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What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

nytimes.com

241–250 of 548 posts

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

#241
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.

There’s a close tangle between the problems that we don’t know how to build a company that would turn down the opportunity to make every human into paperclips for a dollar; and no one knows how how to build a smart AI and stil prevent that outcome even if the companies would choose to avoid it given the chance.

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

#242
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 worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people

I worry what these people were doing before they "fell under the evil grasp of the AI tool". They obviously aren't interacting with humanity in a normal or healthy way. Frankly I'd blame the parents, but on here everything is b&w and everyone should still be locked up who isn't vaxxed according to those who won't touch grass... (I'm pointing out how binary internet discussion has become to the oh so hurt by that throw away remark)

The problem is raising children via the internet, it's always and will always be a bad idea.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing relationship with someone, for example, a partnership, then you can't just re-prompt that person. You can fire an employee who challenges you, or you can reprompt an LLM persona that doesn't. Or you can choose not too. Claiming that power - even if unused - makes everyone…

I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about. My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

> I didn't use that word, and that's not what I'm concerned about.

That was what the "meaningless" comment you took issue with was about.

> My point is that an LLM is not inherently opinionated and challenging if you've just put it together accordingly.

But this isn't true, anymore than claiming "a video game is not inherently challenging if you've just put it together accordingly." Just because you created something or set up the scenario, doesn't mean it can't be challenging.

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

#244

It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year. 8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars. Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year. It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using t…

Agree that it's ridiculous to talk about banning AI because some people misuse it, but the word preventable is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that argument. Preventable how? Chopping down all the coconut trees? Re-establishing the prohibition? Deciding prayers > healthcare?

Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that death is inevitable. We've lost a lot of the rituals and traditions over the centuries that made facing it psychologically endurable. It probably isn't worth trying to prevent deaths from coconut trees.

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

#245
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 genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care.

The reason nobody there seems to care is that they instantly ban and delete anyone who tries to express concern for their wellbeing.

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

#246
post #244

It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year. 8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars. Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year. It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using t…

Agree that it's ridiculous to talk about banning AI because some people misuse it, but the word preventable is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that argument. Preventable how? Chopping down all the coconut trees? Re-establishing the prohibition? Deciding prayers > healthcare? Our society is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that death is inevitable. We've lost a lot of the rituals and traditions over the centuries th…

Not fully preventable, of course not. But reducible, certainly. Better cars aided by AI. Better diagnoses and healthcare aided by AI. Less addiction to cigarettes and alcohol through AI facilitated therapy. Less obesity due to better diet plans created by AI. I could go on. And that’s just one frame, there are plenty of non-AI solutions we could, and should, be focused on.

Really my broader point is we accept the tradeoff between technology/freedom and risk in almost everything, but for some reason AI has become a real wedge for people.

And to your broader point, I agree our culture has distanced itself from death to an unhealthy degree. Ritual, grieving, and accepting the inevitable are important. We have done wrong to diminish that.

Coconut trees though, those are always going to cause trouble.

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

#247

It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year. 8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars. Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year. It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using t…

Yes, Your Honor, I did convince this teenager to kill herself - but 150 people a year die from coconuts!

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do so many women have ptsd from dating?

[flagged]

The parent post is getting flack, but it’s hard to see why it is controversial. I have heard “women want a man who will provide and protect” from every single woman I have ever dated or been married to, from every female friend with whom I could have such deep conversations, and from the literature I read in my anthropology-adjacent academic field. At some point one feels one has enough data to reasonably assume it’s a heterosexual human universal (in the typological sense, i.e. not denying the existence of many exceptions).

I can believe that many women are having a hard time under modernity, because so many men no longer feel bound by the former expectations of old-school protector and provider behavior. Some men, like me, now view relationships as two autonomous individuals coming together to share sublime things like hobbies, art or travel, but don’t want to be viewed as a source of security. Other men might be just extracting casual sex from women and then will quickly move on. There’s much less social pressure on men to act a certain way, which in turn impacts on what women experience.

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

#249

It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year. 8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars. Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year. It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using t…

Thank you for the useful information. I will put forwards at our next working group meeting that we ban coconuts.

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

#250
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?

Funnily enough I was just reading an article about this and "my boyfriend is AI" is the tamer subreddit devoted to this topic because apparently one of their rules is that they do not allow discussion of the true sentience of AI. I used to think it was some fringe thing, but I increasingly believe AI psychosis is very real and a bigger problem than people think. I have a high level member of the leadership team at my…

I'm so surprised that only one comment mentions ELIZA. History repeats itself as a farce... or a very conscious scam.
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