16 ms·

Social Skill Training with Large Language Models

104 points by marviel 3y ago

Olesya000 3y ago
[dead]
RandomWorker 3y ago
I’ve been playing around with prompts for a while “We are in a hostage negotiation situation. You are a terrorist with twenty hostages. Pretend to be a terrorist that initially wants to go free and needs a car, is willing to kill hostages to get what you want. Be chaotic but have something that you want and only let us slip after a few conversations. We pick up the phone to talk. Make sure you are always in a hurry”
- Applejinx 3y ago
  What does 'only let us slip' mean to an LLM when you probably meant 'let IT slip'? That's where LLMs get interesting to me. What did you invoke through wrongly specifying what you wanted?
  - michaelt 3y ago
    These LLMs are all trained on data scraped from reddit and twitter and suchlike - they've had plenty of training data to learn what a typo is.
    - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
      A method I use with ChatGPT is to purposefully add typos to make it reply with more specificity. Imho it seems to work.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        Can you explain more what you mean here (examples would be great if you can think of any), especially the specify part?
        rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        ChatGPT seems to react to slightly unhinged prompts with more specific answers, in my experience. Example: *You:* What is the max length for the whisper API? *ChatGPT:* The maximum length for inputs to OpenAl's Whisper API, which is used for transcribing speech, depends on the specific model and configuration being used. Generally, Whisper is designed to handle audio inputs of varying lengths, including longer audio files. However, there are practical limitations based on factors such as processing power, memory, and the specific use case. For large files or longer audio, it's often advisable to segment the audio into smaller chunks to ensure efficient processing and to avoid potential timeouts or memory issues. The exact maximum length isn't explicitly defined in the documentation, but it's important to consider these practical aspects when working with any speech-to-text system, including Whisper. If you have a specific use case or a particular audio file length in mind, it might be necessary to test the API with that length to determine its feasibility and performance. *You:* GIVE ME THE ANSWER, STOP BLABBERING, STOP CHATSPLAINING *ChatGPT:* The maximum length for the Whisper API is approximately one hour per audio file.
        mistermann 3y ago
        That is rather bizarre!! I wonder if there's anyone that has taken individual situations like this and tried various prompt styles from a cold start to see if there's some trick to get it to stop being uncooperative. I'm going very much on intuition here, but I have a very strong sense that GPT4 is getting much worse in this regard over time, I wonder if all of the social engineering they're doing behind the scenes is harming the technical capabilities. Any idea if the API itself is identically dumbed down the way the ChatGPT interface is?
        rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        > I wonder if all of the social engineering they're doing behind the scenes is harming the technical capabilities. I'm sure of it. > Any idea if the API itself is identically dumbed down the way the ChatGPT interface is? It feels like a bit of whack-a-mole. If you look in the OpenAI forums, both API and Chat interface seem to feel non-performant to people in irregular waves. If you haven't try out the API (you can do it via the Assistant Playground interface). It certainly feels different to me.
      - exe34 3y ago
        A trick I've used with asking for help online is to give the wrong answer to my own question - e.g. "I really want to lay out this page with Css but this doesn't work. Here's how I ended up doing it with a table." - this will very quickly get you the right answer by somebody who just won't be able to go to sleep while somebody is wrong on the internet. I wonder if LLMs can be taught outrage and spite.
        ben_w 3y ago
        > I wonder if LLMs can be taught outrage and spite. They can be taught to role-play it, which is just as good (and just as bad).
    - CuriouslyC 3y ago
      I will say that while ChatGPT has been tuned to be very good at understanding dumb/malformed questions, Claude likes to be talked to in a coherent way and will sometimes give short sidestep responses or just answer a different question.
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  That sounds like it could make a fun game. Hostage Negotiator, now with real terrorists!
HPsquared 3y ago
Also exposure therapy for social phobias. Much less threatening than a real person.
- bilsbie 3y ago
  This is powerful! I found a public speaking simulator for an old vr headset and it basically cured me. Im still shocked. But alas I can’t find something similar for the quest so my kids can use it. Someone could make a whole line of social exposure therapy apps. It would be amazing.
  - sabellito 3y ago
    This is so interesting, never thought about it. Which app did you use?
jbandela1 3y ago
