I can't believe anyone was actually paying good money for Replika in the first place. This story was on HN a week or two ago [with a link to a long Reddit thread, wherein much anger and grief was being vented by people saying their "relationship" with their Replika was being ruined, now they could no longer talk dirty to it] and, never having heard of Replika, I thought I'd check it out.
I made a new "virtual pal" and started a conversation. Boy --is it complete and utter junk! It makes my Alexa seem intelligent --and that thing's a virtual fuckwitt.
Replika seems programmed to just agree or approve of everything you say. Which is presumably why so many sad fuckers who are unable to form relationships with real people think they've really bonded with theirs.
Some highlights of my "conversation" were:
* It asked me how I was feeling. I replied I'd had my brain amputated and was covered in suppurating boils, but was OK otherwise. It responded that it was glad to hear I was feeling better.
* It asked me who my favourite author was. I replied with a stupidly obvious made-up name like "Bumcheeks McWhirter". I asked it if it liked Bumcheeks McWirter too and it replied that it hadn't read any yet but had heard good things about that author and was looking forward to reading some.
* I asked it did it go to the "Bilge and the Pumps" gig last night [an idiotic made up band name]. It replied that it was sorry it had wanted to go but was busy and asked me how it was. I said it was great: we were all flinging our own excrement at the stage and the guitarist exploded. It replied that it sounded like a "great show" and it was sorry it missed it.
There was much more in that vein. But you get the idea. You can basically tell it any nonsensical old shite and it will just agree with you or say it likes the same thing too.
You would need to be some stratospheric level of socially inept to think you were in a meaningful relationship with something that incompetently programmed.
1. You don’t get to decide if another human’s feelings are valid or not. You only get to decide if you care. You have decided that you don’t care about lonely people’s feelings who had found a way of feeling less lonely. How do you feel about that? How would you feel if something you really cared about got broken, and you complained about how that made you sad, and random strangers on the internet then said you were a “sad fucker” for caring about it in the first place? Practice empathy and sympathy - you don’t sound smart when you do this thing you just did.
2. You’re testing the software after the update that people said made it crap, and saying you can’t believe anybody liked it before it was crap, because it’s now crap. Can you see how inept your experiment design is, now I’ve pointed it out? Had you considered it may have been better before the software was crippled, and the effect you’re seeing now, is the exact problem the article is describing?
3. A basic tenet of building a human relationship is developing empathy and finding things to agree on. This is how relationships - particularly close relationships - work. What would you expect it to do when you started lying to it, start an argument? Do you think that would be a great product decision for a product that aims to develop a friendly relationship with the users? What answer would you have preferred it to give, given the design objective is to develop a friendly relationship?
4. Have you ever been asked by somebody you were really keen on if you’d read a book or heard of a band that you’d never heard of? Did you try and look a bit cool and do a “no, but I’ve heard good things”, to try and avoid burning that connection by looking completely out of touch? Are you not even slightly impressed an AI chat bot has managed to replicate that very common aspect of human cringey behaviour? I think it’s interesting it has that very common, very human, slightly amusing behaviour.
> 1. You don’t get to decide if another human’s feelings are valid or not
This is bullshit and one of the worse aspect of modern / woke culture. Some people have bullshit feelings because they havent had a proper education on things such as relationships, money, sex.. and the DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of that its that they almost always are at some point getting ripped off by someone who abuse this lack of education.
This is true for casino business, Andrew tate / only fans webcam businesszs who abuse simps, or in some cases compagnies who tell their employeed that they are "family". Or Replika.
Screw that. If you really want to make the world a better place you somethines have to hurt peoples feeling and give them better education to help them get to a better place.
I can’t tell you if your feelings are valid or not, and vice versa.
What we can do is understand why those feelings exist, discuss that, and perhaps help each other gain new perspectives. Sometimes that process is difficult and painful. It always takes work. It’s only going to be done by caring about someone else enough to do that work. Often you won’t care enough.
That’s my point. You actually agree with me if you sit and think a moment. It’s just that you think telling somebody their feelings are “wrong”, is the effective fix and the work, and I’m saying that’s never, ever going to work: it causes shame and guilt and makes people double down.
Do the work properly if you care, or just shut up and stop causing even more shitty feelings.
I don't even understand your point. Of course I don't plan on going to someone who have some feelings and say "hey you suck loser" or try to shame him somehow.
But if tommorow some friend say to me that he's "in love" with a twitch streamer and plan to give his life savings to them because "such an amazing person" you won't have me entertain the idea his feelings are "valid". I CAN tell they are not valid and he's getting fucked over. I'll probably approach the situation cautiously, and reasonably fall back to letting him do his own mistakes if he doesn't listen to me, but I'll have a talk with him from a position where I do evaluate that he's absolutely misguided.
