating men. If AI can provide emotional support and an outlet for survivors who would otherwise not be able to have that kind of emotional need fulfilled,…
Most people who develop AI psychosis have a period of healthy use beforehand. It becomes very dangerous when a person decreases their time with their real friends to spend more time with the chatbot, as you have no one to keep you in check with what reality is and it can create a feedback loop.
Wow, are we already in a world where we can say "Most people who develop AI psychosis..." because there are now enough of them to draw meaningful conclusions from?
I'm not criticising your comment by the way, that just feels a bit mindblowing, the world is moving very fast at the moment.
Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the default chatbot behavior. Many of these people appear to be creating their own personalities for the chatbots, and it's not too difficult to make an opinionated and challenging chatbot, or one that mimics someone who has their own experiences. Though designing one's ideal partner certainly raises some questions, and I wouldn't be surprised if many are picking sycophantic over challenging. People opting for…
You can make an LLM play pretend at being opinionated and challenging. But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want. And the prompt / context is going to leak into its output and affect what it says, whether you want it to or not, because that's just how LLMs work, so it never really has its own opinions about anything at all.
Hmm. I think you may be confusing sycophancy with simply following directions.
Sycophancy is a behavior. Your complaint seems more about social dynamics and whether LLMs have some kind of internal world.