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AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

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Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#61

Post by rickydroll »

humblebeekeeper wrote: post #45

This is a symptom of alienation, imo, not a unique problem from AI. There's a theory that we're becoming increasingly removed from our work -- we have less control over what we get to build, we have less control over how the products we build function. Because we don't influence what we create as much, work becomes much more about getting a pay check. We no longer work to craft , we work simply to build the things th…

I will argue that work should be just about a paycheck. The CEO/founder's vision is not your vision. It helps you be mindful of differences between your vision and your ethics versus the company's. You'll be able to see more clearly when the gap is too big and it's time to leave.

For me, when work became all about the paycheck, I took my ego out of my work. I remained engaged and performed the job as expected. Whenever I became "unsettled," I took that as a sign to work more on keeping my ego out of my work.

Another advantage of reducing your ego in your work is that you think more about what the customer needs, rather than what the company needs from the product. Doesn't mean you'll make it happen, but at least you know you tried.

To your point about people looking for community, when I reduced my ego at work, I found connection, satisfaction, etc. with communities outside of work.

Even if you're engaged in work, however, you should never lose sight of the fact that the company is making money off the backs of the exploited worker, and it should always remain part of the decision process of stay or go.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#62

Post by rickydroll »

msgodel wrote: post #54
euroderf wrote: post #52

Get rid of cars in town and city centers. Then you're halfway to the solution.

Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other, certainly not strangers, and the perceived (likely even real) consequences of it are an expected net loss.

That's a little extreme. There are country mice and city mice. City mice want to live inside cities and eliminate cars. That's great for them. Country mice, like me and I suspect you, want city mice to stay in the city and not ruin the nicer, quieter living space outside.

Now, if we could just get cities to keep their light pollution within the city, it would be a nicer world.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#63

Post by abnercoimbre »

munificent wrote: post #47

The top two comments here both suggest that the people using chatbots in place of social interaction were already a priori socially isolated and AI has no effect on it. It's merely a "symptom" or after the fact consequence. I deeply, fundamentally disagree with that. Humans are one step mathematical operations that take in an input, transform to an output, and are done. Human life is an endless continuous cascade of…

Some practical advice I gave a good friend yesterday, who is frustrated by the constant bailing from people to go touch grass with him:

1. Increase frequency of informal communication. For example if your hangout is a monthly coding club, you might casually message participants once or twice a week. “Holy smokes Jenny, this HN thread reminded me of you.”

2. Create convenient little group DMs (call it “Bob’s Coding Club”) and add in the people you like to hang out with.

This way, even if you invite someone privately, this person is well aware you hang out with others; they'll worry you can gossip if they bail too much (even though you won't, but fear of getting ostracized is a typical human trait and therefore a helpful forcing function.)

Source: I run meetups [0] for programmers, many of whom are recovering social media addicts.

[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#64

Post by SirMaster »

autoexec wrote: post #43
vouaobrasil wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Even early computers of the 90s and 00s tended to reduce face-to-face contact. At least a lot of children started to spend more time on the computer than hanging out in real life. (The latter wasn't obliterated, but reduced.) 2. Airline and rapid travel encourages people to move away from friends and family because they can be visited or reuinted on occasion more often. 3. Not sure how you were enthusiastic about…

1. time spent in front of screen means you aren't in a face to face interaction with someone, but the same can be said of books. When many people still connected to a local BBS it was another way to get to know people around you and meetups were common. 2 & 6 & 7. access to airlines (and travel in general) was a net positive for meeting new people. Suddenly people could meet and get to know far more people than the h…

>1. time spent in front of screen means you aren't in a face to face interaction with someone

Even if you are video chatting? I video chat with family and friends all the time to keep in touch over longer distances. I feel technology is helping there a lot.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#65

Post by DangitBobby »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #20
DangitBobby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily only a value judgement if it turns out being less social is actually less healthy for everyone. I haven't chosen to be antisocial, the people around me have, which makes it harder for me to be social. Others don't choose to be antisocial but are anyway mainly because they can't help but be glued to their screens. Arguing that this has nothing to do with technology is (social media, in particular)…

> It's not necessarily only a value judgement if it turns out being less social is actually less healthy for everyone. It would still be a value judgement in that case. There's the value of people having the choice to do less healthy things (as long as they're not hurting other people in doing so), versus preventing people from doing less healthy things.

Emphasis on _only_.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#66

Post by tekno45 »

msgodel wrote: post #54
euroderf wrote: post #52

Get rid of cars in town and city centers. Then you're halfway to the solution.

Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other, certainly not strangers, and the perceived (likely even real) consequences of it are an expected net loss.

yeah, the fundamentally social creatures don't want to be around each other.

Thats why NYC is empty.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#67

Post by dttze »

msgodel wrote: post #54
euroderf wrote: post #52

Get rid of cars in town and city centers. Then you're halfway to the solution.

Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other, certainly not strangers, and the perceived (likely even real) consequences of it are an expected net loss.

> Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other

Speak for yourself. Humans are fundamentally social creatures.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#68

Post by vouaobrasil »

SirMaster wrote: post #64
autoexec wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. time spent in front of screen means you aren't in a face to face interaction with someone, but the same can be said of books. When many people still connected to a local BBS it was another way to get to know people around you and meetups were common. 2 & 6 & 7. access to airlines (and travel in general) was a net positive for meeting new people. Suddenly people could meet and get to know far more people than the h…

>1. time spent in front of screen means you aren't in a face to face interaction with someone Even if you are video chatting? I video chat with family and friends all the time to keep in touch over longer distances. I feel technology is helping there a lot.

If there were no video chatting, people would have more incentive to meet in person or not move away as much. Although a small proportion of people will have video chatting over nothing, the GENERAL trend will be more distance between people, even if in SOME cases it means less distance and more meaningful communication.

That's the key also: a small subset of people who benefit in the short-term does not mean that the technology doesn't move things in a worse direction in the long term. After all, the introduction of new technologies like video chatting sometimes just solves problems created by older technologies, possibly leading to a situation of decreasing LOCAL maxima, each of which seems like it is an improvement because it is, after all, a local maximum.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#70

Post by humblebeekeeper »

rickydroll wrote: post #61
humblebeekeeper wrote: post #45

This is a symptom of alienation, imo, not a unique problem from AI. There's a theory that we're becoming increasingly removed from our work -- we have less control over what we get to build, we have less control over how the products we build function. Because we don't influence what we create as much, work becomes much more about getting a pay check. We no longer work to craft , we work simply to build the things th…

I will argue that work should be just about a paycheck. The CEO/founder's vision is not your vision. It helps you be mindful of differences between your vision and your ethics versus the company's. You'll be able to see more clearly when the gap is too big and it's time to leave. For me, when work became all about the paycheck, I took my ego out of my work. I remained engaged and performed the job as expected. Whenev…

I think you are part way down the thread. You are assuming there's a company, that there's a CEO. These things are not axiomatic.

If you work somewhere where you have control over the outputs of the your labor, you can both get a paycheck and not be exploited.

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