4 ms·

When people talk of AI as a loneliness cure I always remember a quote from an essay by Laura Preston about her time at an AI conference [1]: "I was an extrater

by nluken 1y ago

When people talk of AI as a loneliness cure I always remember a quote from an essay by Laura Preston about her time at an AI conference [1]: "I was an extraterrestrial taking notes on the problems of Earth. Finding pizza in your area was a problem. People being mean to you because you were wearing your AirPods at dinner was a problem. Going on vacation was a problem because the hotels would force you to find the light switches. Elders were a problem. (They never took their medicine.) Loneliness was a problem, but loneliness had a solution, and the solution was conversation. But don’t talk with your elders, and not with the front desk, and certainly not with the man on the corner, though he might know where the pizza is. (“Noise-canceling is great, especially if you live urban,” said the earbuds guy. “There’s a lot of world out there.”) Idle chitchat was a snag in daily living. We’d rather slip through the world as silent as a burglar, seen by no one except our devices." [1] https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-47/essays/an-age-of-hyperabundance/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-47/essays/an-age-of-hypera...

bluefirebrand 1y ago
I think this is pretty on point The social fabric has been re-configured by the least socially adept people in society I should know. I'm not terribly socially adept, I grew up on IRC channels and forums because I struggled to connect with people in person But now everyone is on the internet, using social networks designed by people who aren't very social like me, or worse, people who only understand social interaction through a lens of "what can this person do for me" We're in a really strange time. I used to go online to get away from everyone and try to find other people like me Now I have to go offline to in-person events hosting things that appeal to people like me, because everyone is online and there's no avoiding the crowd anymore
- nh23423fefe 1y ago
  You designed social networks? Not designers and product and market research and iterative feedback from partners? You did it, and you did it by not understanding social interaction? Is this an explanation or a just-so insult?
  - itishappy 1y ago
    > designed by people who aren't very social (like me) Parenthesis added.
  - kaonwarb 1y ago
    I agree with parent: it's a reasonable assumption that those turning to the digital world for sociality, including to design digital sociality, are less likely to have previously found success in analog sociality than the median human. (And it was eminently clear in the comment that they were not claiming personally comprehensive credit for having designed social networks.)
  - Magma7404 1y ago
    I agree that I disagree with that other guy. IRC and forums were only populated with nerds. It's once the salesmen and marketing people took control of the whole social media things that the internet was no more about being open to a new world, but more focused and closed inside controlled communities. Those people are definitely on the "extroverted" side and were only here to make money out of our social interactions.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with social inept people reconfiguring it. It is the profit seekers, Ebeneser Scrooges and bean counters reshaping society. Why let people have human relationships when you can put an app between them, worsen the experience and make a profit?
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > It has nothing to do with social inept people reconfiguring it. It is the profit seekers Profit seeking is pretty explicitly anti-social behavior imo
    - dingnuts 1y ago
      expecting compensation for value you create through labor -- profit seeking -- is not anti social at all, it's actually pro social in that it encourages exchange so that eg the baker can get butter for his bread and the farmer bread for his butter, while keeping their specialties and economies of scale. Whatever you have in mind is not commerce, but is probably regulatory capture or central planning.
      - dttze 1y ago
        So you have to do things for free or you are a profit seeker? What?
        _Algernon_ 1y ago
        It's not that complicated. When you profit based on offloading your negative externality on society at large, its bad. Even free market absolutists should be able to agree to that.
