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We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

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Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#481

Post by SoftTalker »

Aurornis wrote: post #269
IgorPartola wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to offer an alternative explanation than AI to this. Shit is just too damn expensive. If you want to go hang out with friends it will cost you $4-8 for a cup of coffee. A dinner starts at $50/person. A trip to an amusement park is over $100 easily. The median individual income in the US currently is just over $65k/year or about $32.50/hour. That means half the workforce makes less than that. When an 8oz cock…

> If you want to go hang out with friends it will cost you $4-8 for a cup of coffee. A dinner starts at $50/person. A trip to an amusement park is over $100 easily. The median individual income in the US currently is just over $65k/year or about $32.50/hour. That means half the workforce makes less than that. When an 8oz cocktail costs you an hour of your life because you work for minimum wage, you’d rather stay home…

Brew a pot of coffee at home. Will cost you maybe $1. Serve it to friends with some cookies maybe $10 total.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#482

Post by esseph »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #184
xtracto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 44 yo Xenial, not too old, not young. That is, I'm part of the "walkman generation" . It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance. Society nowadays is pretty ugly. Younger generations seem very isolationist to me.

Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and…

Maybe because everything you do ends up on the internet. There's always a camera nearby.

People are afraid to open up and be honest, because of the fear of local, internet or political rejection.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#483

Post by fipar »

roncesvalles wrote: post #279
anal_reactor wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.

I guess TIL South America is a part of Europe :)

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#484

Post by throwaway98797 »

Uehreka wrote: post #462
anal_reactor wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.

> Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. This is illegal in almost all of the USA. Sometimes you can get away with it, but if the cops decide to enforce the law on a particular day you’ll get a ticket.

unless you’re a kid or obnoxious police are quite reasonable

made up fears are stealing your joy

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#485

Post by bilbo0s »

xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #449
achierius wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, "when they inject", but the rest of the time? Generally no, they are not. This is why people DO try, if unsuccessfully, to get off of their addictions -- you don't like waking up in an alley, you don't like how broke you are, you don't like how you feel when you come down from the high, you don't like how you're hurting your family.

Yes, but will AI give you a chance to get sober and reflect? Maybe once you hit your daily usage limits :)

What happens when usage limits go away?

Way back in the day there were usage limits on everyone's internet service. Nowadays, not so much. Inference won't be expensive forever.

I mean, just Devil's Advocate, but I could see this becoming an addiction crisis like none we've ever seen in the past. Only since it wouldn't be as public, no one would really be aware of it. (Assuming most people won't broadcast what they're doing in their homes during their waking hours.)

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#486

Post by atlantic »

anal_reactor wrote: post #414
haswell wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient. It doesn’t make much sense to me to put loneliness against efficiency. What does it matter if it’s “inefficient” to maintain friendships of the easily is a lonely life without social connections? People are prioritizing the wrong things IMO.

Life is about gathering resources and using them to reproduce. Humans like being social because for thousands of years it was more efficient to do that socially. Nowadays it's not.

No, it's not. You sound like a biology textbook, not a human being.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#487

Post by ninetyninenine »

techpineapple wrote: post #135
ninetyninenine wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how you u can’t worry about this. Like there’s a trend line of progress right? Ok so the thing isn’t effective now. But there’s a decade of upward progress and that projection line point to a future where a better AI exists. Trend-lines don’t point to an exact future just a most probable future. It is unwise to discount the most probable future.

Progress is famously not a straight line.

Of course not. And neither is machine learning data.

I'm talking about the trendline. If you deploy that machine learning knowledge and draw a best fit line. That line has a slope that is upward.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#488

Post by dpassens »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #221
dpassens wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't, does it? For one, the question was merely whether we'd observe an increased birth rate, not whether that is a reason to pass such a law. Secondly, you're the one who's bringing up coercion. You can both not be on social media and not have kids. It's still your decision.

The comment I responded to was specifically talking about "banning social media" and their confidence this would have a "positive" impact on birth rates, despite the clear preferences of younger people. I'm "bringing up" coercion because I'm not sure how to describe such policies and intentions otherwise? The reason for it might not have been made explicit but we both understand what they were driving at and why they…

> despite the clear preferences of younger people

But the assertion was not that young people have a 'clear preference' not to have children, it was that they just have a clear preference to engage in a behaviour that, as a side-effect, lowers birth rates.

> we both understand

I'm assuming that you're not doing this intentionally, but by asserting that I "understand" the commenter is trying to 'coerce [me] into having a more positive "positive" birth rate', a notion that I still disagree with, you're suggesting that I'm being intentionally obtuse. Please don't do that.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#489

Post by fragmede »

redserk wrote: post #14
cedws wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also doomscrolling. I genuinely think a large portion of Gen Z would rather stay in bed watching Instagram reels than go out to a bar or club. I’ve been wondering recently what impact banning social media would have on birth rates. I’m confident it would be positive but I’m not sure on what magnitude.

I think it is worth calling out how expensive it can be to go out and do things now though. $10-12 beers and $15 cocktails gets expensive over a few weekends.

Buying the cheapest shittiest liquor and pregaming at someone's house before going out wasn't invented by GenX and I'm sure Gen Alpha can figure out how to do that for themselves.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#490

Post by Animats »

The same criticism was leveled at social media, mostly Facebook. Then at mobile phones. Before that, it was aimed at television. In between, it was aimed at games.

The big change is that we've solved boredom. More entertainment content is instantly available than anyone can consume. Humanity has solved "timepass". (That term is used mostly in India [1], but is generally applicable.) A sizable fraction of the population walks around looking at their phone. Once AR glasses catch on, that will get worse.

If you're not bored, you can be lonely, but it doesn't matter as much.

[1] https://ishanmishra.in/50-most-weird-sites-best-funny-websit...

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