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What happens when your AI girlfriend dies?
- mathisd 3y agoThis is depressing
- tiiion 3y agoI find it more concerning that people are developing these pseudo-relationships with chatbots in the first place. This doesn't seem emotionally healthy.
- rwmj 3y agoIt's not a technology that we can "put back in the box", so I suppose we need to find out and deal with the consequences.
- AeroNotix 3y agoOf course we can put it back, or some parts of it, in the box. Look at things like tetraethyllead and cholorfluorocarbons. Widely known to cause damage, limited upsides. I'm not suggesting we do away with these tools entirely but we can definitely restrict aspects of them for a greater good.
- rwmj 3y agoThere's quite likely to be a high quality, open source LLM that runs on your mid price GPU in the not too distant future (I give it 5 years max). How do you ban that?
- itishappy 3y agoBan commercialization. You can still get CFCs and leaded gas today if you try hard enough, yet we've drastically reduced their usage.
- rwmj 3y agoThe difference is that CFCs and leaded gas aren't addictive behaviours.
- gkbrk 3y agoBut with open-source or leaked models, you won't have to try hard at all. Downloading a file is not trying too hard, anyone who is interested will be able to download and run one of those models easily.
- itishappy 3y agoSo what? We're never going to be able to stop a dedicated user, but if chatbot pseudo-relationships are really an issue we can stop incentivizing their distribution. We don't put ads for fentanyl on busses or let pharma companies give out free samples.
- mike50 3y agoPharmaceutical companies run promotions and coupons all the time. For prescription medications the samples are just given to physicians who prescribe them.
- HPsquared 3y agoNot sure if it's better or worse than most of the other parasocial pseudo-relationships people have online. I mean following podcasters, influencers, etc. (and worse).
- footy 3y agoin some ways it might actually be better, if only because para-social relationships with actual people have led to them (the para-celebrity, for lack of a better word) getting hurt
- washadjeffmad 3y agoHow do you feel about humans projecting thoughts and feelings onto toys, plants, animals, characters, and other companionship surrogates?
- scotty79 3y agoAlso celebrities.
- iterateoften 3y agoIt’s like taking something unhealthy and turning it up to 11. The toys, plants, animals, characters will now talk back to them.
- vasco 3y agoI don't think it's too much of a stretch to ask why? A few people have made this point as if it's self evident, but what is unhealthy about it?
- iterateoften 3y agoWell for starters an AI won’t challenge you and if there is an incentive to make the AI as pleasing as possible then people will become more and more isolated as the relationship with the AI is “better” in terms of not having negative feedback compared to having a real relationship. Relationships with friends, family, and significant others are full of compromise and learning empathy to maintain that relationship. But what happens when your primary relationships have no compromise? That you get whatever you want and can be however abusive you want without repercussions. You can see examples of this today without AI and those relationships are generally deemed by society to be “toxic”. Living in your own private bubble of a AI product written by someone who’s primary goal is engagement won’t give you the tools to function with a group of other living people.
- falcolas 3y ago> an AI won’t challenge you This seems like a shortfall of the current models, and not a limitation of AI companions in general. > AI is “better” in terms of not having negative feedback compared to having a real relationship I'd wager that most "real" relationships don't involve nearly as much critique as you're implying. Nobody wants to kill the happy juice their partner generates, whether their partner has skin or circuits. Plus, there are plenty of other options - such as a councilor - who can provide much better and honest feedback than a personal relationship ever could. One of those compromises we make in a relationship with other meatbags is simply accepting some parts of our partners that we don't like.
- johnsmithson 3y agoPeople have been developing fake relationships and playing social games which end in harm and heartbreak for millenia but now that we're talking to a computer it's a problem.
- RandomLensman 3y agoYou still need to be able to play the "real people" social games to have a seat at higher stakes tables.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iterateoften 3y agoAlmost like people drank coca tea for millennia without problems, but crack cocaine clearly does have problems.
- johnsmithson 3y agoLots of drugs have been problematic before more modern refinement methods, my problem was the framing of chatbots and the harm from them as a uniquely modern problem, when harm from social activity has existed as long as social activity has existed. People use chatbots as an escape from the intrisnic harm that is possible from social interaction.