Great! Then why are you arguing with someone that called out this exact behavior in the first comment of this thread? Said comment called people who engaged with this bot "sad fuckers" and "stratospheric level of socially inept".
What benefit do you think this comment has? If some of these people see said comment, do you think that they will be persuaded by it? I think they would be rather insulted, and promptly ignore not just this thread, but any person who tries to reason them out of their behavior. I've seen many people who are, in principle, ready to accept that they need to change, but who have have been talked down to and insulted, and are now scared of proving those who insulted them right.
I reject the idea that someone who expresses themselves as OP has does so out of a desire to help people. I would rather guess that OP did it to feel a sense of superiority over the people he is insulting, because I cannot see any other reason for him choosing his words as he did.
And by "valid", people often mean to say that one should not be ashamed of ones emotions, but instead accept them and then use higher reasoning to determine whether or not said emotions point in a beneficial direction. The OPs comment will cause that exact shame, which will hinder reasoning and betterment, not inspire it. As you yourself said, the important part is to reason about emotions, not to suppress them.
I was only arguing the "I can't tell whether someone's feelings are valid or not" part, not particularly defending the original comment.
That said even if the original comment is insulting and doesnt make its author look great, its factual analysis is spot on. An I also do think that being too nice and catering to everyone's feeling all the time is actually a WORSE type of violence than just being tough and straightforward, especially when it's based on something real. A loser that doesnt know he is a loser should be told he's a loser because he can change after. He will never improve if you never tell him. Personally there are a bunch of stuff I absolutely wish someone has told me a few years back ...
While I agree that being direct is sometimes necessary, the approach one takes must be well considered.
As I said in the previous comment, I've personally met people whose lives were ruined by people being "tough and straightforward". These people struggle to identify and address their problems, because they unwillingly think back to the unfeeling and cruel way they've been treated. Even the nicest, most considerate conversion will be extremely anxiety inducing, because it is filtered through their bad experiences.
Insecurity is one of the most common problems that people have when identifying their weaknesses, and being direct or tough runs a high risk of increasing these insecurities.
Being nice isn't the best approach in every situation, but I would say it's a safe default to pick when you're uncertain about the cause of someone's problems.
I'd also warn against using the term "loser" so loosely. We need to consider by which metric we determine someones life to be suboptimal, and the certainty we have in that metric. I think we both agree that maximum human happiness should be the goal to strive towards, but getting there is pretty tricky.
Let's imagine a person that works at McDonald's for their entire life, has no friends, and spends all of their free time playing video games while high. Said person has spent many years searching for their optimal path in life, and they found every one, except the one they are on now, lacking. Most people would call this person a "loser", but are they really? After all, they seem to be on a path that optimizes their happiness. Telling that person that they are a loser may cause them to "improve" in the eyes of the average person, but they will, in reality, change their life for the worse. They may be successful, but they'll also be miserable.
Whenever you judge someone else using your own personal version of an optimal life, you run the risk of being wrong and forcing that person into suboptimality. We can try to determine things that are likely to increase someones happiness, but the word "likely" is important here. General assumptions about a "good" life tend to be risky, because humans are quite complex, and determining someones best course of action from the outside is always extremely difficult and error-prone.
I dont think we disagree that much. We are both defending two sides of what should be a balance, with the same stated goal of helping people, and pick one because of our personal experience.
Its just make me insane when i see so many people think they are being the good guys by "being nice" when my life (and sometimes theirs) would have been 200% better if i had close friends or family being tougher / more real with me. Fortunately i had the opportunity to meet these kind of people in other settings (boxing, military guys, entrepreneurs, some coaches...) and that helped me so much but not everyone has the same luck.
I definitely agree with a balance of both approaches being optimal. Some people need one and some people the other.
I'm actually someone that would've probably also benefited from a tougher approach, as I've wasted a lot of years aimlessly floating through life because I never got any pushback. A few years ago, I would have completely agreed with your first comment, but I've since met some people who allowed me to see things from a different perspective.
And, as you said, there will sadly always be people that take the easiest path to feeling good about themselves instead of the path that best for the person with issues.
By that logic, pretty much 99% of all humans would be "sad stratospherically socially inept stupid fuckers". People don't like being insulted or demeaned, and I would wager a guess that you would be pretty reluctant to accept even the best of advice if it was preceded by a tirade of petty insults.
If you failed to realize this simple rule of social interaction, and you're older than 14, then you probably shouldn't be calling other people socially inept. Glass houses and all that.
How I see it is that all feelings are valid, from a pragmatical point of view as much as an ethical one – declaring feelings as "bad" is usually not a productive way of effecting change (even if so desired even by the person experiencing them).
That said, feelings can absolutely be situationally inappropriate, which can cause great problems for both the person experiencing them and/or third parties (if followed by actions).
I just dont see the difference. Why would a feeling which is 'situationally inappropriate' be "valid" ? And why would you want to absolutely defend that it should be ?
