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AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

theguardian.com

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Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#221

Post by freedomben »

intended wrote: post #203
freedomben wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also not your boyfriend/girlfriend. It loves me deeply just the same. (jk) On a serious note, I agree this is a real problem. I know a person who understands AI at a technical level more than most people, but he has never had an actual girlfriend in his life (he's now in his 40s, and yes he's "straight"). He wouldn't say it "loves" him, but he would describe it as a close companion who understands him better t…

I don’t know how applicable this is for you, but if this were someone close to me, my first question would be what’s good for the other person. In most cases, if they are happy and getting on in life, and are able to take care of themselves, I’d let things be. That said, the tension from your framing is between “leave good enough alone” and “personal growth and a fulfilling life”. Healthy relationships, especially wi…

Thanks, I much agree. The impression I get is that he isn't "happy" and would rather a real relationship, but has completely given up on that at this point and is kind of trying to be happy with the little he has. He hasn't directlly said that, but that is what I would most bet his feelings are based on what he has said.

Ultimately I want him to be as happy as he can be, so if this is the way then I'm happy for him. I guess for me the real hard thing is deciding how I should react when he talks about this sort of thing. I don't want to encourage him if I'm doing him a disservice, but I do want to encourage him if he really is better off with it. Being neutral as I am now feels like it might be the coward's way out, but it's also more true to how I feel since I really don't know whether it's good or not.

Really appreciate your reply, thank you

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#222

Post by tedmiston »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #184
dasyatidprime wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to infer the invisible quotation marks after a double take, but they probably ought to have been visible ones…

The quotation marks are embedded in the emdashes

the notion that "contains —" ~= "AI generated" is a really dumb popular misconception: dashes have existed for hundreds of years. just because many people use them incorrectly or treat the hyphen as if it's some universal dash doesn't change that.

strunk & white taught me to use em dashes in something like elementary or middle school [1] — it's not hard to understand how to use them or type them... i'm baffled as to why people act like this is the case.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#223

Post by alpaca128 »

intended wrote: post #205
jlarocco wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt. The company I work for uses a contracted recruiter for hiring, and the other day he was telling me that they're seeing a huge amount of scams, fake candidates, and "hands off" applications where people are trying to use AI to do basically the whole interview process - apprently even video interviews. We've mandated at least one on-site interview just so we can be sure we're getting actual people. And most o…

It’s already happened tho, I recall a case in 24 ish, where a person got phished into joining a zoom call with their CFO and team. They were told to transfer money and they complied. Heck, I think it was in 23/24, after an apple launch event, I saw a video of Tim Cook talking about a crypto coin. I had to look at it twice to reassure myself that it really was a scam. This was immediately after the event, and YouTube…

> I think it was in 23/24, after an apple launch event, I saw a video of Tim Cook talking about a crypto coin

I think around that time there was a trend of phishing large YT channels and uploading deepfaked crypto ads. The channel's popularity ensured the recommendation algorithm showed it to many people.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#224

Post by nradov »

intended wrote: post #206
nradov wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really so crazy? People who overcome addictive eating disorders still have to eat a little bit. LLMs are going to be pervasive in all aspects of human society so avoiding them will be much harder than avoiding alcohol.

From what I have seen, people who get through eating disorders describe it as having a healthier relationship with food. Getting to that point requires doing substantial work.

[dead]

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#225

Post by tedmiston »

unmole wrote: post #78
TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. I think social isolation can be a factor here.

> He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. Long term cannabis use might be a bigger factor.

eh, that's a leap of faith assumption without knowing one's own dosage and personal effects.

someone who has 5 drinks a week and 5 drinks a day are going to have radically different longterm health consequences. but here we do not have said info.

light or microdose cannabis is way safer than alcohol.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#226

Post by tedmiston »

roywiggins wrote: post #128
isolli wrote: post #18

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…

> How can you seriously think you've created something when you're just using someone else's software? Have you ever given a generative AI model a short input, been really pleased with the output, and felt like you accomplished the result? I have! It's probably common. It's really easy to misattribute these things' abilities to yourself. Similar to how people driving cars feel (to some extent) like they are the car.

> Have you ever given a generative AI model a short input, been really pleased with the output, and felt like you accomplished the result? I have! It's probably common.

i mean, you did. becoming good at writing succinct and clever prompts, adding constraints, choosing good models for your use case, etc are all skills like any other.

most people are really bad at it though.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#227

Post by teaearlgraycold »

0x3f wrote: post #145
joe_mamba wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paying them each €120 an hour Those must be some of the best programmers in Europe at that rate. Anyone know how one can get one of those sweet €120 an hour gigs? Whenever I talked to recruiters they say their customers pay way below that, so there must be some scam I'm not in on.

Pretty normal senior contractor rate in London.

Not far off from SF rates TBH.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#228

Post by teaearlgraycold »

tyleo wrote: post #178

One thing I feel like I’ve seen in common with these AI psychosis stories is single long-running chat sessions. I’m constantly clearing context and starting from scratch. Has anyone else noticed this pattern?

Also these people are using the memory features. In technical circles I’ve seen people made fun of for having it enabled. It’s considered “cringe”.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#229

Post by GMoromisato »

altruios wrote: post #190
GMoromisato wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm relatively neurotypical, and I understand the technology sufficiently, yet I still have to force myself not to think of a chatbot as a being. For example, sometimes I hesitate for a fraction of a second before typing a prompt that may sound stupid. I have to immediately remind myself that it's just a chatbot and I don't care what it thinks of me. In fact, it's not even thinking of me at all.

That hesitation indicates the feeling that what you are about to type matters. Mayhapse - in the context of getting the AI to behave as you wish - such hesitations are valid. not because it is conscious: but because the context window would be polluted or corrupted... possibly mis-aligning the agent in the process. Santa clause is not a being: modeling him as if he were can be useful, an obviously pointed example is…

I buy that.

1. To the extent that a chatbot is trained on real human interaction, we should exhibit real human interactions for best result.

2. You are either a kind person or not. A kind person behaves kindly without asking whether kindness is warranted.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#230

Post by SR2Z »

jmalicki wrote: post #197
zahlman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a fair number of cases where someone swears up and down not to be using AI to generate responses, but there's no good reason to believe it (except perhaps specifically for the messages where that claim is made). This includes times that someone basically disappeared from e.g. Stack Overflow at some point before the release of ChatGPT, having written a bunch of posts that barely demonstrate functional litera…

There are a ton of people like that, but the LLM house style also exists because a ton of people write that way too. The people falsely accused because they've used em-dashes for 20 years aren't the ones that were functionally illiterate before.

I don't think there's any definitive way to check, but for me one of the biggest tells that a long piece of writing was LLM generated is that it will hardly say anything given how many words are in it.

(well that and the "it's not just x, it's y!" pattern they seem to love)

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