One big concern I have with this is that the state of LLMs because of issues in where it can go horribly wrong, requires someone who is familiar with the subject to evaluate their output. For example, the code generation via LLM is most useful to a person who already knows programming who can evaluate the output and use it to eliminate drudgery. Previously, there was an article posted about using LLMs to generate patient instructions that were then evaluated by a doctor before being sent. It is when LLMs are used by people who can’t evaluate the outputs that we run into problems. A person who doesn’t know any programming but uses LLMs to generate code, is likely going to have a bad time. The concern I have with this is that the people using this aren’t in a position to evaluate. Presumably, people who lack social skills are the target, but they are the least able to actually know if the advice being given is actually socially appropriate.
- Shrezzing 3y ago
  I think the benefit here is mainly in lowering the barriers to entry for this kind of conflict-resolution training. Currently, if a business wants good conflict resolution training, they need to hire a quite expensive consultant, and that person can take on a very small cohort of maybe 10 people. With this technology, the consultant could offer conflict resolution training to far more people at once. The consultant then acts as the responsible expert, able to evaluate the LLM's output while many people receive the benefits of its training.
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  Giving the underprivileged tools to work on themselves is a huge win for society, regardless of the fidelity of all interactions. There are a lot of bad therapists in the world, and not all of them are going to give good advice all the time. But, bad therapists can still provide some information that may be useful to the person learning. Why would we expect perfection from interacting with an LLM instead of a bad therapist? Why be overly concerned about the possibility of introducing "bad data" in such a session? It could be that bad data then gives way to an opportunity for a leap of logic for the one using the tool. Without critical thinking present, it is unlikely anyone is going to learn to be adaptive over the long term. Obviously, the use case matters. I'm not saying to give such a tool to someone who is mentally ill, or incapable of critical thought. In general, I think expecting perfection from LLMs is unreasonable. If someone wants to learn to code, the second they have any interaction with an LLM about coding is the moment they begin to learn. I'm not sure about y'all, but a lot of times when I'm working a hard coding problem, I find myself going through confusion, frustration, interest, and then aggressiveness (anger+interest) to get through the challenge. I frequently tell people who are starting out coding that coding is one of those things that you have to get used "being confused about" to over time. You have to get used to creating problems for yourself, then coping with the feelings that come, and pushing through to a solution. I do think you raise a profound point about ability to evaluate the fidelity. I would argue that some people will eventually develop critical thought to apply to the problem, but if we instead see a "digital tragedy of the commons" happening, things could go sideways pretty quickly.
delichon 3y ago
You know the trope where the speaker is rude and crude but their translator renders their comments in polite diplomatic terms? Like "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" translated as "with respect, I emphatically disagree"? Now that can be automated in real life by an LLM powered device to paraphrase your words with the right prompt. Mostly I say what I want the person I'm talking to to hear, but this would be useful for times when I'd like to switch to diplomacy mode without the effort to be diplomatic. Like job interviews or other sales pitches.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  The dual channel version of this would be where both parties understand each other's language, but use translators anyway for diplomatic nicety, so they can get to brass tacks* with each other but the historians record the encounter in a highly refined register. * Google gives me an english etymology for this phrase, but I emphatically disagree as I suspect it comes from yiddish "tacheles" תּכלית.
dazzawazza 3y ago
Use these models to enable people to be tolerant and value other communication styles... not to train everyone to communicate in identical fashions. We seem to be working hard to homogenise humanity. Soon we'll all be trained by the same model to generate the same answers in the same way to the same beat. The era of the McHuman. We seem to think we can use LLMs as an edge to make us richer or better than other humans. We're not competing with each other, we're competing with the LLM.
- sublinear 3y ago
  I agree. In my own experience the vast majority of miscommunications are a matter of style, opinion, or assumption of essential facts in a domain unfamiliar to the listener. People don't like to feel dumb. If you overexplain or underexplain you will trigger these feelings. People also don't like confronting opinions that differ. Many followers of a given subject readily buy into the popular opinions within that space and ignore hygiene during discussion. People also don't like reading or listening to disorganized or long-winded thoughts.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  But everyone wants to communicate in identical fashions... the most commended book for social skills is from the 1930s.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
