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This is funny, but it does hit on something deeper. We already lose so much connection to each other by the current convenience of online. People are noting how

This is funny, but it does hit on something deeper. We already lose so much connection to each other by the current convenience of online. People are noting how much smaller their friends circles are, how difficult it is to have meetups, and how much is just based almost entirely on online communication. When things become even more convenient, what happens? When it's so much easier to just fall in love with a chat bot because they get you? When talking to your friends brings abrasiveness (not a bad thing btw, friends who challenge you to improve are fantastic), but your bots just actually get how to talk to you in the way you want? When you don't even know who your coworkers are or what they're like because everyone is just using their bots to convey things on slack, so it's that much harder to even make "office friends" nevermind serious ones. Even going off the deep end, because of the lack of limitations someone hooked up their model to a vibrator and now when it generates certain tags it provides you physical sensations (which, unfortunate to any readers here in the dark, there are already tools to link audio/video to your toys so this idea isn't that far fetched). I don't think people are really prepared for how much the average person is willing to completely avoid for the sake of convenience.

nonbirithm 4y ago
It wouldn't be surprising with millions of people's mindsets already conditioned by the convenience of an abundance of content, that if they're handed a piece of tech that can generate it personalized to their preferences in a more efficient manner that cuts humans out of the loop, there's nothing stopping a lot of them from using it. Maybe what was needed was a wider understanding of media literacy and the creator's mindset, the idea that even the most tasteless and bland porn video in existence could only have possibly been brought about because humans were behind the camera shots, the acting, the production, even if they were all terrible at their jobs. Nobody cared to think about those people until now because a lot of content comes off as disposable, even with a team of humans behind it, and well-poisoning AI was relegated to jokes about Skynet. We never considered the idea that something other than a human could also create such a thing, and at a comparable level of quality. It was an unwritten rule of creativity for centuries until generative tech made it blisteringly obvious. Maybe "I don't need to be a chef to appreciate the food" will be rewritten in the coming years. Maybe as, "but the chef needs to be human for the food to connect."
- waboremo 4y ago
  That's such a great point, and it reminds me of when image generation first was becoming mainstream. How quickly the consensus shifted from "only humans can do it, I mean look at how awful the face is" to this existential unease as more was released and things improved. It's going to be really interesting to see where the gradual changes happen, where we redefine concepts. I'm optimistic on that front, I don't think it's all doom and gloom and convenience does have major upsides. However I also believe that it's going to be really challenging for a lot of people if we just blindly keep walking forward without any sort of checks and balances.

nonbirithm 4y ago

It wouldn't be surprising with millions of people's mindsets already conditioned by the convenience of an abundance of content, that if they're handed a piece of tech that can generate it personalized to their preferences in a more efficient manner that cuts humans out of the loop, there's nothing stopping a lot of them from using it. Maybe what was needed was a wider understanding of media literacy and the creator's mindset, the idea that even the most tasteless and bland porn video in existence could only have possibly been brought about because humans were behind the camera shots, the acting, the production, even if they were all terrible at their jobs. Nobody cared to think about those people until now because a lot of content comes off as disposable, even with a team of humans behind it, and well-poisoning AI was relegated to jokes about Skynet. We never considered the idea that something other than a human could also create such a thing, and at a comparable level of quality. It was an unwritten rule of creativity for centuries until generative tech made it blisteringly obvious. Maybe "I don't need to be a chef to appreciate the food" will be rewritten in the coming years. Maybe as, "but the chef needs to be human for the food to connect."

waboremo 4y ago
That's such a great point, and it reminds me of when image generation first was becoming mainstream. How quickly the consensus shifted from "only humans can do it, I mean look at how awful the face is" to this existential unease as more was released and things improved. It's going to be really interesting to see where the gradual changes happen, where we redefine concepts. I'm optimistic on that front, I don't think it's all doom and gloom and convenience does have major upsides. However I also believe that it's going to be really challenging for a lot of people if we just blindly keep walking forward without any sort of checks and balances.