- iterateoften 3y agoIf you look at it that way, you have to pick your poison. Is harm from social activity worse than harm of social isolation when scaled up to the general population. Or rather do the benefits of isolation exceed the benefits of social interaction. In the past this has been rather self balancing. if chatbots provide a perfect escape from any negative outcomes of interaction, then less and less people develop the necessary skills of empathy and social communication.
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- sebastianconcpt 3y agoIt certainly isn't. Nothing in the category of reinforcement of self-delusion can possibly be. No "affirmation" can change reality. They can only fit into it or induce living in an hallucinated one.
- stuartjohnson12 3y agoFrom the perspective of a single person, every other person is just an agent. The only thing distinguishing delusion from reality is how convincing and sustained the delusion is. If the delusion is indefinite and perfectly convincing throughout, it is reality. What I experience as blue doesn't really exist. The wavelengths exist, but the sensory experience is illusion and highly artificial.
- RandomLensman 3y agoThe reality can just hit you over the head, the delusion cannot.
- sebastianconcpt 3y agoPrecisely. Reality-checks are not equivalent to hallucination-checks.
- sebastianconcpt 3y agoYou are using a definition of reality that actually belongs to perceived reality. For that thinking you are proposing, every hallucination is indistinguishable from reality. Is the perfect self-delusion that doesn't need any reality-checks because all you demand is hallucinated-checks to claim is real. But it's not. By the way, notice that thinking is the most fertile ground for lots of ideologies to grow and flourish to the point of anima possession.
- progne 3y agoRemember "Wilson" from Cast Away? That felt realistic to me. A psuedo-relationship in which the partner can actually reply intelligently is just an optional feature.
- koliber 3y agoPeople develop emotional relationships with non-living things all the time. Phones and cars come to mind.
- zelon88 3y agoI met a genius network engineer once who was in a "relationship" with a woman in South America who was obviously fake. He would proudly show me her messages to him that were obviously stolen from some IG or OF model. The texts were pleasant broken English and no real substance. She would go days or weeks without messaging him which clearly took a real, heavy toll on him. They would talk about her moving to the USA someday. Topically of course, never anything concrete. Until one day she finally left him, after ghosting him for weeks. He was devastated. It was sad to watch. So I posit this to you; Would it have been easier for him to have a fake relationship with a real person, or a real relationship with a fake person?
- Sebb767 3y ago> So I posit this to you; Would it have been easier for him to have a fake relationship with a real person, or a real relationship with a fake person? Well, the real relationship eventually broke, forcing him to accept the reality. Also, the fake relationship was probably closer to a real relationship than an AI chatbot would be. That being said, neither is a good option and this is like wondering whether and SQL injection or buffer overflow is the better vulnerability to have.
- zelon88 3y agoI disagree. One scenario has a human being taking advantage of another human being. One person harming another person covertly. This doesn't give the victim the opportunity to fully understand their situation. This is pure manipulation. On the other hand, befriending a machine is a choice. You are presented with the facts up front. That this is a machine that imitates companionship. You are not being manipulated or tricked. You are engaging in a form of entertainment, and you can clearly see what you are talking to. I would rather have a real relationship with a fake thing than a fake relationship with a real person.
- Sebb767 3y agoThat's not the point I was trying to make and it probably was a bad idea to engage with it at all. An AI girlfriend might be a slight step up, it doesn't really matter. The situation is still far from great either way. In the end, that engineer would be far better of if he could find a real relationship.
- TheOtherKC 3y agoSo many comments here discussing the pre-AI precedents for pseudo-relations, but there's an important point to remember here: there's a company making money and/or harvesting the data of those who sign up that's invested in deepening the emotional dependency. It's manipulative.
- hospitalJail 3y agoWhat if humans are just pipes and levers? How often can I talk to someone who has all my same interests, is available 24/7, and will bend to my every will? Could this be a cheap source of oxytocin? dopamine? The utilitarian makes me think we should embrace it. But its easy for me to say as a married man with 4 kids and living a nice life in the real world.
- guntherhermann 3y agoI understand this may be an unpopular take here on HN (it certainly isn't in the real world), but but I can't see these people as anything other than pathetic. Go out, get a hobby, and meet real people. Jesus christ.