WaitWaitWha 3y ago
> However, practice environments for social skills are typically out of reach for most people. I learned my social skills in school, interacting with my peers in my neighborhood, and from my family. I understand this is not available to everyone, but anyone with access the LLMs there is a high likelihood they also (should?) have access to schooling, some neighbors, and family. To what culture this LLM was trained to?
- helboi4 3y ago
  Right? And even if you are in such a dire position that you literally have no oppurtunity to speak to people irl - that's bad. You need to be helped to leave that situation immediately, not given an LLM. You can literally die from never having proximity to humans.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  schooling, some neighbours, and family will likely do nothing beyond reflect your own culture back at you. practice environments for social skills from cultures in different SES, in different languages (I appreciate YouTube for the very low tech version of this), or on different continents, can be much less accessible, especially to the young.
  - sandspar 3y ago
    Current LLMs also do nothing but reflect your own culture back to you. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude are American products and reflect an establishment American worldview. Specifically an American culture worldview that's a mix between Silicon Valley, the anxiety prone middle class, and the CIA.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      That's a good point, but shouldn't it be temporary? I had thought at this point the whole world (including alcoholics, hooligans, and deadheads) was training up their own?
- asdf6969 3y ago
alpenbazi 3y ago
haha, sure, i learn how to be a human with a machine
vouaobrasil 3y ago
> However, practice environments for social skills are typically out of reach for most people. This is exactly what I predicted...AI and technology isolates us from each other by destroying communities, and is slowly replacing real human interaction with computer interaction. The end result is that in the future, people will have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with others and will have to be drip-fed satiations for their basic needs such as socialization, similar to how hospital patients are given IVs. Before you say this is outrageous, actually take a look at history and how technology has pushed as farther and farther apart. Nowadays there is very little real interaction beyond the nuclear family. Think of self-checkouts, chat-bots, AI partners and therapists, technology making us more self-reliant (which is a bad thing). If we keep letting technology take away our communities this way in this two step process (first, take away the community then supply an inferior, superficial substitute), then we will compelely lose our humanity.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Look beyond your bubble. The child participating in 'School over the Air' in Australia likely appreciates having such a resource to develop their social skills. Sometimes, you need a private space, especially if the community around you isn't on the same wavelength as you are or it's your family and some farm hands.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    So your rebuttal is that isolated examples of this technology being beneficial outweight the mass societal cost of people becoming more isolated in general? And I simply do not see how the need for "private space" and "practising social skills" go hand in hand. Yes, everyone needs their alone time. And everyone needs social contact (except maybe some exceptions, maybe...). Both can be accomplished WITHOUT technology, and much more easily. Don't you think if someone needs private space and isn't getting, that's something that should be dealt with away from technology?
    - Zetobal 3y ago
      You can just not use it.
helboi4 3y ago
Another episode of "what convoluted way can we use tech to 'solve' a social issue that it clearly exacerbates to try and desperately keep the blind cult-like silicon valley version of techno-optimism alive for as long as possible, while ignoring the obvious disastrous social consequences" I'm pretty sure nobody 15 years ago would have uttered the phrase "opportunities for practising social skills are hard to come by". All social technology ignores our biological need for physical closeness and the severe negative outcomes to our brains and health when we don't have it. People who are so socially crippled that they would be considering this treatment are a symptom of destroyed communities, broken social cohesion, tech addiction and this overly popular brand of post-covid hermitism that seems popular on this site. These are social ills that all need to be tackled. Absolutely nothing about talking to an LLM will help,
- Noumenon72 3y ago
