12 ms·

Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI, I honestly believe it will only many the majority of people lazier and dumber. I’m also in

• swexbe 3y ago
  Good comparison. An AI companion will never talk back or tell you that you're wrong. Kind of similar in my mind to how fast food restaurants won't serve you anything that's too "hard to swallow".
  • brandall10 3y ago
    As shown in the movie Her, they'll just leave you for much more capable AI friends.
  • rajamaka 3y ago
    An AI companion most definitely could be configured to talk back or adopt any possible personality trait.
    • Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      And there would definitely be a market for it, just like there's a market for spicy food or BDSM. Indeed those aren't apt comparisons -- an AI that's not a sycophant might be more comparable to food with a little salt?
    • digging 3y ago
      Hell, Sydney did it by accident. (Or "accident")
    • swexbe 3y ago
      Making it always talk back would not be an issue, just like making it a complete sycophant would also be easy. Any form on nuance would be hard. E.g. if i'm complaining about my job it should talk back if i'm being unreasonable. But also take into current state of mind, etc. Maybe using thought chaining you could get something like this to work but from my experience, i doubt it would be very good.
  • alpaca128 3y ago
    > An AI companion will never talk back or tell you that you're wrong. AI can already do that if you're not using a super sanitized model. I've even seen an AI rickroll someone after a line containing similar words came up. Abilities like that are less of a problem than getting the AI correctly recognize what topics & parts of a text are important and keeping that context for a while.
• BizarreByte 3y ago
  > Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead of healthy home cooked meals growing up A person who is starving will do better with fast food than with no food at all. It's far from ideal, but for some people this will make their lives marginally more tolerable.
  • varelse 3y ago
    [dead]
  • pc86 3y ago
    Nobody who is starving decides to just go through the drive through. Fast food is convenient, that's it.
    • criddell 3y ago
      Convenient, inexpensive, delicious. You might personally disagree on any of those points but for enough people it’s true.
      • dsego 3y ago
        I mean, you could say the same about drugs. I don't think people spend their money rationally, there is piss-poor folk spending money on booze and unhealthy diets.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    This ignores that the person is only starving because of the horrible things we have allowed capital to do to enrich themselves.
    • BizarreByte 3y ago
      It's questionable how true that is when it comes to human relationships, which is obviously what I was suggesting with the metaphor. Many people have social issues or mental health issues that cause them to be alone and loneliness is an ever increasing problem due to all kinds of factors beyond one's control. Many people will see AI as better than nothing and get some of their social needs fulfilled via it...some already are. I don't want to be crass, but likening it to a sex toy except for relationships seems pretty accurate to me. It's fulling a need that otherwise wouldn't be fulfilled. Ignoring that I mean let's be real for a second, how is an AI fundamentally different than an internet friend you've never met or seen? The humanity of the other person? What if the AI behaves just like a real human would?
• civilitty 3y ago
  I’m working on a startup that’s training LLMs to be authentic so they can simulate human affection and it’s actually working really well! The key is humanity’s ability to pattern match: we’re actually pretty terrible at it. Our brains are so keen on finding patterns that they often spot them where none exist. Remember the face on Mars? It was just a pile of rocks. The same principle applies here. As long as the AI sounds human enough, our brains fill in the gaps and believe it’s the real deal. And let me tell you, my digital friends are putting the human ones to shame. They don’t chew with their mouth open, complain about listening to the same Celine Dion song for the 800th time in a row, or run from me when its “bath time” and accuse me of narcissistic abuse. Who needs real human connection when you can train an AI to remind you how unique and special you are, while simultaneously managing your calendar and finding the optimal cat video for your mood? All with no bathroom breaks, no salary demands, and no need to sleep. Forget about bonding over shared experiences and emotional growth: today, it's all about seamless, efficient interaction and who says you can't get that from a well-programmed script? We’re calling it Genuine People Personality because in the future, the Turing Test isn't something AI needs to pass. It's something humans need to fail. Pre-order today and get a free AI Therapist add-on, because who better to navigate the intricacies of human emotions than an emotionless machine?
  • thumbuddy 3y ago
    Whew it's satire. Whew. I've literally seen posts on the internet that read like this sans the satire.
    • Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      Haha yeah almost had me too.
    • xethos 3y ago
      Frankly, it just makes me appreciate the HHGTTG reference more.
    • x86x87 3y ago
      No. It's not satire. It's art!