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        > expecting compensation for value you create through labor -- profit seeking You're right The term I was looking for was more along the lines of "profit maximizing" or "profit motive": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_motive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_motive My mistake I hope people generally understood what I meant even if I didn't use the precisely correct term for this
onion2k 1y ago
This is interesting, but the implication of what it's saying overstates the upside of random conversations (you could get what you're looking for), and utterly ignores the huge downside that when you're lonely a rejection makes things a thousand times worse. In today's society you (seem to be) much more likely to be told to ^$*£ off rather than get an actual moment of connection with someone. AI doesn't do that. It's always going to be nice to you, and that feels good even if it's entirely artificial.
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  I think it could replace a lot of therapists, which may say more about a lot of therapists than it says about AI. Someone who will listen to you and make sympathetic noises, maybe toss in a perspective gleaned from mainstream thinking here and there, but never challenge you so hard that you stop coming back for more paid sessions. Cynicism aside, that might be okay for some people. If you need to talk about something to get it out of your system, and you don't have any friends willing to listen to you cry in your beer for a couple hours, maybe "talking" to an AI isn't a terrible replacement. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine people turning it into a weird dependency if they stop thinking of it as a sort of sounding board and start seeing it as a real "friend."
- dingnuts 1y ago
  > It's always going to be nice to you, and that feels good even if it's entirely artificial. No?? It feels awful! I feel like an alien when I read comments like this. I would rather a negative but authentic and honest interaction than yet another yes-man or yes-bot being fake nice to me. It feels condescending and fake and awful. I do not understand the appeal of talking to these machines at all, all they do is validate whatever you say and output empty flattery. It is obsequious as hell and it turns my stomach. You're better off talking to a literal mirror.
  - rurp 1y ago
    I totally agree, transparently fake friendliness or kindness is really off-putting. Pretty much everyone hates insincere personal interactions with another human, but some people like fake interest if it comes from a computer algorithm. I really don't understand that desire.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
Why is this? Oh yeah because Hell is other people. Why is Hell other people? Because of their look! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Part_3,_Chapter_1:_The_look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Part_3,_...
fedrahhhh 1y ago
[dead]
mock-possum 1y ago
But I like slipping through life as a silent burgler :( I almost always have things in doing, places I’m going, thoughts I’m thinking, and they almost never involve other people. I barely need people to be present at all, most of the time. That’s not to say I don’t like people - I don’t have any particular animosity, they can’t help being here any more than I can - and there are plenty of people I know and love and yearn to see again from time to time. But most of the time? I could go days without human contact. Oh the idea alone makes me giddy!
atrettel 1y ago
This is an interesting quote, but it frames the problem as ultimately individual in origin. It is as if loneliness is your own fault for not being willing to talk to the people around you. It doesn't ask why it is difficult to talk to people or even if you are in a situation where you can talk to people regularly. I tend to think loneliness is more of a structural problem rather than an individual one --- that is, it is a consequence of how society as a whole structures our lives and interactions with people (for better or for worse). A generic person drives from their single family house by themselves to work, works largely by themselves (in many industries), and then drives back to their single family house. There is no "third place" for interaction with others and driving itself is isolating as a practice. With that kind of life as the structural default, there really isn't much chance of interaction in the first place. It's not an individual problem.

