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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

#281

Post by jlarocco »

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…

> Someone in another thread pointed out that people on HN seem to be very unaware of how bad things are online for some reason.

That's probably true, but not totally unexpected. I suspect HN readers are relatively tech savvy, and probably do an above average job avoiding the seedier parts of the internet and generally know to be cautious online.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#282

Post by bigtex88 »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #156

> 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”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of down…

What? How is the other factor clearly not the real problem?

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#283

Post by hackeraccount »

GMoromisato wrote: post #166
mock-possum wrote: post #13

This really is bizarrely fascinating, I feel so lucky that I’m not vulnerable to whatever this is. It’s interesting that they mention autism a few times as a correlation; personally, I’ve wondered whether being on the spectrum makes me less inclined to commit to anthropomorphism when it comes to LLMs. I know what it’s like talking to another person, I know what it feels like, and talking to a chatbot does not feel th…

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.

Maybe I'm really self-centered but I go through all the motions with those bots - please and thank you for example - but I have zero problems asking the dumbest questions in the world.

Wasn't there a bit in Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum where one of the characters who's totally rational flinches when the titular pendulum is coming towards his face - even though he's far enough way that it won't hit him? That's how I am with chatbots. I know it's a trick but it's just easier to pretend the dove has vanished then to think about it hiding in the magicians sleeve.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#284

Post by hackeraccount »

bitwize wrote: post #188
kakacik wrote: post #29

Exactly the first half (or a bit more) of movie Her by Spike Jonze. Lonely people got their emotions up / 'fall in love' with uncritical always-positive mirage and do stupid shit. This a variant of classic Midlife crisis when older men meet younger women without all that baggage that reality, life and having a family between them brings over the years ( rarely also in reverse). Just pure undiluted fun, or so it seems…

But in Her , Theodore and Samantha get into a bitter argument and break up before making up again, like regular humans do. It was actually a fairly touching story about relationships in general. LLM chatbots can't match that, they are designed to be sycophantic and not push back against you. They have no desires or will of their own. So they will amplify whatever issues you have.

Is the issue that there's no there there - or is that LLM chatbots are just not good enough? If they (as they sometimes remind me of ) weren't like a golden retriever that will happily agree with you about anything as long as you keep throwing the ball would it all be better?

On one level it would have to be be but if there's "no there there" then fixing that flaw would just raise a different one.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#285

Post by hexaga »

MarkusQ wrote: post #261
hexaga wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're also wrong, but in a much more fundamental/hazardous. RLHF rewards driving the evaluator to have certain opinions (that the AI response is good/right/helpful/whatever) and thus subverting the evaluator is prominent in the solution landscape. Why should the model learn to actually be right (understand all the intricacies of every possible problem domain) when inducing the belief that it is right is _right there…

Thank you for the TLDR; as you guessed, I didn't want to read your wall of text. > you basically are completely wrong about where the propensity to induce > delusion comes from, specifically in a way that leaves you and anyone who > believes like you extremely more vulnerable because you dismiss the actual > mechanism out of hand I disagree. Both because you misconstrue my model (I don't think stochastic parrots have…

In like spirit: Nuh-uh!

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#286

Post by MarkusQ »

hexaga wrote: post #285
MarkusQ wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the TLDR; as you guessed, I didn't want to read your wall of text. > you basically are completely wrong about where the propensity to induce > delusion comes from, specifically in a way that leaves you and anyone who > believes like you extremely more vulnerable because you dismiss the actual > mechanism out of hand I disagree. Both because you misconstrue my model (I don't think stochastic parrots have…

In like spirit: Nuh-uh!

LOL. You win.

Completely unironically, I bow to your internet powress.

I spewed coffee, and am still chuckling. Well played.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#287

Post by ahartmetz »

bonoboTP wrote: post #246
jmalicki wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just patterns like "not just X, but Y", but also deeper patterns and a kind of narrative cadence. Sure it's also mimicking something real, but usually it's a mismatch between the insightfulness of the content and the quality of the delivery. It feels like chewing on empty calories, it's missing the intentionality and the edge of being human. I guess you need to read a lot of LLM output to get a feel for this…

I wonder whether AI house style is the result of the people training it having no sense of writing style or some kind of technical limitation.

With AI, there is no sense of the level of emphasis matching the meaning of the text, or a long-range dramatic arc - everything is a revelation, like somebody who can only speak in TED talks. Everything is extremely earnest, very important, and presented using the same five flashy language hacks.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#288

Post by snypher »

lelanthran wrote: post #275
jmalicki wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are a ton of people like that, but the LLM house style also exists because a ton of people write that way too. Everyone keeps saying this, and I keep asking for a link to this type of writing that is dated pre-2022, and I keep getting nothing. If it was that common, I'd have gotten at least a few examples by now.

I believe that, much the same way as a fighter jet designed for the average pilot doesn't fit any of them, the 'average' of written text ends up reading like an LLM without being able to find a 100% matching sample.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#289

Post by xigoi »

lelanthran wrote: post #275
jmalicki wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are a ton of people like that, but the LLM house style also exists because a ton of people write that way too. Everyone keeps saying this, and I keep asking for a link to this type of writing that is dated pre-2022, and I keep getting nothing. If it was that common, I'd have gotten at least a few examples by now.

I certainly used em dashes before 2022, and so did anyone who cares about proper typography.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#290

Post by lelanthran »

xigoi wrote: post #289
lelanthran wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a ton of people like that, but the LLM house style also exists because a ton of people write that way too. Everyone keeps saying this, and I keep asking for a link to this type of writing that is dated pre-2022, and I keep getting nothing. If it was that common, I'd have gotten at least a few examples by now.

I certainly used em dashes before 2022, and so did anyone who cares about proper typography.

> I certainly used em dashes before 2022, and so did anyone who cares about proper typography.

Who said anything about em-dashes? There's an entire Wikipedia page documenting the tells, and only one of the 15 or so items is "extended usage of em-dashes".

It's not fluff, it's actual tells.

No nonsense, no BS, just tells.

The key insight is...

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