491–500 of 548 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What else do you expect them to do if none of the choices are worthwhile?
Maybe lower their standards to the point that they can be satisfied by a real person, not a text completion algorithm that literally worships the ground they walk on and outputs some of the cheesiest, cringiest text I've ever read.
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> But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want. This seems tautological to the point where it's meaningless. It's like saying that if you try to hire an employee that's going to challenge you, they're going to always be a sycophant by definition. Either they won't challenge you (explicit sycophancy), or they will challenge you, but that's what you wanted th…
The LLM will only be challenging in the way you want it to be challenging. That is probably not the way that would be really challenging for you.
One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?
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After having spoken with one of the people there I'm a lot less concerned to be honest. They described it as something akin to an emotional vibrator, that they didn't attribute any sentience to, and that didn't trigger their PTSD that they normally experienced when dating men. If AI can provide emotional support and an outlet for survivors who would otherwise not be able to have that kind of emotional need fulfilled,…
I think there's a difference between "support" and "enabling". It is well documented that family members of someone suffering from an addiction will often do their best at shielding the person from the consequences of their acts. While well-intentioned ("If I don't pay this debt they'll have an eviction on their record and will never find a place again"), these acts prevent the addict from seeking help because, witho…
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> But it's still an LLM. It's still being sycophantic: it's only "challenging" because that's what you want. This seems tautological to the point where it's meaningless. It's like saying that if you try to hire an employee that's going to challenge you, they're going to always be a sycophant by definition. Either they won't challenge you (explicit sycophancy), or they will challenge you, but that's what you wanted th…
It's not meaningless. What do you do with a person who contradicts you or behaves in a way that is annoying to you? You can't always just shut that person up or change their mind or avoid them in some other way, can you? And I'm not talking about an employment relationship. Of course, you can simply replace employees or employers. You can also avoid other people you don't like. But if you want to maintain an ongoing…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After having spoken with one of the people there I'm a lot less concerned to be honest. They described it as something akin to an emotional vibrator, that they didn't attribute any sentience to, and that didn't trigger their PTSD that they normally experienced when dating men. If AI can provide emotional support and an outlet for survivors who would otherwise not be able to have that kind of emotional need fulfilled,…
The problem is that chatbots don't provide emotional support. To support someone with PTSD you help them gradually untangle the strong feelings around a stimulus and develop a less strong response. It's not fast and it's not linear but it requires a mix of empathy and facilitation. Using an LLM for social interaction instead of real treatment is like taking heroin because you broke your leg, and not getting it set or…
It's about replaying frightening thoughts and activities in safe environment. When the brain notices they don't trigger suffering it fears them less in the future. Chatbot can provide such safe environment.
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In my experience, the types of people who use AI as a substitute for romantic relationships are already pretty messed up and probably wouldn't make good real romantic partners anyways. The chances you'll encounter these people in real life is pretty close to zero, you just see them concentrate in niche subreddits.
You aren't going to build the skills necessary to have good relationships with others - not even romantic ones, ANY ones - without a lot of practice. And you aren't gonna heal yourself or build those skills talking to a language model. And saying "oh, there's nothing to be done, just let the damaged people have their isolation" is just asking for things to get a lot worse. It's time to take seriously the fact that ou…
Other people don't owe you being your training dummy. I'd prefer you sort that out with a chatbot.
>(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies have denied those claims.)
Alternative to archive.is busybox wget -U googlebot -O 1.htm https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/technology/openai-chatgpt-users-risks.html firefox ./1.htm
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/ios-145-how-to-stop-apps-fr...
"Firefox recently announced that they are offering users a choice on whether or not to include tracking information from copied URLs, which comes on the on the heels of iOS 17 blocking user tracking via URLs."
"If it became more intrusive and they blocked UTM tags, it would take awhile for them all to catch on if you were to circumvent UTM tags by simply tagging things in a series of sub-directories.. ie. site.com/landing// etc.
Also, most savvy marketers are already integrating future proof workarounds for these exact scenarios.
A lot can be done with pixel based integrations rather than cookie based or UTM tracking. When set up properly they can actually provide better and more accurate tracking and attribution. Hence the name of my agency, Pixel Main."
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/category/paid-media/pay-...
Perhaps tags do not necessarily need to begin with "utm". They could begin with any string, e.g., "gift_link", "unlocked_article_code", etc., as long as the tag has a unique component, enabling the website operator and its marketing partners to identify the person (account) who originally shared the URL and to associate all those who click on it with that person (account).
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There are a lot of edge cases where suicide is rational. The experience of watching an 80 year old die over the course of a month or few can be quite harrowing from the reports I've had from people who've witnessed it; most of whom talk like they'd rather die in some other way. It's a scary thought, but we all die and there isn't any reason it has to be involuntary all the way to the bitter end. It is quite difficult…
The stories coming out are about convincing high school boys with impressionable brains into committing suicide, not about having intellectual conversations with 80 year olds about whether suicide to avoid gradual mental and physical decline makes sense.
As jb_rad said in the thread root, hyper-focusing on the risk will lead people to overreact. DanielVZ says we should hyper focus, maybe even overreact to the point of banning AI because it can persuade people to suicide. However the best view to do is acknowledge the nuance where sometimes suicide is actually the best decision and it is just a matter of getting as close as possible to the right line.