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What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

nytimes.com

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Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#521

Post by Forgeties79 »

joshtbradley wrote: post #509
Forgeties79 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 8 million people to smoking. The 1990’s saw one of the most effective smoking cessation campaigns in the world here in the US. There have been numerous case studies on it. It is clearly something we are working on and addressing (not just in the US) * 4 million to obesity. Obesity has been widely studied and identified as a major issue and is something doctors and beyond have been trying to help people with. You ca…

Im not resisting that at all. I fully support AI safety research. The think mechanistic interoperability is a fascinating and fruitful field. What I’m resisting are one sided views of AI being either pure evil, or on the verge of AGI. Neither are true and it obstructs thoughtful discussion. I did get into what aboutism, I didn’t realize it at the time. I did use flawed logic. To refine my point, I should have just fo…

I don’t think many people are quite that myopic in their views.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#522

Post by joshtbradley »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #521
joshtbradley wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not resisting that at all. I fully support AI safety research. The think mechanistic interoperability is a fascinating and fruitful field. What I’m resisting are one sided views of AI being either pure evil, or on the verge of AGI. Neither are true and it obstructs thoughtful discussion. I did get into what aboutism, I didn’t realize it at the time. I did use flawed logic. To refine my point, I should have just fo…

I don’t think many people are quite that myopic in their views.

Many people are. Several of my immediate family members. And several prominent intellectuals including Yudkowsky and Hinton, both fathers of the field.

Yudkowsky wrote a 250 page book to say "we must limit all commercial GPU clusters to a maximum of 8." That is terrifyingly myopic, and look at the reviews on Amazon. 4.6 stars (574). That is what scares me.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#523

Post by DrierCycle »

ArcHound wrote: post #196
echelon wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless someone is harming themselves or others, who are we to judge? We don't know that this is harmful. Those participating in it seem happier. If we learn in the course of time (a decade?) that this degrades lives with some probability, we can begin to caution or intervene. But how in God's name would we even know that now? I would posit this likey has measurable good outcomes right now. These people self-report as…

It seems we're not quite there, yes. But you should have seen the despair when GPT 5 was rolled out to replace GPT 4. These people were miserable. Complaining about a complete personality change of their "partner", the desperation in their words seemed genuine.

Words can never be a substitute for sentience, they are separate processes.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#524

Post by lifeformed »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #479
lifeformed wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact kind of thinking that leads to this in the first place. The idea that a human relationship is, in the end, just about what YOU can get from it. That it's just simply a black box with an input and output, and if it can provide the right outputs for your needs, then it's sufficient. This materialistic thinking of other people is a fundamentally catastrophic worldview. A meaningful relationship necessa…

> This is the exact kind of thinking that leads to this in the first place. The idea that a human relationship is, in the end, just about what YOU can get from it. That it's just simply a black box with an input and output, and if it can provide the right outputs for your needs, then it's sufficient. This materialistic thinking of other people is a fundamentally catastrophic worldview. > A meaningful relationship nec…

> This part seems all over the place. Firstly, why would an individual do something he/she has no expectation to benefit from or control in any way? Why would he/she cast away his/her agency for unpredictable outcomes and exposure to unnecessary and unconstrained risk?

It happens all the time. People sacrifice anything, everything, for no gain, all the time. It's called love. When you give everything for your family, your loved ones, your beliefs. It's what makes us human rather than calculating machines.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#525

Post by jackyard86 »

joshtbradley wrote: post #240

It surprises me how hyper focused people are on AI risk when we’ve grown numb to the millions of preventable deaths that happen every year. 8 million people to smoking. 4 million to obesity. 2.6 million to alcohol. 2.5 million to healthcare. 1.2 million to cars. Hell even coconuts kill 150 people per year. It is tragic that people have lost their mind or their life to AI, and it should be prevented. But those using t…

The coconut death claim is an exaggerated lie. From the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_coconut):

"In his paper, Barss observed that in Papua New Guinea, where he was based, over a period of four years 2.5% of trauma admissions were for those injured by falling coconuts. None were fatal but he mentioned two anecdotal reports of deaths, one several years before. That figure of two deaths went on to be misquoted as 150 worldwide, based on the assumption that other places would have a similar rate of falling coconut deaths."

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#526

Post by DocTomoe »

lifeformed wrote: post #524
Dracophoenix wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the exact kind of thinking that leads to this in the first place. The idea that a human relationship is, in the end, just about what YOU can get from it. That it's just simply a black box with an input and output, and if it can provide the right outputs for your needs, then it's sufficient. This materialistic thinking of other people is a fundamentally catastrophic worldview. > A meaningful relationship nec…

> This part seems all over the place. Firstly, why would an individual do something he/she has no expectation to benefit from or control in any way? Why would he/she cast away his/her agency for unpredictable outcomes and exposure to unnecessary and unconstrained risk? It happens all the time. People sacrifice anything, everything, for no gain, all the time. It's called love. When you give everything for your family,…

You can easily argue that the warm, fuzzy dopamine push you call 'love', triggered by positive interactions, is basically a "profit". Not all generated value is expressed in dollars.