by nluken 1y ago

bluefirebrand 1y ago

I think this is pretty on point The social fabric has been re-configured by the least socially adept people in society I should know. I'm not terribly socially adept, I grew up on IRC channels and forums because I struggled to connect with people in person But now everyone is on the internet, using social networks designed by people who aren't very social like me, or worse, people who only understand social interaction through a lens of "what can this person do for me" We're in a really strange time. I used to go online to get away from everyone and try to find other people like me Now I have to go offline to in-person events hosting things that appeal to people like me, because everyone is online and there's no avoiding the crowd anymore

nh23423fefe 1y ago
You designed social networks? Not designers and product and market research and iterative feedback from partners? You did it, and you did it by not understanding social interaction? Is this an explanation or a just-so insult?
- itishappy 1y ago
  > designed by people who aren't very social (like me) Parenthesis added.
- kaonwarb 1y ago
  I agree with parent: it's a reasonable assumption that those turning to the digital world for sociality, including to design digital sociality, are less likely to have previously found success in analog sociality than the median human. (And it was eminently clear in the comment that they were not claiming personally comprehensive credit for having designed social networks.)
- Magma7404 1y ago
  I agree that I disagree with that other guy. IRC and forums were only populated with nerds. It's once the salesmen and marketing people took control of the whole social media things that the internet was no more about being open to a new world, but more focused and closed inside controlled communities. Those people are definitely on the "extroverted" side and were only here to make money out of our social interactions.
_Algernon_ 1y ago
It has nothing to do with social inept people reconfiguring it. It is the profit seekers, Ebeneser Scrooges and bean counters reshaping society. Why let people have human relationships when you can put an app between them, worsen the experience and make a profit?
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > It has nothing to do with social inept people reconfiguring it. It is the profit seekers Profit seeking is pretty explicitly anti-social behavior imo
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    expecting compensation for value you create through labor -- profit seeking -- is not anti social at all, it's actually pro social in that it encourages exchange so that eg the baker can get butter for his bread and the farmer bread for his butter, while keeping their specialties and economies of scale. Whatever you have in mind is not commerce, but is probably regulatory capture or central planning.
    - dttze 1y ago
      So you have to do things for free or you are a profit seeker? What?
      - _Algernon_ 1y ago
        It's not that complicated. When you profit based on offloading your negative externality on society at large, its bad. Even free market absolutists should be able to agree to that.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > expecting compensation for value you create through labor -- profit seeking You're right The term I was looking for was more along the lines of "profit maximizing" or "profit motive": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_motive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_motive My mistake I hope people generally understood what I meant even if I didn't use the precisely correct term for this

onion2k 1y ago

This is interesting, but the implication of what it's saying overstates the upside of random conversations (you could get what you're looking for), and utterly ignores the huge downside that when you're lonely a rejection makes things a thousand times worse. In today's society you (seem to be) much more likely to be told to ^$*£ off rather than get an actual moment of connection with someone. AI doesn't do that. It's always going to be nice to you, and that feels good even if it's entirely artificial.

aaronbaugher 1y ago
I think it could replace a lot of therapists, which may say more about a lot of therapists than it says about AI. Someone who will listen to you and make sympathetic noises, maybe toss in a perspective gleaned from mainstream thinking here and there, but never challenge you so hard that you stop coming back for more paid sessions. Cynicism aside, that might be okay for some people. If you need to talk about something to get it out of your system, and you don't have any friends willing to listen to you cry in your beer for a couple hours, maybe "talking" to an AI isn't a terrible replacement. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine people turning it into a weird dependency if they stop thinking of it as a sort of sounding board and start seeing it as a real "friend."
dingnuts 1y ago
> It's always going to be nice to you, and that feels good even if it's entirely artificial. No?? It feels awful! I feel like an alien when I read comments like this. I would rather a negative but authentic and honest interaction than yet another yes-man or yes-bot being fake nice to me. It feels condescending and fake and awful. I do not understand the appeal of talking to these machines at all, all they do is validate whatever you say and output empty flattery. It is obsequious as hell and it turns my stomach. You're better off talking to a literal mirror.
- rurp 1y ago
  I totally agree, transparently fake friendliness or kindness is really off-putting. Pretty much everyone hates insincere personal interactions with another human, but some people like fake interest if it comes from a computer algorithm. I really don't understand that desire.

Der_Einzige 1y ago

Why is this? Oh yeah because Hell is other people. Why is Hell other people? Because of their look! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Part_3,_Chapter_1:_The_look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Part_3,_...

fedrahhhh 1y ago

[dead]

mock-possum 1y ago

But I like slipping through life as a silent burgler :( I almost always have things in doing, places I’m going, thoughts I’m thinking, and they almost never involve other people. I barely need people to be present at all, most of the time. That’s not to say I don’t like people - I don’t have any particular animosity, they can’t help being here any more than I can - and there are plenty of people I know and love and yearn to see again from time to time. But most of the time? I could go days without human contact. Oh the idea alone makes me giddy!

atrettel 1y ago

This is an interesting quote, but it frames the problem as ultimately individual in origin. It is as if loneliness is your own fault for not being willing to talk to the people around you. It doesn't ask why it is difficult to talk to people or even if you are in a situation where you can talk to people regularly. I tend to think loneliness is more of a structural problem rather than an individual one --- that is, it is a consequence of how society as a whole structures our lives and interactions with people (for better or for worse). A generic person drives from their single family house by themselves to work, works largely by themselves (in many industries), and then drives back to their single family house. There is no "third place" for interaction with others and driving itself is isolating as a practice. With that kind of life as the structural default, there really isn't much chance of interaction in the first place. It's not an individual problem.