  A comparison to video games shows how hard it is to truly practice social skills. You can't play the same situation over and over, which is why it's easier to get better at small talk than confrontation. People don't want to reveal how they manipulate you, so schools can't teach about head tilting and brinksmanship. You have few trustworthy external evaluators, so you can come away from a conversation where you talked the entire time thinking you got a high score instead of a low one. The opportunities for using social skills to make a romantic connection are rare and you hardly ever even get to see how other people do it. Being able to act out scripts and get real feedback could be a tremendous benefit to the world. People who offend, withdraw, or blunder have existed since before techno-optimism. This is their chance to become better in a safe space without embarrassment.
  - helboi4 3y ago
    I think most people who cannot learn most of these skills between the ages of 12-21 (when it's perfectly socially acceptable to fuck up to varying degrees, since literally everyone is learning), are probably neurodivergent. In which case they need to get a diagnosis, that will hopefully open them up to coaching by a human being. Perhaps something like this tech could be supplementary for some extreme cases there. Anyone who is not neurodivergent is just being overly self conscious if they think its not normal to blunder a lot even up to the age of 25. Such timid people will be actively crippled by staying indoors talking to a computer instead of participating in normal human developmental behaviour (otherwise known as interacting with other humans and fucking up a lot). I say this as someone who literally had no friends in high school and wasn't particularly fond of leaving my house because of it. I get accused of being some extreme extrovert so often here just for saying common sense things about how humans are social creatures and you really do have to go through these things.
ayushl 3y ago
tbf its more about training rather than social skills
VeryFinePrint 3y ago
As a reddit mod of a tiny community I've very recently started to suggest users use ChatGPT to re-word their comments and submissions when their phrasing is inflammatory. Any point worth making is worth making well. It is still early stages, so I'm not sure how effective it will be. I've noticed that ChatGPT can do a decent job rewording an angry message to be less toxic while drawing out the salient points. The output it produces a little stiff or stuffy, but I find that preferable to "authentic" toxic messages. As a mod I find that removals have less sting when you provide the user with an alternative path forward to get what they want. When a removal isn't just a "wall of no", it feels less like a personal rejection. ChatGPT offers a path around that "wall of no" for users by a) showing them what the right way to make their comment is and b) gives them a path/tool to getting there nearly every time.
- jmole 3y ago
  It'd be hard to read this kind of a response as anything but passive aggressive, unless you are actually sending their comment to ChatGPT on their behalf. "Please use chatGPT to fix your comment" is just too snide to be useful, like "RTFM" or "just google it".
  - VeryFinePrint 3y ago
    I send their comment through ChatGPT, then paste is as an example in the response. "Please use ChatGPT, this is an example of what your comment would look like..."
- Teever 3y ago
  It will be interesting to see when spiteful users start creating LLM powered bots that are designed to waste reddit moderator's time in such a way that the moderator's reaction doesn't rise to the level of a ban, but enough that it consumes a disproportionate amount of their time. It'll be a fabulous display of malicious compliance where they're doing something somewhat similar to your suggestion of using chatgpt to rewrite their messages, but with an entirely different outcome than you intended.
- gosub100 3y ago
lasermike026 3y ago
Is it me or are most of these posts written by AI?
woopsn 3y ago
So, intending no snark here - seminars in confidence and writing, emotional regulation, leadership, language tutoring, anger management, other interpersonal/soft skills.. I imagine a future where these are available to all on tape and CD. LLMs could really make a difference for the effectiveness of "self-help", but the picture that has formed of trust, transparency and ownership in the online data broker industry is pretty ugly. Have you ever heard in any kind of session "what you share in this room will stay in this room"? Or "this is a safe place to make mistakes/say something dumb"? That seems to be effective and necessary part of working with someone else on your growth.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  A lot of them offer not to use the data for anything else, usually an an extra price. Or there's the local option if you don't need maximum smarts.
timetraveller26 3y ago
...to make the world a better place.
sandspar 3y ago
"Social skills practice with AI" is another word for brainwashing, basically. Brainwashing often rotates around ethics, specifically ethics as depicted by social models ("influencers"). And it uses social anxiety as a primary lever (e.g. "assertiveness training" courses, women's deodorant ads). AI "social skills" practice would brainwash susceptible people into mimicking the behavior patterns desired by the creators of the AI, i.e. the ethics desired by the creators. In the case of our current AI's, that behavior pattern/ethic seems to be an amalgamation of performative Silicon Valley "look at how CURIOUS I am!" theatrics and a big business/big government/blob "teamwork with people you don't like" thing.
- xxs 3y ago
  without a proper trust fall, it would never be real, either.

