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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

#691

Post by giantg2 »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #679
dv_dt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls

Parks and trails are/were non commercial meeting spaces. City recreational parks in America used to have water fountains and cool stuff like climbable sculptures for kids and decommissioned Korean War era fighter jets in sand pits. That all went away with the helicopter parents.

Still plenty of those sorts of things around me. Maybe this varies by state.

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

#692

Post by calf »

daniel-grigg wrote: post #684

I don’t know about curing loneliness but when I wrote our bot for doing code reviews I was quite thrown back by how positive and sympathetic the feedback was compared to my peers. It felt like my bot human than us humans! Was it fake? Sure. I mean I instructed it to praise good changes after all. But it still felt good. And now I’m noticing another effect, my human peers have started mimicking some its behaviours.

It still seems fake, whenever I go in-depth taking multiple turns with ChatGPT it ends up revealing its "yes-man" attitude. It just hides it better in newer iterations.

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

#693

Post by packetlost »

klipt wrote: post #596
kazinator wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can Japan even attract immigrants if it wants to? The language is notoriously hard to learn and it's not like they have super high paying jobs the way the USA does

Yes. Lots of (moderately) wealthy westerners. I personally would move there if I could.

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

#694

Post by techpineapple »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #466
techpineapple wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you not notice a trendline of technological improvement of AI? No, in fact I noticed a series of AI winters. In all things, progress is famously _not_ a straight line. Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m smart because line goes up, you’re dumb because you think line goes down.” Everyone Clearly can see what would happen if line went up, I just; looking at the broad history a…

>No, in fact I noticed a series of AI winters. In all things, progress is famously _not_ a straight line. A series of winters? There's only one winter. Then after Geoffrey Hinton you can bullshit every 6 month lull into a "winter" if you want but everyone knows what the "actual" winter was. In general over a span of 10 years the line is UP. >Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m sma…

I think VR is a great example of a technology we are currently choosing to stop, very similarly to AI, all evidence suggests we’ll hit a cost/benefit wall before we get to superintelligent AI similar to the abandonment of VR progress currently in the works.

Contradictorally though - I am near certain we will declare victory on AGI much sooner than 10 years from now. OpenAI’s contract with Microsoft nearly requires it, and Sam Altman recently said that by reasonable measures of 5 years ago, ChatGPT 4 is AGI. In some sense that may best evidence things are stalling.

But really 10 years from now, either one of us could declare victory, and we’d probably be right.

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

#695

Post by Izkata »

_puk wrote: post #162
cheschire wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the younger crowd, A/S/L? Was a typical introduction between people who were taking their chat to the next level. Like a handshake introduction in a room of crowded people where up to that point you were just throwing responses into the group discussion. This was in the days of IRC and Yahoo! Chat. Age/Sex/Location?

Wasn't that the standard greeting on ICQ from randoms across the globe? Uh-Oh! A/S/L?

It was the standard greeting in AIM chatrooms too. It was still a novelty to chat with someone unknown from somewhere else in the world, so it was neat to know where they were.

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

#696

Post by 986aignan »

kiba wrote: post #673
rcarr wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all developed nations, Japan is probably the one least affected by housing pricing in the world seeing as though Japanese housing depreciates rather than appreciates over time. Rent prices in America are a staggering 177.4% more expensive than Japan[1]. Ever increasing house prices, caused by the underlying power imbalance between capital and labour, is the root of all evil in the Anglosphere. It will not stop…

It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form of copyright, patents, even domain names, the orbitals in the sky, the electromagnetic spectrum. Capital can be used to produce more capital, but you cannot produce more land, more electromagnetic spectrum, more orbitals, etc. The housing crisis is a restrictio…

At some point, I would imagine the distinction between capital and land becomes blurry, though. Economic rent can be had from either if the barrier to competition is high enough.

Domain names are a good example, because as skissane said, you could just make another DNS root. The trouble is convincing people (browsers) to use it. The problem in attempting to overturn Facebook isn't mainly the coding, either, but having a critical mass care. Those barriers don't seem like absolutes the way land is; they're just very high, high enough for those who control them to extract economic rent.

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

#697

Post by waaaaaaaaahhhh »

nathan_compton wrote: post #579
RamblingCTO wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. There's always the layer of hormones, chemicals, touch, electric fields, and whatnot that also entails human contact. Mirror neurons. Stuff like that. It's like replacing a partner with a sex doll. I'm a bit sad that the author didn't have a take on the cheap reproduction of human contact and how it's connected to our broader culture and instead thinks about a non-solution to one of the issues that causes a lot…

But I'm not even talking about that. While I think embodied AI would probably improve the illusion and might help some people, the fundamental issue is that loneliness can only be alleviated by an entity that can judge you as unworthy of their attention and time. If you build a robot specifically to give someone positive regard it actually isn't giving positive regard because it has no choice. While there are basic e…

"Loneliness can only be alleviated by an entity that can judge"...won't say your wrong, but does that include for you: "An entity that gives you food for thought"?

Or as a well more philosophic-Question (call it an oldie): "Needed existence to substain sustaining the saints?"

OT: There once was a saying that while talking to god a lot people became angry, asked by god "Angry for what?" so the people answered, "Angry about you god...", "cos been angry about the people around sometimes..." So god answered: "Like you i also become angry about the people sometimes" and those listening Crowd, knowed from in there, "That was the reason for why god didn't showed up most of the time ?"

Saying "...let me alone!" ?

and if that couldn't be "confussier"... P-:

(still reading)

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

#698

Post by rogerrogerr »

kovek wrote: post #681
Nathanba wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of what I'm talking about in regards to humans vs AI. First you misunderstand my comment, barely even responding to it, then you paint me as defensive even though I've been very open and the absolute opposite of defensive. It's actually you who is being defensive now, starting on a clear attack and painting me into some kind of scared recluse corner, somebody who supposedly can't even understa…

Why are you socializing with humans on Hacker News right now?

Wait you’re _humans_?! I thought the AI had taken everyone’s jobs, surely it started with the HN commenter positions!

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

#699

Post by _whiteCaps_ »

busymom0 wrote: post #678
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the land of the free, America sure does have some weirdly authoritarian laws, many of them relating to alcohol!

It's only just been legalized here in Canada as part of a pilot project this year: https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/city-news/newsroom/city-lists...

In Vancouver since 2023.

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

#700

Post by Der_Einzige »

nathan_compton wrote: post #46
xandrius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loneliness is not mere solitude. Loneliness is not being happy with being alone, solitude is the state of being alone. I couldn't find a word for specifically being happy about it. So, loneliness is intrinsically negative, otherwise one wouldn't feel that way.

Having some intrinsically negative experiences is good, arguably.

People who hold this belief unironically are ontologically evil.
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