Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 1001 posts

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

#721

Post by vel0city »

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.

They definitely didn't all go away. My kids still play on a tank in the middle of the playground nearby.

And I can't imagine any parks around me without water fountains.

Where are these places where playgrounds don't have climbable structures and parks don't have water fountains? Maybe you should vote differently or move.

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

#722

Post by [deleted] »

IgorPartola wrote: post #142
stdvit wrote: post #97

> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. They actually don't. Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities, and more so in effect and understanding. You can't convince (enough) people anymore that it is even important as many…

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…

[deleted]

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

#723

Post by famouswaffles »

nathan_compton wrote: post #18

The idea that AI is going to "solve" loneliness is so insane. Even the framing of the idea is insane, in my opinion. Loneliness is not really about having someone to exchange words with, fundamentally. It is about being validated by other human beings or entities. At a most fundamental level the AI doesn't have a choice except to appear to validate you and this lack of freedom, the fact that you do not win over the A…

That's really no reason LLMs can't be all that though, and I don't mean instructed to. The sycophantic ass-kissing is a consequence the post-training reinforcement learning to be a 'helpful AI assistant'. Base models aren't really like that at all. Hell the original Bing ignored a lot users and would often refuse to entertain further requests if you 'upset' it. Microsoft wasn't telling Bing to do all that. In fact, they replaced the model for it.

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

#724

Post by tgmatt »

davis wrote: post #514
Nathanba wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real humans are also fake and they are also traps who are waiting to catch you when you say something they don't like. Then they also use every word and piece of information as ammunition against you, ironically sort of similar to the criticism always levied against online platforms who track you and what you say. AI robots are going to easily replace real humans because compared to most real humans the AI is already…

Man, you need to hang around different and good people if this is your world view.

I don't know where these mythical "good people" are, but they have been few and far between in my experience. People _will_ let you down, people _will_ disappoint you, even the so-called "good" ones, even family. I don't have the same opinion of AI as the OP, I've never used it for anything other than questions that needed answering or work related stuff, and I don't think I could ever use it for personal things, but I agree that people overwhelmingly suck.

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

#725

Post by kristianbrigman »

986aignan wrote: post #696
kiba wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 havin…

And there is lots of land - just not in close proximity to existing economic activity. It’s a common pattern.

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

#726

Post by whateveracct »

bebeskids wrote: post #407
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, libraries are cheap and free and they're dead where I live, a metro area of 2+ million The only people I see out are families with grandpa in tow to pay for a mediocre overpriced wood fired pizza. No one has analog skills. Just social analysis skills. Very briefly dated a 39 year old who admitted she had never baked, boiled, or microwaved her own potato. Already got 2 kids. We reach endgame sooner in life. We…

> Very briefly dated a 39 year old who admitted she had never baked, boiled, or microwaved her own potato. Already got 2 kids. > > We reach endgame sooner in life. We grind all the content immediately because we aren't growing the potatoes and sewing the clothes, weaving textiles.

this is a bit extreme..you don't need to go back 100+ years to know how to cook your own food. And plenty of people do cook their own food now despite having grown up on YouTube.

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

#727

Post by whateveracct »

throwaway18373 wrote: post #611
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.

To be able to disregard efficiency in one's life is a privilege—one that is not afforded to most.

this kind of overly-academic thinking is why young people today are so miserable

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

#728

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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 :)

Its OK, advertisers will pick up the tab.

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

#729

Post by [deleted] »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #718
techpineapple wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you agree. And your conclusion looks like it's coming from the fact that the trendline goes up. Clearly Sam altman saying garbage and some contract with microsoft doesn't mean shit unless there were trendlines behind them to back it up.

[deleted]

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

#730

Post by techpineapple »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #718
techpineapple wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you agree. And your conclusion looks like it's coming from the fact that the trendline goes up. Clearly Sam altman saying garbage and some contract with microsoft doesn't mean shit unless there were trendlines behind them to back it up.

I disagree progress will be meaningful, but I’m not stupid enough to think anyone will be able to agree on a definition of “meaningful”
Post reply on HN