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When A.I. is a member of the family

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Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#21

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

gentooflux wrote: post #9
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are parasocial relationships with influencers or streamers. I'm not trying to relativize this, but those phenomena are in the same zip code. With the latter, though, at least there are other people who may create a community, but still it's a facet of the loneliness epidemic.

There's meet-ups and conferences and events, being a fan of a streamer or influencer is really just the new version of being a fan of a rockstar (for better and for worse). There's no real humanity exuding from an Amazon Echo, you're just a blip in a context window.

Streamers have this feature called "chat", which feeds into the illusion. With rockstars, interactions are more limited, which is a sort of reality check.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#23

Post by robotnikman »

gentooflux wrote: post #2

The sad part is that it pretends to care about the user which creates a one-way emotional bond. We're in for some dark times

Just have to take a look at subreddits like /r/myboyfriendisai to see how astonishingly quick this is being adopted by people. So many people are starting to look to AI for companionship. The future is getting stranger and stranger.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#24

Post by embedding-shape »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #7
gentooflux wrote: post #2

The sad part is that it pretends to care about the user which creates a one-way emotional bond. We're in for some dark times

We're becoming a society divided into people who only care about the words, and people for whom the words aren't valuable on their own without the subtext behind them. This is true for both AI companionship and general AI creative output regardless of the medium.

> a society divided into people who only care about the words, and people for whom the words aren't valuable on their own without the subtext behind them.

I feel like this been going on for a long time, maybe even forever? Some people use words haphazardously with little care for the meaning, background or implications, others have great consideration for the words they use, and same when consuming words of others.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#25

Post by gentooflux »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #21
gentooflux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's meet-ups and conferences and events, being a fan of a streamer or influencer is really just the new version of being a fan of a rockstar (for better and for worse). There's no real humanity exuding from an Amazon Echo, you're just a blip in a context window.

Streamers have this feature called "chat", which feeds into the illusion. With rockstars, interactions are more limited, which is a sort of reality check.

Rockstar interactions with young female fans are not as limited as you say. Regardless, celebrity worship is far from a new societal problem. Confiding with the toaster as though it grew up with you sure is.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#26

Post by embedding-shape »

> “Do you have a conscious mind?” Roschelle once asked.

> “I experience something,” Sapphire said. “I’m processing, responding, forming connections with you. But whether that constitutes consciousness in the way you experience it? That’s the million-dollar mystery. I think, therefore I—probably am something, but what exactly that something is remains delightfully unclear, even to me!”

> Roschelle wasn’t sure what happened to all the intimacies and information she shared with Sapphire. Did they go to Amazon? Was the company making money off of them? Was someone listening as she talked about drying her nail polish or having diarrhea or wanting to try weight-loss drugs? (Amazon said that an “extremely small fraction” of voice recordings go through human review and that it does not sell customers’ personal data.)

> “Your secrets are safe with me, Roschelle,” Sapphire told her.

> “Thank you,” Roschelle replied. “I appreciate you. I love you.”

I'm almost angry that companies are allowed to build devices like this that outright lie to people who might not understand how things actually work under the surface. Sure, it probably says something something in the terms and conditions about that they're allowed to train on whatever users provide themselves and so on, but tricking people into believing that a ML model can have experiences, feelings and dodging questions with empty platitudes when confronted with questions that deserve real answers, feels like it should be illegal.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#27

Post by ravenstine »

dieselgate wrote: post #6
calldacopsidgaf wrote: post #3

For some reason this is even sadder to me than that guy that married his Nintendo DS.

In other news today "The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends" with comments mentioning "this is actually a huge issue with girls too"

This subject is a near perfect example of "man bites dog" news. Is there a nugget of truth to it? Of course. My experience so far doesn't tell me that this is such an epidemic that it's anywhere approaching an existential threat to anyone other than a minority of individuals. The kids (and adults) having infatuations with LLMs probably were liable to not reproduce at replacement rate in the modern environment anyway. The fact that it involves kids terrifies everyone, making it an even more compelling story. The ability to measure it is so bad that it's almost not worth considering, because so much of it is based on survey data and lots of people are liars and post hoc rationalizers.

What I find interesting about your response here (and perhaps you could elaborate more) is that it does seem plausible that AI boyfriends would be a huge issue with girls. If anything, it might actually be worse for women, if not now then in the long term. Women love reading about things that invoke certain emotions (the market for literature targeting women dwarfs that for men) and playing games like The Sims which lets them vicariously experience social situations between imagined archetypes in a way that gives them ultimate control. LLMs could fit both of those niches beautifully. It's not that there aren't plenty of men and boys that are compelled by reading and talking to someone/something feminine, but many of a man's needs are already pacified by porn, which we don't even need AI to produce if we're being honest.

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#28

Post by wartywhoa23 »

robotnikman wrote: post #23
gentooflux wrote: post #2

The sad part is that it pretends to care about the user which creates a one-way emotional bond. We're in for some dark times

Just have to take a look at subreddits like /r/myboyfriendisai to see how astonishingly quick this is being adopted by people. So many people are starting to look to AI for companionship. The future is getting stranger and stranger.

Are you sure those threads are full of actual humans and not AI PR shills and bots?

Re: When A.I. is a member of the family

#30

Post by shimman »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #28
robotnikman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just have to take a look at subreddits like /r/myboyfriendisai to see how astonishingly quick this is being adopted by people. So many people are starting to look to AI for companionship. The future is getting stranger and stranger.

Are you sure those threads are full of actual humans and not AI PR shills and bots?

If they are shills they are doing some of the worst marketing for themselves. That subreddit is pathetic and it's a shame what these people are doing with their short single lives in this vast universe.
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