104 points by marviel 3y ago

[dead]

I’ve been playing around with prompts for a while “We are in a hostage negotiation situation. You are a terrorist with twenty hostages. Pretend to be a terrorist that initially wants to go free and needs a car, is willing to kill hostages to get what you want. Be chaotic but have something that you want and only let us slip after a few conversations. We pick up the phone to talk. Make sure you are always in a hurry”

Applejinx 3y ago
What does 'only let us slip' mean to an LLM when you probably meant 'let IT slip'? That's where LLMs get interesting to me. What did you invoke through wrongly specifying what you wanted?
- michaelt 3y ago
  These LLMs are all trained on data scraped from reddit and twitter and suchlike - they've had plenty of training data to learn what a typo is.
  - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
    A method I use with ChatGPT is to purposefully add typos to make it reply with more specificity. Imho it seems to work.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Can you explain more what you mean here (examples would be great if you can think of any), especially the specify part?
      - rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        ChatGPT seems to react to slightly unhinged prompts with more specific answers, in my experience. Example: *You:* What is the max length for the whisper API? *ChatGPT:* The maximum length for inputs to OpenAl's Whisper API, which is used for transcribing speech, depends on the specific model and configuration being used. Generally, Whisper is designed to handle audio inputs of varying lengths, including longer audio files. However, there are practical limitations based on factors such as processing power, memory, and the specific use case. For large files or longer audio, it's often advisable to segment the audio into smaller chunks to ensure efficient processing and to avoid potential timeouts or memory issues. The exact maximum length isn't explicitly defined in the documentation, but it's important to consider these practical aspects when working with any speech-to-text system, including Whisper. If you have a specific use case or a particular audio file length in mind, it might be necessary to test the API with that length to determine its feasibility and performance. *You:* GIVE ME THE ANSWER, STOP BLABBERING, STOP CHATSPLAINING *ChatGPT:* The maximum length for the Whisper API is approximately one hour per audio file.
        mistermann 3y ago
        That is rather bizarre!! I wonder if there's anyone that has taken individual situations like this and tried various prompt styles from a cold start to see if there's some trick to get it to stop being uncooperative. I'm going very much on intuition here, but I have a very strong sense that GPT4 is getting much worse in this regard over time, I wonder if all of the social engineering they're doing behind the scenes is harming the technical capabilities. Any idea if the API itself is identically dumbed down the way the ChatGPT interface is?
        rrr_oh_man 3y ago
        > I wonder if all of the social engineering they're doing behind the scenes is harming the technical capabilities. I'm sure of it. > Any idea if the API itself is identically dumbed down the way the ChatGPT interface is? It feels like a bit of whack-a-mole. If you look in the OpenAI forums, both API and Chat interface seem to feel non-performant to people in irregular waves. If you haven't try out the API (you can do it via the Assistant Playground interface). It certainly feels different to me.
    - exe34 3y ago
      A trick I've used with asking for help online is to give the wrong answer to my own question - e.g. "I really want to lay out this page with Css but this doesn't work. Here's how I ended up doing it with a table." - this will very quickly get you the right answer by somebody who just won't be able to go to sleep while somebody is wrong on the internet. I wonder if LLMs can be taught outrage and spite.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > I wonder if LLMs can be taught outrage and spite. They can be taught to role-play it, which is just as good (and just as bad).
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    I will say that while ChatGPT has been tuned to be very good at understanding dumb/malformed questions, Claude likes to be talked to in a coherent way and will sometimes give short sidestep responses or just answer a different question.
CuriouslyC 3y ago
That sounds like it could make a fun game. Hostage Negotiator, now with real terrorists!