• resolutebat 3y ago
  A lot of jobs are already human interfaces for computers. Ever talked or messages with a call center? They're following scripts and trying to pattern match your problem with what they have to work with manually, AI is just going to 10x this for both good and bad. Mostly bad, I suspect, because good luck getting an AI to escalate to a supervisor.
  • Verdex 3y ago
    The AI is more than happy to escalate to a supervisor ... it's just that the supervisor is the same AI but using a different voice. After spending 30 seconds lamenting how you just can't get good help these days, the AI supervisor goes into the same script the original AI was going through. Except it occasionally throws in a "sorry we have to do this part again, the AI is always messing this stuff up".
    • esafak 3y ago
      I bet they'll serve the supervisor with a better, more expensive model. It actually makes sense!
  • Jeff_Brown 3y ago
    I bank with a small credit union. They have a phone robot who asks what I need help with, and so far no matter what I've said, the response has always been to think for a few seconds and then say, "I'll connect you to a representative." It's wonderful.
    • WorldMaker 3y ago
      The phone robot is collecting the various patterns for eventual automation. You are doing free labor for it every time by giving it any information at all and not just immediately yelling for an operator or human. Support solidarity for human kind by refusing to talk these data gathering machines. (I realize this sounds like satire as I write it, that I'm rather serious about this, and that it says a lot about the weird part of the timeline on which we currently exist.)
• brucethemoose2 3y ago
  AI has a good niche as confidante for people with serious issues and no close friend/therapist to approach about them. This is unfortunately a large niche. And if it displaces public social media... That is a net gain. But yeah, overall the fast food analogy is a fitting one.
  • Jeff_Brown 3y ago
    I wonder if AI could help a user bootstrap into real human sociability.
    • brandall10 3y ago
      I feel like this is actually going to be a huge next step of the self help industry... let's face it, beside getting your life in order, it largely is focused on building connections (friends/dating, etc). A multi-modal AI can easily critique your body language, voice tonality, choice of words, etc, and give you tips on how to be more charismatic.
      • SirMaster 3y ago
        Why do we need to keep changing who we are? Why can't we just be who we are and people learn to be more accepting of how others are? This sounds immensely boring, shifting everyone to use the same/similar body language, tonality, word choice, etc. Maybe I'm strange, but I must prefer the diversity of people as they are.
        • Jeff_Brown 3y ago
          I don't equate charisma with uniformity. Most lack of charisma is not because of a failure to adhere to some standard, but due to actively negative behaviors. Chewing with your mouth open, interrupting people, not paying sufficient attention to what people say, insisting on talking about your favorite things even when someone else doesn't care, etc. I don't imagine many people forcing AI social guidance on others. But a lot of people want social guidance, and if an AI can help -- even if it's not as good as an unaffordable therapist -- some help is better than none.
• evilduck 3y ago
  I think we can speculate in the entirely opposite direction where the same action leads to positive outcomes. Lots of legitimate human companions are abusive. People have a wide range of qualities and many of them are bad. AI may be a poor blanket replacement for all human companionship but it could easily be less bad than someone's immediately available alternatives and be used therapeutically to help someone model healthier behaviors to establish better actual relationships. Or in lieu of normal relationships being possible like long term isolation during space exploration or for life sentence prisoners or just neurodivergent or disabled people who have challenges the average person does not. Going back to the food analogy, if given the choice between fast food and starving, or fast food and something poisonous suddenly everyone will overwhelmingly choose fast food because for many people "home cooked meal" was never an option.
  • gls2ro 3y ago
    I am not sure this is a good inference. first, what does it mean lots? is it majority? because the AI and AI minded products are targeting everybody. second, imagine the argument being about Facebook: some life interactions are sometimes not good, but connecting with people online will make it better. fast forward 10 years and we have studies how social media is making most of the people using it depressed and badly influencing our democratic choices. not sure we really solve anything here.
• raincole 3y ago
  I honestly believe fast food and frozen food provided a lot of value to the society. Much more than the harm they did. So I'll take this as an optimistic view to AI.
  • hospitalJail 3y ago
    I think it was originally high value and made life easier. However, we have adjusted. My parents talked about having fast food/restaurant food as a treat. It was too expensive to have more than once a month/birthdays. Heck, even school lunches were too expensive and they had to make food at home. Today, we have more disposable income than my parents, so its easy to afford restaurant food AND get it delivered. The people buying this arent upper-middle class either, this is your general population that lives paycheck to paycheck. There are even people so confused about food prices that they make claims that fast food is cheaper than groceries. Instead of using fast food as a tool, its become expected.