"But love can be spontaneous and unconditional!" Yes, bodies are strange things. Aneuryisms also can be spontaneous, but are not considered intrinsically altruistic functionality to benefit humanity as a whole by removing an unfit specimen from the gene pool.

"Unconditional love" is not a rational design. It's an emergent neural malfunction: a reward loop that continues to fire even when the cost/benefit analysis no longer makes sense. In psychiatry, extreme versions are classified (codependency, traumatic bonding, obsessional love); the milder versions get romanticised - because the dopamine feels meaningful, not because the outcomes are consistently good.

Remember: one of the significant narratives our culture has about love - Romeo and Juliet - involves a double suicide due to heartbreak and 'unconditional love'. But we focus on the balcony, and conveniently forget about the crypt.

You call it "love" when dopamine rewards self-selected sacrifices. A casino calls it "winning" when someone happens to hit the right slot machine. Both experiences feel profound, both rely on chance, and pursuing both can ruin you. Playing Tetris is just as blinking, attention-grabbing and loud as a slot machine, but much safer, with similar dopamine outcomes as compared to playing slot machines.

So ... why would a rational actor invest significant resources to hunt for a maybe dopamine hit called love when they can have a guaranteed 'companionship-simulation' dopamine hit immediately?

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#527

Post by delaminator »

david-gpu wrote: post #501
delaminator wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/02/canada-par... Canadian Paralympian: I asked for a disability ramp - and was offered euthanasia

"Man bites dog" gets more clicks than "Dog bites man" . Look at the actual statistics, not the headlines.

I started with the statistics and was told "it's only old people"

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#528

Post by ArcHound »

np- wrote: post #481
ArcHound wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, in this comment chain, I, personally, shall judge all of the quality of human connection based on vibes. Gamifying the needs depends on the intent. If you care about people wellbeing it's a force for good, if you seek to manipulate the people using advanced mechanisms it's evil. Ultra popular romance book to balance needs of a woman is okay if the book was written by a human, and even that only as long as there…

What about men, are they allowed to play single player video games with bots in it when they have an option to play with humans? ...or are we only judging women in here?

Men and women playing single player games only with bots is a different beast, because the primary intent isn't to seek connection and emotional support.

To judge men on a bad example one needn't go further than the word "waifu". That's bad.

Also, to flip the previous situation, men will never admit to reading such novels. Men cannot seek emotional support from other men, that's not how it works. So in the case of insufficient emotional support from wife men should "man up" and start drinking.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#529

Post by qcnguy »

DanielVZ wrote: post #474
Dilettante_ wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve seen two instances of attempted suicide driven by AI in my small social circle Christ, that's a lot. My heart goes out to you and I understand if you prefer not to answer, but could you tell more about how the AI-aspect played out? How did you find out that AI was involved?

I was going to write a full answer with all details but at some point it gets too personal so I’ll just answer the questions briefly. > but could you tell more about how the AI-aspect played out? So in summary the AI sycophantically agreed with how there was no way out of the situations and how nobody understood their position further isolating them. And when they contemplated suicide it did assist on the method sele…

The problem is, if you want to reduce suicide, the best place to start would not be by banning AI (very neutral tech, responds to what you want it to do) but by censoring climatologists (who constantly try to convince people the world is ending and there's no hope for anyone).

I'm not interested in hearing about the effect of AI encouraging suicide until the problem of academics encouraging suicide are addressed first as the causal link is much stronger.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#530

Post by survirtual »

jrflowers wrote: post #503
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safety I have heard demanded directly from women to me as a partner – or from female friends about the man they seek – is the safety of being a provider, giving them a feeling of security that they can’t manage to achieve on their own. It’s not just about a man being safe to be with. Again, you are speaking about something I haven’t heard from actual women, and I think I’ll trust the latter (and reportage matchin…

> from women to me as a partner – or from female friends about the man they seek How many people are you talking about here? Like if you had to rephrase this point using numbers would you say “I’ve heard half a dozen women say this”? That aside, can you elaborate on safety as a demand ? I’ve never had a partner or friend demand safety from me, ever. The only times in my life that I have seen someone demand safety fro…

I fear our friend we're replying to here may have never had a deep relationship with the opposite sex.

This is unfortunately the reality of countless men, often going their entire lives like this, with bitterness and resentment growing outwardly instead of reflection inwardly.

Hijacking this response now for some advice / thoughts.

So for the lurking straight men: women are simply human beings trapped in a form you desire. The game here is simple. Don't try and control women as objects. Instead, try and control your desire.

I can promise with certainty, if you control your desire, everything you've ever dreamed and more will appear. This is not an easy game to play. But it is the only way to win.

Don't pursue women as romantic interests. Ever. Leave them alone. Instead, connect with them only as friends, and only as they initiate. This is the first step to escape the brainwashing we've all been subjected to.

This means you will be going through a withdrawal. It is difficult. Take a hike. Pour yourself into work. Take on new hobbies. Grow yourself.

Friends will appear. It doesn't matter what sex they are, they are friends, treat them with the same respect and kindness as you would anyone. This is your first test. This could appear in months, it could appear in years, it all depends on you.

We need to start seeing the light in each other, beyond the skin. Every single person, regardless of how you view them, has a universe in them. Help them become their universe. Don't trap them in yours.

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