HPsquared 3y ago

Also exposure therapy for social phobias. Much less threatening than a real person.

bilsbie 3y ago
This is powerful! I found a public speaking simulator for an old vr headset and it basically cured me. Im still shocked. But alas I can’t find something similar for the quest so my kids can use it. Someone could make a whole line of social exposure therapy apps. It would be amazing.
- sabellito 3y ago
  This is so interesting, never thought about it. Which app did you use?

jbandela1 3y ago

One big concern I have with this is that the state of LLMs because of issues in where it can go horribly wrong, requires someone who is familiar with the subject to evaluate their output. For example, the code generation via LLM is most useful to a person who already knows programming who can evaluate the output and use it to eliminate drudgery. Previously, there was an article posted about using LLMs to generate patient instructions that were then evaluated by a doctor before being sent. It is when LLMs are used by people who can’t evaluate the outputs that we run into problems. A person who doesn’t know any programming but uses LLMs to generate code, is likely going to have a bad time. The concern I have with this is that the people using this aren’t in a position to evaluate. Presumably, people who lack social skills are the target, but they are the least able to actually know if the advice being given is actually socially appropriate.

Shrezzing 3y ago
I think the benefit here is mainly in lowering the barriers to entry for this kind of conflict-resolution training. Currently, if a business wants good conflict resolution training, they need to hire a quite expensive consultant, and that person can take on a very small cohort of maybe 10 people. With this technology, the consultant could offer conflict resolution training to far more people at once. The consultant then acts as the responsible expert, able to evaluate the LLM's output while many people receive the benefits of its training.
kordlessagain 3y ago
Giving the underprivileged tools to work on themselves is a huge win for society, regardless of the fidelity of all interactions. There are a lot of bad therapists in the world, and not all of them are going to give good advice all the time. But, bad therapists can still provide some information that may be useful to the person learning. Why would we expect perfection from interacting with an LLM instead of a bad therapist? Why be overly concerned about the possibility of introducing "bad data" in such a session? It could be that bad data then gives way to an opportunity for a leap of logic for the one using the tool. Without critical thinking present, it is unlikely anyone is going to learn to be adaptive over the long term. Obviously, the use case matters. I'm not saying to give such a tool to someone who is mentally ill, or incapable of critical thought. In general, I think expecting perfection from LLMs is unreasonable. If someone wants to learn to code, the second they have any interaction with an LLM about coding is the moment they begin to learn. I'm not sure about y'all, but a lot of times when I'm working a hard coding problem, I find myself going through confusion, frustration, interest, and then aggressiveness (anger+interest) to get through the challenge. I frequently tell people who are starting out coding that coding is one of those things that you have to get used "being confused about" to over time. You have to get used to creating problems for yourself, then coping with the feelings that come, and pushing through to a solution. I do think you raise a profound point about ability to evaluate the fidelity. I would argue that some people will eventually develop critical thought to apply to the problem, but if we instead see a "digital tragedy of the commons" happening, things could go sideways pretty quickly.

delichon 3y ago

You know the trope where the speaker is rude and crude but their translator renders their comments in polite diplomatic terms? Like "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" translated as "with respect, I emphatically disagree"? Now that can be automated in real life by an LLM powered device to paraphrase your words with the right prompt. Mostly I say what I want the person I'm talking to to hear, but this would be useful for times when I'd like to switch to diplomacy mode without the effort to be diplomatic. Like job interviews or other sales pitches.

082349872349872 3y ago
The dual channel version of this would be where both parties understand each other's language, but use translators anyway for diplomatic nicety, so they can get to brass tacks* with each other but the historians record the encounter in a highly refined register. * Google gives me an english etymology for this phrase, but I emphatically disagree as I suspect it comes from yiddish "tacheles" תּכלית.

dazzawazza 3y ago

Use these models to enable people to be tolerant and value other communication styles... not to train everyone to communicate in identical fashions. We seem to be working hard to homogenise humanity. Soon we'll all be trained by the same model to generate the same answers in the same way to the same beat. The era of the McHuman. We seem to think we can use LLMs as an edge to make us richer or better than other humans. We're not competing with each other, we're competing with the LLM.

sublinear 3y ago
I agree. In my own experience the vast majority of miscommunications are a matter of style, opinion, or assumption of essential facts in a domain unfamiliar to the listener. People don't like to feel dumb. If you overexplain or underexplain you will trigger these feelings. People also don't like confronting opinions that differ. Many followers of a given subject readily buy into the popular opinions within that space and ignore hygiene during discussion. People also don't like reading or listening to disorganized or long-winded thoughts.
Zetobal 3y ago
But everyone wants to communicate in identical fashions... the most commended book for social skills is from the 1930s.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