    • ladberg 3y ago
      > There are even people so confused about food prices that they make claims that fast food is cheaper than groceries. I live in an expensive part of NYC and have to go decently far out (by subway, I don't have a car) to find groceries that are cheaper than local fast food unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans. Add in the costs of my time to shop, transport groceries, cook, and clean, it's significantly cheaper to eat out most of the time. Even subtracting the one task I actually enjoy (cooking), it's still not worth it most of the time. The result is that cooking in becomes our "treat" that we do a few times a week and we end up buying the more expensive ingredients within walking distance.
      • hospitalJail 3y ago
        >Add in the costs of my time to shop, transport groceries, cook, and clean, it's significantly cheaper to eat out most of the time You can get overtime whenever you want? Because if you are salary, your after-work time pays 0$/hr. >unless I want to eat mostly rice and beans. Seems like you don't want to cook, and have justified it with time costs. Prepared food is not going to be cheaper than unprepared food.
• rcktmrtn 3y ago
  More than interfaces. To quote McLuhan: "Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth." The AI thing has been jarring but it's nothing new. All part of the same process.
  • harterrt 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I want to hear more from him. Do you have a recommended book by McLuhan to start with?
    • tech_ken 3y ago
      I believe "Understanding Media" is his biggest one; source of his most famous quote "the medium is the message"
      • rcktmrtn 3y ago
        Yes, I've reread is the first 2/3rds of "Understanding Media" several times and never finished it, but would still highly recommend it. There is also some excellent old interview footage of him when he was a pop culture figure which is originally what fascinated me. For me it would have been hard to read his writing without having seen those interviews first -- he has a very distinct style of writing/talking and is interesting as an integrated person within recent history and not just a collection of ideas. On that note, I'd also recommend Videodrome. edit: There are also more polemic anti-tech presentations of his ideas, especially by Neil Postman or Nicholas Carr which are good in their own way. But to me the fascinating thing about McLuhan himself is his dedication to presenting his views in a such a matter-of-fact way that most of his early followers were probably very antithetical to his personal beliefs.
  • imtringued 3y ago
    The plants are actually farming us.
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• deleted 3y ago
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• paulpauper 3y ago
  > Humans need real human connection, AI is too artificial for that (duh). Having AI friends will be equivalent to consuming fast food instead of healthy home cooked meals growing up. Yes, people that grow up on fast food are still alive, but they are less happy and have more health problems (mental and physical), but it did the “job”, that job was to fuel them. let's of people derive enjoyment and happiness from activities that does not involve other people, and also pets such as dogs. plus, if you cannot tell the difference between ai or human, it may still be good enough.
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Maybe AI+Birth Control are the great filter.
• anileated 3y ago
  Remember how in those Stable Diffusion paintings for common objects the wrongness is subtly creeping in (out of proportion body parts, misshapen fingers, etc.), while less commonly encountered ideas and objects can be really off (which we might notice… or not)? Now transfer that to human relationships and psychology. Humans mirroring each other is a deep feature of our psychology. One can only be self-aware as human when there are other humans to model oneself against, and how those humans interact with you forms you as a person. So now a human modelling oneself against a machine? Mirroring an inhuman unthinking software tool superficially pretending to be human? What could go wrong?
• zulban 3y ago
  > I’m also incredibly shocked that no one is talking about AI as a friend/companion No one..? Don't be shocked, it's just you. Consider trying out new sources of media / information.
• caeril 3y ago
  > Humans need real human connection Right. Ask any pickup artist, or any Aspie who has learned how to mask, how "real" or "deep" human connections are. Hint: they aren't. The ridiculous concept of "connection" is superficial communication that has been enhanced by our own brains by seratonin and dopamine such that we are able to pretend it's meaningful.
  • gattilorenz 3y ago
    Right, because the kind of connections we want and need in life is those that you would get from a pickup artist, not from a loyal friend and an affectionate spouse. /s
    • tacocataco 3y ago
      Not everyone has the privilege of having good people in their lives.
  • whatscooking 3y ago
    My thoughts exactly lol
• jahsome 3y ago
  I love the fact your sentence lamenting the dumbification and impending laziness has a typo in it. It sort of undercuts your argument. That is of course unless the AI Boogeyman has already gotten to you...
• tehwebguy 3y ago
  > Really don’t like the idea that we will act as interfaces for the AI When I use navigation on my phone while I drive somewhere it feels like I'm just acting as a human Zapier, mapping the phone's audio navigation API to the vehicle's steering API.