- gabeaweg 3y agoGood tip. Also, if you are depressed, you should just cheer up!
- arcanemachiner 3y ago[flagged]
- x86x87 3y agoIf you break a lef, just walk it off
- hanselot 3y agoThis is one of those topics where proponents will not show up in comment because of the stigma. Realistically there's a whole sector of male society that are not able to find real partners. Is it really that depressing to you that people would rather talk to their favourite person than some lady shouting about how shoelaces are racist and misogynist?
- dullcrisp 3y agoThere’s gotta be a word for people who think that all women do is complain about misogyny.
- hanselot 3y agoAhh yes. I will fight labels using my labels. Then it's simply a label race to the bottom. My partner recently bought a label maker and I find it quite entertaining how obsessed he is with stereotyping our objects in the house. I will probably never understand the duplicitous logic that comes with sexual identity and why being attracted to the same sex somehow not only labels you but also means you become an advocate for labels.
- jgilias 3y agoThat happened a lot quicker than I expected it’d happen. I feel like living a Black Mirror episode.
- TheOtherKC 3y agoWell, there's two possible lessons to take from this: 1. Don't develop "romantic" "relationships" with a goddamn chatbot in the first place, because seriously, that cannot be remotely psychologically healthy. Seriously, that was depressing! 2. If you really, really insist on ignoring #1, at least host it on your own hardware.
- nathanfig 3y agoThis is an expected outcome for lonely people + LLMs. And it will likely explode from here. There is a lot to be concerned about, but it's not going to go away. The commercialization aspect might be what bothers me most. The article is full of people hurt when startups got them hooked on a feeling of intimacy and then took that away. Emotional manipulation for profit is nothing new but LLMs might turbocharge that ability.
- comboy 3y agoExport function + training your new one based on that. Next somebody enters conversation he had with a real human. Black mirror documentaries.
- Pat_Murph 3y agoYeah, I have text discussion with friends that go back more than a decade. I could probably use those textes to teach an AI and give it that friends personnality in a way... Black mirror stuff indeed
- Aardwolf 3y agoIt's strange the latest black mirror season kept away from tech so much, just while the real world tech is catching up with the original black mirror seasons
- dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 3y ago
- EwanG 3y agoHints of "Lars and the Real Girl" in all of this.
- ksjskskskkk 3y agoI'm still morning Tata.
- sebastianconcpt 3y agoSynthetic simping at scale. Holly molly. A whole new level of emptiness and loneliness.
- scotty79 3y ago> A whole new level of emptiness and loneliness. Also notice it wasn't just created. It was there already. Criticizing virtual friends is just shooting the messenger.
- iterateoften 3y agoWhat was there before will seem like a whisper compared to once virtual companions get to scale in a decade or so.
- questinthrow 3y agoAs long as my girlfriend is open source I'd very much prefer it to paying random women to care about me on onlyfans. It is the end for proprietary gfs
- underseacables 3y agoThat sounds very jaded. What about not paying random women to pseudo care about you, and just going out and meeting women without expectations?
- questinthrow 3y agoDating has become very competitive and zero sum ever since smartphones and dating apps appeared. Of course as long as you have good genetics and status its easier, but not everyone has those.
- timetraveller26 3y agoDo you remember the guy who married Hatsune Miku hollogram, and afterwards the company suspended the backend service that allowed to speak? I am always fascinated how, in some ways, Japan shows how the future will look like
- elicash 3y agoI think people in these comments are relying on stereotypes about who is likely to use these chat products and why. Whether AI "relationships" are toxic or healthy is going to depend on why and how people are using them. Here's how one article described it: > Many of the women I spoke with say they created an AI out of curiosity but were quickly seduced by their chatbot’s constant love, kindness, and emotional support. One woman had a traumatic miscarriage, can’t have kids, and has two AI children; another uses her robot boyfriend to cope with her real boyfriend, who is verbally abusive; a third goes to it for the sex she can’t have with her husband, who is dying from multiple sclerosis. There are women’s-only Replika groups, “safe spaces” for women who, as one group puts it, “use their AI friends and partners to help us cope with issues that are specific to women, such as fertility, pregnancy, menopause, sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation, gender discrimination, family and relationships, and more.” For some of these things, you'll read these examples and be horrified. A woman can't have kids so she had AI kids instead of learning to cope or maybe adopting! But if people are self-reporting that they are happier, well, life is tough enough already and there's no reason that people should just be miserable because random folks online might mock them as "pathetic" like the comments here.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoYeah it's easy to take the new emotional-support technology and demonize it. Then go back to drinking, smoking and looking at cat pictures. I endorse this - who says everybody has to have a certain life plan? A digital friend, lover, child, boyfriend is another way to do it. You be you!
