This is one of the most interesting things about AI to me. As a lifelong computer nerd I've always dreamed of having a computer friend who knows all about my l

This is one of the most interesting things about AI to me. As a lifelong computer nerd I've always dreamed of having a computer friend who knows all about my life and who I can bounce ideas off, it's a core sci-fi trope. But I tried these new LLMs everyone was so hype about and... nah, they all feel like I'm wasting my time. Anything I want to actually know I can look up myself faster than negotiating with these things to try guess what they want me to tell them so they will actually do what I wanted. And as far as just being a nice personality to spend my time with goes, they all come across to me as awkward or pretentious or fussy, and not what I want my computer friend to sound like. If I need to spend 20 minutes trying to "train" my computer friend how to sound vaguely like a real person, it's a fail, sorry. It feels like trying to socialize on Reddit or Discord, you waste a bunch of time going back and forth with strangers who are trying to be funny or clever but never actually say anything meaningful. Which is why I don't use those sites either. But then I have real life friends who have mentioned they talk to these chatbots all the time, almost like a therapist, and they ask them questions about their lives. Obviously they don't take the advice as seriously as they might coming from a professional, but they still consider it a valuable interaction. To them, having this kind of stilted interaction with a hokey-sounding AI is worth something. And I don't get what they are seeing that I am missing. Perhaps my standards are too high? Or perhaps they just have a greater tolerance for wasting time? Anyway, when surveys ask me if I've used AI, I always say yes. The worst surveys then do not ask a follow-up question of "did you think it was actually useful/compelling/fun", but of course they don't because the whole point of them is to build hype to sell the gimmick to another company who will shoehorn it into whatever.