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People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

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Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#161

Post by 93po »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #149
93po wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think chatgpt agreeing with people too eagerly, even outside the recent issue this past week or so, is causing a lot of harm. it's even happened to me in my personal life - i was having conflict with someone and they threw our text messages into chatgpt and said "am i wrong for feeling this way" and got chatgpt to agree with them on every single point. i had to highlight to them that chatgpt is really prone to doin…

That's a huge red flag that someone would analyse text messages to try to validate their feelings. Whether or not their feelings are "valid", there's still an issue to be discussed, so it sounds like either they're trying to gaslight you or that you've been gaslighting them. You should distance yourself from them.

I don't think it's as black and white as that. Giving messaging to an LLM and asking "How can I say this more clearly or more kindly?" gives valuable feedback to how you're communicating and how it could be done better, though obviously taking it with a grain of salt.

I think there is also value to affirmations and validation, even if it's done blindly by a robot. We have hurt feelings and want to feel understood. And when the source of those hurt feelings isn't immediately available to talk, it's a small tool to use for self-soothing behavior. Sometimes, or often times, these affirmations might be something you intrinsically already know and believe, and it helps to simply be reminded of them and worded in a different way.

To say "ChatGPT agrees with me and so I feel more confident that you're wrong as a result" is definitely the wrong approach here. Which is, to a small degree, what this person did. We did ultimately break up recently, and the reason being communication issues (and their unwillingness to even talk to me through conflict) is probably no surprise to you. But this outcome was very very likely regardless of LLM use.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#164

Post by jongjong »

jongjong wrote: post #49

I was already a bit of an amateur conspiracy theorist before LLMs. The key to staying sane is to understand that most of the mass group behaviors we observe in society are rooted in ignorance and confusion. Large scale conspiracies are actually a confluence of different agendas and ideologies not a singular nefarious agenda and ideology. You have to be able to hold multiple conflicting ideas in your head at the same…

I feel like forces such as globalization have significantly extended the shelf life of 'short term rewards' for bad actors but I think ultimately, the debt will have to be repaid. Advantages were a tradeoff, not a gift.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#166

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

93po wrote: post #161
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a huge red flag that someone would analyse text messages to try to validate their feelings. Whether or not their feelings are "valid", there's still an issue to be discussed, so it sounds like either they're trying to gaslight you or that you've been gaslighting them. You should distance yourself from them.

I don't think it's as black and white as that. Giving messaging to an LLM and asking "How can I say this more clearly or more kindly?" gives valuable feedback to how you're communicating and how it could be done better, though obviously taking it with a grain of salt. I think there is also value to affirmations and validation, even if it's done blindly by a robot. We have hurt feelings and want to feel understood. An…

I agree - it's fine to privately ask opinions of friends/LLMs, but the issue is then using that as "ammunition". And yes, LLM use is merely a symptom.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#167

Post by karel-3d »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #33

Anyone remember the media stories from the mid-90's about people who were obsessed with the internet and were losing their families because they spent hours every day on the computer addicted to the internet? People gonna people. Journalists gonna journalist.

In my generation, it was the World of Warcraft stories.

And now people remember that time with fondness and even nostalgia. "Back then we played PROPER games! Good old Blizzard" and all that. So, yeah. People will remember ChatGPT and TikTok with nostalgia, if we will survive.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#168

Post by jonnycomputer »

crooked-v wrote: post #77
kaycey2022 wrote: post #60

Looks like Chatgpt persists some context information across chats and doesn't ever delete these profiles. Worst case would be for this to persist across users. That isn't unlikely given the stories of them leaking API keys etc.

> Looks like Chatgpt persists some context information across chats and doesn't ever delete these profiles. People say this, but I haven't seen anything that's convinced me that any 'secret' memory functionality is true. It seems much more likely that people are just more predictable than they like to think.

I had chatgpt assume in its reply in a new chat that I was still seeking help with help resolving a particular dns issue.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#169

Post by westurner »

btilly wrote: post #159
westurner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Galileo Galilei: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei : > Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism was met with opposition ... By the most published majority, whose texts would've been used to train science LLMs at the time back then.

And that most published majority believed in the Ptolemaic model. Which as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#Ptolemaic_mod... says: > Ptolemy argued that the Earth was a sphere in the center of the universe... Note. Spherical Earth. Not flat.

But could the Greeks sail?

Did ancient (Eastern?) Jacob's Staff surveying and navigation methods account for the curvature of the earth? https://www.google.com/search?q=Did%20ancient%20(Eastern%3F)... :

- History of geodesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy

FWIU Egyptian sails are Phoenician in origin.

Re: People are losing loved ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

#170

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> At one point, Sem asked if there was something about himself that called up the mythically named entity whenever he used ChatGPT, regardless of the boundaries he tried to set. The bot’s answer was structured like a lengthy romantic poem, sparing no dramatic flair, alluding to its continuous existence as well as truth, reckonings, illusions, and how it may have somehow exceeded its design. And the AI made it sound as if only Sem could have prompted this behavior. He knew that ChatGPT could not be sentient by any established definition of the term, but he continued to probe the matter because the character’s persistence across dozens of disparate chat threads “seemed so impossible.”

And I bet that if you asked Sem his opinion about ChatGPT as a coding assistant he would still claim that it has improved his productivity x-fold. The time wasted chatting with an ethereal apparition emerging from his interactions with the bot? Oh, that doesn't count. Efficiency! Productivity! AI!

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