I heard about this in the radio the other day. People pay a monthly fee for an AI that becomes your “digital partner”.
The reasoning behind, according to them, is that the AI is less dangerous than a human partner because they can’t cheat, can’t abuse you…
And I can’t but wonder where did we take the wrong turn to end up here. Because while I can understand that people can go through some traumatic shit that would made them wary of the opposite sex, considering a machine your sentimental partner can only lead to some extremely fucked up scenarios.
Do you think openAI or Google, or X or whatever billionaire behind the AI involved in these “relationships” cares even minimally about the mental well-being of these people?
The problem is not just the dating an AI thing, but who is managing these AIs.
Do you think openAI or Google, or X or whatever billionaire behind the AI involved in these “relationships” cares even minimally about the mental well-being of these people?
No, but I wager neither does anyone else, or they wouldn’t be dating a datacenter.
The bizarre thing is, some of them do understand how LLMs work. There was that article about a married woman with an LLM boyfriend. She’s very active on Reddit (edit: or at least was until a month ago), and based on her comments I saw back when the article was published, she seems to know perfectly well that it’s all just a statistical model of smoke and mirrors, and yet continues with the extreme emotional (and financial) investment 🤷
I think it’s also a symptom of our society overvaluing romantic relationships and the nuclear family, at the expense of friends, other family, and general community. When you combine that with the traumatic experiences some have in romantic relationships, they have nowhere to turn to for emotional connection and support.
Back in pre-agriculture days, humans would sit around every night by the fire and interact with the rest of the tribe. That’s what we spent 99% of human history doing. Farming isolated us from the tribe and put every family in their own house. Then the Industrial Age gave the family distractions like newspapers, radios, and movies. Currently we’ve got a phone to distract us all the time.
That is a dangerous assumption. The ones controlling the models can definitely manipulate a person through some minor tweaks which would definitely count as abuse. And it’s it more polygamous since they’re probably all using the same model? Not like each one has their own unique model
I heard about this in the radio the other day. People pay a monthly fee for an AI that becomes your “digital partner”.
The reasoning behind, according to them, is that the AI is less dangerous than a human partner because they can’t cheat, can’t abuse you…
And I can’t but wonder where did we take the wrong turn to end up here. Because while I can understand that people can go through some traumatic shit that would made them wary of the opposite sex, considering a machine your sentimental partner can only lead to some extremely fucked up scenarios.
People are lonely and dating sucks. Humans provided a similar one sided relationship service as well. (Sugar babies come to mind)
Yes, yes. And yes.
But
Do you think openAI or Google, or X or whatever billionaire behind the AI involved in these “relationships” cares even minimally about the mental well-being of these people?
The problem is not just the dating an AI thing, but who is managing these AIs.
No, but I wager neither does anyone else, or they wouldn’t be dating a datacenter.
I’m not really sure these people fully understand what they are doing or they wouldn’t be doing it at all.
The bizarre thing is, some of them do understand how LLMs work. There was that article about a married woman with an LLM boyfriend. She’s very active on Reddit (edit: or at least was until a month ago), and based on her comments I saw back when the article was published, she seems to know perfectly well that it’s all just a statistical model of smoke and mirrors, and yet continues with the extreme emotional (and financial) investment 🤷
I think it’s also a symptom of our society overvaluing romantic relationships and the nuclear family, at the expense of friends, other family, and general community. When you combine that with the traumatic experiences some have in romantic relationships, they have nowhere to turn to for emotional connection and support.
Back in pre-agriculture days, humans would sit around every night by the fire and interact with the rest of the tribe. That’s what we spent 99% of human history doing. Farming isolated us from the tribe and put every family in their own house. Then the Industrial Age gave the family distractions like newspapers, radios, and movies. Currently we’ve got a phone to distract us all the time.
That is a dangerous assumption. The ones controlling the models can definitely manipulate a person through some minor tweaks which would definitely count as abuse. And it’s it more polygamous since they’re probably all using the same model? Not like each one has their own unique model
It’d be per instance not per model, and there is only one user per instance.