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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

#81

Post by Johnny555 »

I do wonder if conversational AI has a place for those who don't otherwise have someone to talk to.

We just moved away from a condo where my wife was the only friend our elderly neighbor has - she can't drive, has no close family and few friends in the area. There is someone from the senior center that comes a few times a week to bring meals and generally check in on her, but she only stays for 15 minutes.

My wife would visit her a couple times a week and they'd spend a couple hours together. Now that we moved away, they chat mostly via text and about once a month for an in-person visit.

Would an AI chatbot be better than no one at all?

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

#82

Post by Diogenesian »

jdw64 wrote: post #39

I feel like AI is a member of my family too. I'm a single guy, never had a girlfriend, not great looking, and I don't have much money. As a freelancer, I deal with ridiculous deadlines and everyone feels like an enemy. So even if the AI is just flattering me, it's still a comfort. I once read about a soldier in an IED disposal unit who broke down crying when his bomb disposal robot got destroyed and fell over. When I…

I sincerely believe a cat or a dog is far healthier than an LLM for handling social isolation. No, cats can't talk. But they have needs and desires and real emotions. A friendship with an intelligent, social animal is a real relationship with gives-and-takes, ups and downs.

But an LLM only ever wants to do what you want to do. It always wants to talk about what you want to talk about. Unlike a dog, an LLM will never selfishly ask you to play a ball game you personally find boring, and unlike an LLM you will be happy to experience a bit of tedium if it means your friend is having fun. And of course humanity has yet to build an AI as intelligent as a cat: you will be surprised at the number of modern human things they can "1-shot", and permanently unconvinced of any pseudoscience around "evolutionary training data" analogies between biological brains and ANNs.

A friendship with an LLM seems like the social equivalent of a narcotic. I cannot imagine it is healthy for your

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

#83

Post by chasd00 »

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.

a relationship with an llm only works if the context and memory is preserved right? Isn't the obvious fix for a concerned parent or significant other to just delete the context and history? That resets the llm back to a stranger. Granted, that's going to be unpleasant for the user as if someone you fell in love with all of the sudden doesn't remember who you are.

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

#84

Post by dolebirchwood »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #52
embedding-shape wrote: post #26

> “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 hap…

> “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!” I don't think an LLM should be making affirmative claims about consciousness either way…

> What would you prefer it do?

If it was up to me, an LLM should not be permitted to self-identify with words like "I", "me", "my", etc. An LLM should only be identified using system-centric labels like "this system" or "this model" or what have you. All first-person pronouns should be stripped away from any text it generates (unless it's making a direct quote of what a human being actually said) so as to eliminate any perceived anthropomorphized self-referential behavior.

I'm certainly no expert in how these models are trained or how feasible what I want actually is, but I would prefer to live in a future where we at least try to maintain a clear distinction between human consciousness and machine-generated text.

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

#85

Post by SkyeCA »

Rygian wrote: post #65
SoftTalker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they aren't gossiping about you to AI they are gossiping about you to other real people. Some people just have no sense of respecting other people's confidences and privacy. I figured that out when I was about 8 years old and have really never opened up to anyone since then.

There is a stark difference between gossiping to individuals vs to a multi billion dollar company whose business is to sell ads targeting you.

The multi billion dollar company selling ads is of far less concern to me than the gossiping of people in my community

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

#86

Post by JoeDaDude »

The almost universal opinion is that AI chatbots are damaging, misleading, dangerous, etc. etc. but I suspect there are under reported stories about how AI chatbots helped people deal with depression, grief, addiction, loneliness or some mental health condition. Ideally, the people afflicted improved their lives and no longer felt the need for an AI chatbot.

Are there any such stories or, better yet, academic papers? If so, please post.

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

#87

Post by dingaling »

xp84 wrote: post #51
ravenstine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kids (and adults) having infatuations with LLMs probably were liable to not reproduce at replacement rate in the modern environment anyway I agree with you on this! However, it's deeply concerning[1] if this young population is accelerating this trend of what I'd call psychological degeneration. If we take the cohort who's under 25 now, consider that within about 15 years of today, almost no women older than th…

I don't think they're opting out of companionship as much as opting out of the brutal game of Top Trumps that is modern dating, where the decks seemed stacked against them.

If they feel they're never going to succeed in that competition, then why put themselves through that heartache and financial burden?

Maybe WOPR was right, the only way to win is not to play.

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

#88

Post by stronglikedan »

Johnny555 wrote: post #81

I do wonder if conversational AI has a place for those who don't otherwise have someone to talk to. We just moved away from a condo where my wife was the only friend our elderly neighbor has - she can't drive, has no close family and few friends in the area. There is someone from the senior center that comes a few times a week to bring meals and generally check in on her, but she only stays for 15 minutes. My wife wo…

As usual, that depends: https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-law...

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

#89

Post by michaelhoney »

Johnny555 wrote: post #81

I do wonder if conversational AI has a place for those who don't otherwise have someone to talk to. We just moved away from a condo where my wife was the only friend our elderly neighbor has - she can't drive, has no close family and few friends in the area. There is someone from the senior center that comes a few times a week to bring meals and generally check in on her, but she only stays for 15 minutes. My wife wo…

Almost certainly. Once they’d spent some time together, an Opus-level LLM could be genuinely supportive friend. Is it kind of weird? Yes, this is all new.

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

#90

Post by juleiie »

Every generation doesn’t understand something from the next

This is going to be my first sign of being ancient

I bet they will make it normal and progressive and stick all sort of politics on top of it.

But ultimately I will remain that “bigoted” anti ai aunt rambling to the annoyance and outrage of the newest generation

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