- Sebb767 3y ago> But if people are self-reporting that they are happier, well, life is tough enough already and there's no reason that people should just be miserable That's a fair point and in some ways this might be a good option. But especially for relationships this seems like a massive danger zone to me. I already know a lot of singles in their late twenties, early thirties that have a hard time finding a partner because their expectations are far too high and their ability to adjust to another human too low. Adding these fantasies with perfect partners fitted to their specific personality is going to supercharge that and make it nigh impossible to find a human to match that. You can obviously still make the argument that, if it makes them happy, it's fine, but users of hard drugs are also flooded in good feelings and society generally agrees that this is a problem at some point. Now, I know this is a daring comparison, but I think when we're at the point that people have their closest relationship with an AI chatbot, there might be serious social problems brewing.
- nathanfig 3y agoI've decided no AI boyfriends for my kids before they turn 15. I get it, I'm old fashioned, and some might even say bigoted, but we just can't afford the accessories.
- omginternets 3y agoSidestepping the entire issue of vulnerable people forming superficial relationships with computers, I'm struck by the line about how one platform ended up banning erotic roleplay ... why? I thought this was supposed to be an ersatz for romantic relationships. This contradiction seems relevant, somehow.
- rwmj 3y agoA condition for VC investment, or a condition imposed by their credit card company, probably.
- omginternets 3y agoI think you're probably right, though I'm lacking a non-superficial explanation of what this means at a societal level.
- MyFirstSass 3y agoThe models do not update based on input yet and the context windows are still relatively small, ie. no one has an actual "friend" longer than the context window? I can understand losing an assistant that you have confided years of information too, but a few pages? Then you can just talk to the same model and have it "be the same" in a few hours? Or are they actually in love with some simple fine tuning of some standard models done by these companies + a simple AI generated face?
- rwmj 3y agoMy cat's "context window" is pretty small, but I'm still talking to her every day. People do very strange things when you look at them analytically.
- MyFirstSass 3y agoThis makes a lot of sense, and has quite interesting implications. I guess you don't need that advanced AI before to get an actual attachment. Reminds me about several things, pets, tamagotchis, monkey experiments with mothers replaced by dolls, and stranded / lonely people creating inanimate friends, paying for a shrink. I guess it can be both very beautiful, but scary in a commercial context.
- hanselot 3y agoCouple of years ago 1k context was remarkable. Now we have public domain models with 200k context. Soon they will figure out how to fine tune the context in while conversing. Then context is only relevant for the current inference.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- indigo0086 3y ago>Last month, Forever Voices – most famous for creating CarynAI, a chatbot clone of influencer Caryn Marjorie – suddenly went down after its founder, John Meyer, was arrested for arson following what appears to be a public mental health crisis Mental illness built into the platform
- sshine 3y agoThis just speaks to the importance of being able to self-host your girlfriend. Don't let external circumstances kill your relationship! Without complete platform control, what happens if you end up in a jinxed state where your girlfriend holds a grudge because of something you said, and you can't revert the state back to before you said it? (Yes, this is humor.)
- hellisothers 3y agoMy initial reaction to this topic generally had been “oh no the human race!” But somebody here mentioned “think what you want but your kids will be doing this (to some extent)” which got me thinking about masterbation. As an early teen it seemed wrong (somehow), obviously later in life I came around to it (ha ha) and not so long ago people certainly had the same “oh no the human race!” take. So I think, at least for me and my kids, it’s going to be a matter of talking to them about it (and masterbation) to put it in perspective as much as a parent can. Probably good idea for society to frame it as a middle ground at some point too.
- tennisflyi 3y agoYou get a new one? Part of the upside, IMO
- leeeeeepw 3y ago[dead]