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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

#771

Post by weatherlite »

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…

> Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities

Source ? At least about fitness - I'm a regular runner and I've never seen so many people jog outside. Not sure what's going on in gyms though.

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

#772

Post by fakedang »

Hoasi wrote: post #365
vincnetas wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When mall is called a public space... Public space situation is really sad.

> When mall is called a public space... Public space situation is really sad. Absolutely, but still, that is a reality in many cities. They are places where "going to the mall" is the main form of entertainment left.

Ironic that the US is embracing Middle Eastern culture (specifically the Gulf countries). Honestly it's funny when Americans criticize cities like Doha and Dubai for being lacklustre and cultureless when most American tier-2 cities and towns are boring af. I've been told in some towns and suburbs that the best thing to do for leisure was to visit the local Walmart.

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

#773

Post by fakedang »

terribleperson wrote: post #647
mgraczyk wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true in the US. Young people in US consume much more of those things you listed than people over 40 did at the same age. Young people have more purchasing power than previous generations. EDIT: Data from the fed and payroll providers show this overwhelmingly to be the case, but just to add some color/anecdote. I found all of the first jobs I had in highschool and just after. 3/3 of my first roles now adver…

A 20-30% increase in prices does not match what I've observed. Restaurant prices are up 50-100% over the past decade. This isn't hard to check: look at old and new menu photos on yelp. Banh mi have gone from $3 to $6 in less than ten years. My local gas station mexican place (which has excellent food) has seem a price increase of 50% since 2019 and more like 100% since 2016. Coffee ditto, but luckily I don't buy coff…

To be fair, most of the current economic growth in the US in dollar terms is the result of inflationary growth and price-gouging in traditional industries. So it makes sense that basic necessities would follow the same trends and cost more.

I've seen the same effect happen like a mirror in all dollar-pegged economies I've visited since COVID.

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

#774

Post by DocTomoe »

kylecazar wrote: post #159

AI is incapable of solving loneliness. It's a biological signal we have (thanks to evolution) to seek social connections with other humans , for things like reproduction and survival. Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model. All it can offer is a distraction and an illusion, because it has no humanity. Note: I don't even think dogs solve loneliness. They can…

> Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model.

This isn't an empirical claim; it’s a definitional loop. You've defined "mentally healthy" in a way that makes your conclusion true by default. It's like saying, "Only mentally ill people commit suicide, because a sane person wouldn't do that." You've smuggled your conclusion into your premise. It doesn't prove anything; it just circularly reinforces your bias.

If someone who passes every clinical benchmark for mental health reports feeling less lonely after talking to a model, your definition simply reclassifies them as "not mentally healthy" to preserve the thesis. That's unfalsifiable - Karl Popper would call it a pseudo-theory.

If you want to know whether talking to a model can reduce loneliness in mentally healthy people, you have to measure loneliness directly - not redefine "healthy" so your preferred answer is guaranteed.

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

#775

Post by drusenko »

Nathanba wrote: post #423
AlecSchueler wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only suggest you ask your AI friends about the benefits of socialising and its importance to human development, they can explain it to you in a way that might not make you defensive. Yes, accepting things you have no control over is a sign of maturity. Hiding in your room talking to your phone won't make the scary people outside disappear, you're going to have to deal with them someday.

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…

Your idea of there being competition for human relationships is super fascinating. In my own life, there are fun/easy relationships, and there are those which push me to think deeply and differently, for any number of reasons.

In that vein, doesn’t “competition for relationships” necessarily breed egocentrism above all else? The winning relationship will give you what you want, but not what is necessarily true…

In that vein, you might also consider that the commenters you’re replying to may be worth engaging intellectually with more deeply purely based on the fact that they’re presenting divergent views that are uncomfortable.

Based on how we’ve designed AI to date and how you describe it in terms of optimizing for self enjoyment for each individual (and difficult to argue most will choose that for themselves), it’s hard to see a world where AI can push productive conflict the way humans can.

Then again, I might just be a flawed human who doesn’t fully understand the point you are trying to make and is extrapolating from my own biases, flaws, experiences, and the limited sample size I have of your point of view.

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

#776

Post by disambiguation »

Insufficient data for a meaningful answer. We don't really have a clear grasp of the relative benefits and harm yet.

Automobiles offer enormous gains in convenience and productivity, but at the cost of a non-negligible mortality rate as well as environmental impact. Society deems this a net-positive.

The two major unknowns with "AI companions" are: can people be trusted with this level of autonomy, and is the massive centralization of personal data going to result in abuse and exploitation.

I doubt any amount of discourse can answer questions of "how much", but perhaps the conversation can anticipate potential harm and "invent the traffic light" before the car crash equivalent becomes common place.

To do that, we have to first answer: what are the characteristics of the failure-mode of an AI companion?

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

#777

Post by DocTomoe »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #705
silvestrov wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying is that AI is like a stuffed toy animal. Next week it is exactly like it is this week.

Yes good analogy. For LLMs they are pretrained then can't learn anything new. We can make it appear they do with RAG and other smoke and mirrors. Those smoke and mirrors are useful as a tool, but the AI doesnt learn.

Realistically, that’s not far from how a human brain works - we rely on a deep corpus of pre-learned patterns (largely set in early childhood) and continually refresh it with new inputs held in short-term memory, reinforced through repetition. If LLMs reach the point where they can integrate their "short-term" context (RAG, etc.) into updated long-term weights more regularly, they’d be functionally simulating that aspect of human cognition.

(Disclaimer: I am not a neuroscientist. The model is massively simplified. But I believe the broad strokes are accurate.)

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

#778

Post by billfor »

kristianbrigman wrote: post #725
986aignan wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s not enough land that has enough water resources.

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

#779

Post by esseph »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #740
esseph wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why take the risk?" You end up on video for drunkenness with police, and assuming they don't shoot you or beat the fuck out of you, the video still ends up on the internet. The next day at work, you quickly get called in to talk to your manager and HR, and now you have to find a new job. Time to find a new job! And in this market? Not worth the risk. Now companies are searching for New Hires on social media, and gue…

You’d have to be trashed and making a huge scene for that to ever play out like that.

Yeah, some people can't handle alcohol very well.

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

#780

Post by simianparrot »

DocTomoe wrote: post #777
bravesoul2 wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes good analogy. For LLMs they are pretrained then can't learn anything new. We can make it appear they do with RAG and other smoke and mirrors. Those smoke and mirrors are useful as a tool, but the AI doesnt learn.

Realistically, that’s not far from how a human brain works - we rely on a deep corpus of pre-learned patterns (largely set in early childhood) and continually refresh it with new inputs held in short-term memory, reinforced through repetition. If LLMs reach the point where they can integrate their "short-term" context (RAG, etc.) into updated long-term weights more regularly, they’d be functionally simulating that as…

As a human I can learn to play my first instrument (piano) in my late 30’s. I’m also learning Japanese, with an “alphabet” and structure entirely unlike any other language I know. I got my gun license last year and am doing competitive one-hand pistol shooting.

These things in isolation might seem like “RAG+” but in total they’ve reshaped a lot of my thought patterns and physical aspects as well. Piano has improved motor functions, pistol shooting has vastly decreased time to focus and increased breathing control, and Japanese has allowed me to think about the world and how to describe it mentally in entirely new ways.

I think it’s easy to fall into a trap of undervaluing our brain and body until we actually fully use it.

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