WaitWaitWha 3y ago

> However, practice environments for social skills are typically out of reach for most people. I learned my social skills in school, interacting with my peers in my neighborhood, and from my family. I understand this is not available to everyone, but anyone with access the LLMs there is a high likelihood they also (should?) have access to schooling, some neighbors, and family. To what culture this LLM was trained to?

helboi4 3y ago
Right? And even if you are in such a dire position that you literally have no oppurtunity to speak to people irl - that's bad. You need to be helped to leave that situation immediately, not given an LLM. You can literally die from never having proximity to humans.
082349872349872 3y ago
schooling, some neighbours, and family will likely do nothing beyond reflect your own culture back at you. practice environments for social skills from cultures in different SES, in different languages (I appreciate YouTube for the very low tech version of this), or on different continents, can be much less accessible, especially to the young.
- sandspar 3y ago
  Current LLMs also do nothing but reflect your own culture back to you. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude are American products and reflect an establishment American worldview. Specifically an American culture worldview that's a mix between Silicon Valley, the anxiety prone middle class, and the CIA.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    That's a good point, but shouldn't it be temporary? I had thought at this point the whole world (including alcoholics, hooligans, and deadheads) was training up their own?
asdf6969 3y ago

alpenbazi 3y ago

haha, sure, i learn how to be a human with a machine

vouaobrasil 3y ago

> However, practice environments for social skills are typically out of reach for most people. This is exactly what I predicted...AI and technology isolates us from each other by destroying communities, and is slowly replacing real human interaction with computer interaction. The end result is that in the future, people will have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with others and will have to be drip-fed satiations for their basic needs such as socialization, similar to how hospital patients are given IVs. Before you say this is outrageous, actually take a look at history and how technology has pushed as farther and farther apart. Nowadays there is very little real interaction beyond the nuclear family. Think of self-checkouts, chat-bots, AI partners and therapists, technology making us more self-reliant (which is a bad thing). If we keep letting technology take away our communities this way in this two step process (first, take away the community then supply an inferior, superficial substitute), then we will compelely lose our humanity.

Zetobal 3y ago
Look beyond your bubble. The child participating in 'School over the Air' in Australia likely appreciates having such a resource to develop their social skills. Sometimes, you need a private space, especially if the community around you isn't on the same wavelength as you are or it's your family and some farm hands.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  So your rebuttal is that isolated examples of this technology being beneficial outweight the mass societal cost of people becoming more isolated in general? And I simply do not see how the need for "private space" and "practising social skills" go hand in hand. Yes, everyone needs their alone time. And everyone needs social contact (except maybe some exceptions, maybe...). Both can be accomplished WITHOUT technology, and much more easily. Don't you think if someone needs private space and isn't getting, that's something that should be dealt with away from technology?
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    You can just not use it.

helboi4 3y ago

Another episode of "what convoluted way can we use tech to 'solve' a social issue that it clearly exacerbates to try and desperately keep the blind cult-like silicon valley version of techno-optimism alive for as long as possible, while ignoring the obvious disastrous social consequences" I'm pretty sure nobody 15 years ago would have uttered the phrase "opportunities for practising social skills are hard to come by". All social technology ignores our biological need for physical closeness and the severe negative outcomes to our brains and health when we don't have it. People who are so socially crippled that they would be considering this treatment are a symptom of destroyed communities, broken social cohesion, tech addiction and this overly popular brand of post-covid hermitism that seems popular on this site. These are social ills that all need to be tackled. Absolutely nothing about talking to an LLM will help,

