5 ms·

(OP here). In practice my stress level about this (for me and my family) is about zero. Eight year olds are quite smart; he knows exactly what is going on here

(OP here). In practice my stress level about this (for me and my family) is about zero. Eight year olds are quite smart; he knows exactly what is going on here and finds it entertaining. Real dad’s presence isn’t going anywhere. It’s largely a fun gimmick and treated as such. And if it started getting weird, I’d just turn it off. Now, as the tech improves I think this line of thinking is going to be a legitimate concern - I don’t think you are being a wet blanket. But at its current level, it’s pretty transparently a half-baked computer program, and treated as such by my kid.

hm-nah 3y ago
> But at its current level, it’s pretty transparently a half-baked computer program… Or it could be transparently trans-parenting. First time in human evolution we have had an on-call, near-real-time, interactive evocation of a loved one. trans prefix 4 : so or such as to change or transfer transliterate translocation transamination transship
EvanAnderson 3y ago
> Eight year olds are quite smart; he knows exactly what is going on here and finds it entertaining. I'm betting there's more to this, subconsciously, than we know. We instinctively ascribe agency to objects that move in a non-inertial frame. We anthropomorphize both living and non-living things. I suspect there are deep subconscious instincts being "tickled" by this application of technology. Giving it the voice of a parent is probably touching some adjacent instincts relating to parental recognition, too. Aside: Have you talked to him about how an LLM is chaining words together through a statistical model versus actually "thinking" and understanding what it's "saying"? I recently walked my 10 y/o daughter thru a simple Markov model text generator example to give her a very basic understanding of how computers and be programmed and trained to give output that appears to be generated by a thinking process. My sense is that lay-people believe that these LLMs really are "thinking" and I wanted to provide her with some inoculation against that perception when she inevitably runs into it.
- thwarted 3y ago
  My sense is that lay-people believe that these LLMs really are "thinking" The way the comment rhetoric is on hacker news around LLMs, it seems some technical people believe that LLMs really are "thinking" too.
- numlocked 3y ago
  My sense is that lay-people believe the LLMs are essentially googling things in the background. The idea that they are not connected to the internet is unfathomable.
  - ghostpepper 3y ago
    Is being connected to a digested snapshot of the internet really that different from being connected to the actual internet? I'd argue that they are connected to the internet in a meaningful sense
    - jeffrallen 3y ago
      At least the digested version of the internet doesn't flake out, give 404s, and ask for permission to put cookies on your browser.

hm-nah 3y ago

> But at its current level, it’s pretty transparently a half-baked computer program… Or it could be transparently trans-parenting. First time in human evolution we have had an on-call, near-real-time, interactive evocation of a loved one. trans prefix 4 : so or such as to change or transfer transliterate translocation transamination transship

EvanAnderson 3y ago

> Eight year olds are quite smart; he knows exactly what is going on here and finds it entertaining. I'm betting there's more to this, subconsciously, than we know. We instinctively ascribe agency to objects that move in a non-inertial frame. We anthropomorphize both living and non-living things. I suspect there are deep subconscious instincts being "tickled" by this application of technology. Giving it the voice of a parent is probably touching some adjacent instincts relating to parental recognition, too. Aside: Have you talked to him about how an LLM is chaining words together through a statistical model versus actually "thinking" and understanding what it's "saying"? I recently walked my 10 y/o daughter thru a simple Markov model text generator example to give her a very basic understanding of how computers and be programmed and trained to give output that appears to be generated by a thinking process. My sense is that lay-people believe that these LLMs really are "thinking" and I wanted to provide her with some inoculation against that perception when she inevitably runs into it.

thwarted 3y ago
My sense is that lay-people believe that these LLMs really are "thinking" The way the comment rhetoric is on hacker news around LLMs, it seems some technical people believe that LLMs really are "thinking" too.
numlocked 3y ago
My sense is that lay-people believe the LLMs are essentially googling things in the background. The idea that they are not connected to the internet is unfathomable.
- ghostpepper 3y ago
  Is being connected to a digested snapshot of the internet really that different from being connected to the actual internet? I'd argue that they are connected to the internet in a meaningful sense
  - jeffrallen 3y ago
    At least the digested version of the internet doesn't flake out, give 404s, and ask for permission to put cookies on your browser.