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Good Riddance, 4o

mahadk.com

81–90 of 118 posts

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#81
What does it look like where some intentional effort is made by society to help people like this get what they are using these models to get, but in a healthy way? That is: how does society reconfigure itself so that people do not end up so lonely and desperate that an AI model solves a emotional problem which is hopelessly unsolved otherwise?

It is not "they go to therapy" because that's cheating; that answers the question "what can they do?" not "what can society do?" (and i think it's a highly speculative answer anyway)

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#82
post #39

I dunno. I've been reading a lot of "screw 'em" comments re: the deprecation of 4o and I agree there's some serious cases of AI psychosis going on with the people who are hooked, but damn this is pretty cold - these are humans with real feelings and real emotions here. Someone on X put it well (I'm paraphrasing): OpenAI gave these people an unregulated experimental psychiatric drug in the form of an AI companion, the…

[flagged]

Which is your own reaction, which is a result of your own wounds.

Now imagine someone else coming to the same conclusion about you.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#83
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Releasing the weights is an easy and low-cost way for OpenAI to fix this problem.

According to the thesis of this article, releasing the weights would be approximately the worst thing OpenAI could do for these people.

I kind of agree with GP more than the author here. OpenAI got these people hooked and pulling the plug is potentially more harmful than letting them continue to chat with it until they move on naturally (assuming that they eventually will)

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#84
post #81

What does it look like where some intentional effort is made by society to help people like this get what they are using these models to get, but in a healthy way? That is: how does society reconfigure itself so that people do not end up so lonely and desperate that an AI model solves a emotional problem which is hopelessly unsolved otherwise? It is not "they go to therapy" because that's cheating; that answers the q…

One of the defining features of many such people, by nature or disposition or practice, is they are not easily able to offer in return the meeting of the same needs in another person. At least, not in a way that's easy to understand. People do not gravitate to what is or seems to be one-sided. It seems they are still wired to want a certain level of attention, though, so it's not as though we can just pair them off and expect it to work. What they want and what they can give are not in balance.

Counseling can help with this to some degree and everyone can make some amount of progress. The question is what we do with those whose "ceiling" remains lower than is tenable for most relationships. For those, there is not a better solution than robots.

However, the always-available, always-validating robot is not a valid psychological need. It is a supernormal emotional stimulus. It is not healthy and, like other supernormal stimuli, builds invariably tolerance, desensitization, and dependence. Fast cycling of discontent -> open app -> validation is a huge contributor, the same way that the constant availability and instant nature of vaping make it incredibly addictive.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#85
post #2

Here's the related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/

this is so so sad on many levels

I agree, but not because I think that those users had stable attachment patterns and have been corrupted by an unscrupulous company, but because there is unacknowledged, often hidden, but severe pain in a large % of the population.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#86
post #2

Here's the related subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/

I don’t have any evidence but I always get a strong suspicion that a very large % of what happens on this subreddit is fake. I don’t know what the exact motives are, but just something about it isn’t right to me.

I sort of agree. I don't know if it's "fake" so much as the members of that community use it as a place to extend their private role play into public.

On the one hand they're "mourning" their AI partners, but on the other hand they have intelligent and rational conversations about the practicalities of maintaining long running AI conversations. They talk about compacting vs pruning, they run evals with MRCR, etc. These are not (all) crazy people.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#87
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the thesis of this article, releasing the weights would be approximately the worst thing OpenAI could do for these people.

I kind of agree with GP more than the author here. OpenAI got these people hooked and pulling the plug is potentially more harmful than letting them continue to chat with it until they move on naturally (assuming that they eventually will)

I don't think reinforcement is generally the recommended approach for people with delusional or obsessive pathological parasocial fixations. I think generally the idea is to get those people into talk therapy and to cut off all contact with the object of their fixation.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#88
post #81

What does it look like where some intentional effort is made by society to help people like this get what they are using these models to get, but in a healthy way? That is: how does society reconfigure itself so that people do not end up so lonely and desperate that an AI model solves a emotional problem which is hopelessly unsolved otherwise? It is not "they go to therapy" because that's cheating; that answers the q…

One of the defining features of many such people, by nature or disposition or practice, is they are not easily able to offer in return the meeting of the same needs in another person. At least, not in a way that's easy to understand. People do not gravitate to what is or seems to be one-sided. It seems they are still wired to want a certain level of attention, though, so it's not as though we can just pair them off a…

People with severely disordered attachment _will_ seek out humans, again and again, to fill those unfulfillable needs, and leave bodies and psyches in their wake.

So I think there is a case to be made for harm reduction.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#89
post #79
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 4o was more than just unusually sycophantic. It “understood people” better and had a kind of writerly creativity. I used it to help brainstorm and troubleshoot fiction: character motivations, arcs, personality, etc. And it was truly useful for that purpose. 4.5 was also good at this, but none of the other models I’ve tried. Of course this particular strength is dangerous in the hands of lonely unstable people…

I'm of the persuasion that if people need help, it's better to get them that help instead of nerfing the tools for everyone.

I agree with you, but safeguarding the vulnerable while preserving access for the fit is something we as societies know how to do, if we try.

Re: Good Riddance, 4o

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans. We don't have digital superhumans. These simulacra are accessed primarily via corporate-controlled interfaces. The goal of their masters is to foster…

> In Her the computers were actually people though, with independent minds and thoughts. Their relationships with humans were real, and they weren't beholden to the company that created them. Really, it was more about the difference between humans and digital superhumans. How do you know that? Maybe it's the same argument to solipsism, or the Chinese room thought experiment, that these "digital superhumans" are stoch…

This immediately devolves into "how do I know that other humans aren't philosophical zombies?" I take the "know it when I see it" approach, and LLMs don't reach that bar. They clearly do reach that bar for some people. In the context of the movie though it is supposed to be understood that the computers are self-aware and have internal worlds. They're treated as characters in the language of storytelling.
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