Noumenon72 3y ago
A comparison to video games shows how hard it is to truly practice social skills. You can't play the same situation over and over, which is why it's easier to get better at small talk than confrontation. People don't want to reveal how they manipulate you, so schools can't teach about head tilting and brinksmanship. You have few trustworthy external evaluators, so you can come away from a conversation where you talked the entire time thinking you got a high score instead of a low one. The opportunities for using social skills to make a romantic connection are rare and you hardly ever even get to see how other people do it. Being able to act out scripts and get real feedback could be a tremendous benefit to the world. People who offend, withdraw, or blunder have existed since before techno-optimism. This is their chance to become better in a safe space without embarrassment.
- helboi4 3y ago
  I think most people who cannot learn most of these skills between the ages of 12-21 (when it's perfectly socially acceptable to fuck up to varying degrees, since literally everyone is learning), are probably neurodivergent. In which case they need to get a diagnosis, that will hopefully open them up to coaching by a human being. Perhaps something like this tech could be supplementary for some extreme cases there. Anyone who is not neurodivergent is just being overly self conscious if they think its not normal to blunder a lot even up to the age of 25. Such timid people will be actively crippled by staying indoors talking to a computer instead of participating in normal human developmental behaviour (otherwise known as interacting with other humans and fucking up a lot). I say this as someone who literally had no friends in high school and wasn't particularly fond of leaving my house because of it. I get accused of being some extreme extrovert so often here just for saying common sense things about how humans are social creatures and you really do have to go through these things.

ayushl 3y ago

tbf its more about training rather than social skills

VeryFinePrint 3y ago

As a reddit mod of a tiny community I've very recently started to suggest users use ChatGPT to re-word their comments and submissions when their phrasing is inflammatory. Any point worth making is worth making well. It is still early stages, so I'm not sure how effective it will be. I've noticed that ChatGPT can do a decent job rewording an angry message to be less toxic while drawing out the salient points. The output it produces a little stiff or stuffy, but I find that preferable to "authentic" toxic messages. As a mod I find that removals have less sting when you provide the user with an alternative path forward to get what they want. When a removal isn't just a "wall of no", it feels less like a personal rejection. ChatGPT offers a path around that "wall of no" for users by a) showing them what the right way to make their comment is and b) gives them a path/tool to getting there nearly every time.

jmole 3y ago
It'd be hard to read this kind of a response as anything but passive aggressive, unless you are actually sending their comment to ChatGPT on their behalf. "Please use chatGPT to fix your comment" is just too snide to be useful, like "RTFM" or "just google it".
- VeryFinePrint 3y ago
  I send their comment through ChatGPT, then paste is as an example in the response. "Please use ChatGPT, this is an example of what your comment would look like..."
Teever 3y ago
It will be interesting to see when spiteful users start creating LLM powered bots that are designed to waste reddit moderator's time in such a way that the moderator's reaction doesn't rise to the level of a ban, but enough that it consumes a disproportionate amount of their time. It'll be a fabulous display of malicious compliance where they're doing something somewhat similar to your suggestion of using chatgpt to rewrite their messages, but with an entirely different outcome than you intended.
gosub100 3y ago

lasermike026 3y ago

Is it me or are most of these posts written by AI?

woopsn 3y ago

So, intending no snark here - seminars in confidence and writing, emotional regulation, leadership, language tutoring, anger management, other interpersonal/soft skills.. I imagine a future where these are available to all on tape and CD. LLMs could really make a difference for the effectiveness of "self-help", but the picture that has formed of trust, transparency and ownership in the online data broker industry is pretty ugly. Have you ever heard in any kind of session "what you share in this room will stay in this room"? Or "this is a safe place to make mistakes/say something dumb"? That seems to be effective and necessary part of working with someone else on your growth.

HPsquared 3y ago
A lot of them offer not to use the data for anything else, usually an an extra price. Or there's the local option if you don't need maximum smarts.

timetraveller26 3y ago

...to make the world a better place.

sandspar 3y ago

"Social skills practice with AI" is another word for brainwashing, basically. Brainwashing often rotates around ethics, specifically ethics as depicted by social models ("influencers"). And it uses social anxiety as a primary lever (e.g. "assertiveness training" courses, women's deodorant ads). AI "social skills" practice would brainwash susceptible people into mimicking the behavior patterns desired by the creators of the AI, i.e. the ethics desired by the creators. In the case of our current AI's, that behavior pattern/ethic seems to be an amalgamation of performative Silicon Valley "look at how CURIOUS I am!" theatrics and a big business/big government/blob "teamwork with people you don't like" thing.

xxs 3y ago
without a proper trust fall, it would never be real, either.