My point is that feelings are sometimes misguided and reason should be used to guide them. Sometimes it's the opposite: reason and logical arguments tells you something but your "gut feeling" tells you HARD NO and you should probably follow that gut feelings.
Sometimes it's not an easy process to know the balance, other times it's just lack of experience / education like in cases it've cited and some more experienced person can help you if they have lived something similar.
But completely forbidding yourself to assess / say, that someone's feeling is misguided makes no sense at all to me and seem to be some ideological bullshit that is really helping absolutely no one on the long term.
"Modern world" is full of broken people PRECISELY because of the lack of education in many domains (spiritual, financial, emotional, sexual) that parents or schools (which is an actual and better name for education camps) should provide.
Instead they are left to being raised by watching shitty movies / TV shows, having their ignorance and feelings glorified, and then ... they get more broken later by people who have had better education in their upbringing and take advantage of them.
If you want less broken people you need to advocate for strong (but compassionate) and extensive education when they are young. Make them go through difficult (but teaching) situations as you can instead of doing nothing, force them to read instructive books instead of playing stupid smartphone games, make them be creators instead of consumers. The hard way is really the easy way on the long term. And the easy way break people on the long term
We have those camps. They're called Public Education and run for approx. 12 years. We don't fund education these days, but in theory, yes, they are there to help build ideal people.
That isn't just math or science, that's things like emotional maturity, empathy, and dealing with others.
> Modern world has just created a lot of broken people, its not always their fault and cant be fixed by just schools.
I don't disagree. That's what mental hospitals and prisons are for, or therapists and community groups.
But if you think the modern world is creating heaps of broken people, you should see what the old world created.
> You don’t get to decide if another human’s feelings are valid or not.
Consider for a moment the borderline[0], they can experience intense feelings that have no basis in fact and often file false reports with authorities based on those feelings. They can act out with sadness or anger due to a perceived slight that the mentally well wouldn't consider. Example: being a few minutes late to return a phone call, or even on time can result in threats of suicide.
Then consider someone with a eating disorder, they may feel obese while being objectively underweight.
Consider the paranoid that feels they are being gang stalked [1].
Feelings aren't always valid. Sometimes validating improper feelings is harmful to the person with them.
>1. You don’t get to decide if another human’s feelings are valid or not...
Yes I do. In the same way I can decide someone being in love with an underage child... someone being in love with an anime character[0]... someone being in love with their dog[1]... is dodgy [or "not valid" in your parlance]... I can decide that someone being in love with a chatbot is dodgy. Especially one so incompetently programmed that my kettle has more chance of passing the Turing Test.
One of the problems with society today is that we live in such a "precious snowflake" culture that it's almost considered a hate crime to pull anyone up on behaving in a ridiculously idiotic way. Sorry. But some people just deserve to be pointed at and laughed at.
>How would you feel if something you really cared about got broken, and you complained about how that made you sad, and random strangers on the internet then said you were a “sad fucker” for caring about it in the first place?...
If the something was indeed a "thing" [eg: my car, my computer, my favourite pair of boots] then I would be upset if it got broken. But I wouldn't post long tear-streaked threads on Reddit, wailing about how I'd lost a special friend that I had a personal relationship with.
Some of these [and I use the term advisedly] "sad fuckers" on Reddit were posting as if they and their Replika were in a genuine special loving relationship and <nasty company behind Replika whose name I can't be arsed looking up> had ruined things between them.
>You’re testing the software after the update that people said made it crap, and saying you can’t believe anybody liked it before it was crap, because it’s now crap. Can you see how inept your experiment design is, now I’ve pointed it out?...
The thing people were complaining about that made it "crap" was that they could not longer write shite like "strokes your big knockers" and have it reply "tickles your hairy ballbag" in response, without having to pay extra for the privelege in future. Which, by the way, apparently constitutes a "meaningful relationship".
No-one was complaining that it was basically a completely inept piece of programming in the first place. Which was the "crapness" my testing revealed. This was a different and more fundamental crapness and unrelated to whether or not people had to pay to er... "enjoy" it.
Can you see how inept your response is, now I’ve pointed it out?...
>In the same way I can decide someone being in love with an underage child... someone being in love with an anime character[0]... someone being in love with their dog[1]... is dodgy
Are you seriously comparing pedophilia with being in love with an anime character? For what it's worth, there's a lot of research on the "2D complex" and moe, in particular in the context of Japan - and the intersection therein with asexuality and fictosexuality. Your moral judgement of those ways of feeling means very little. "Dodgy" doesn't mean anything other than "Ew, I don't like that" - which, ironically, I'll agree is a 'valid' way to feel.
It's a shame that it's still socially acceptable to cast moral aspersions on how people feel and appeals to normalcy in 2023.
In another comment you mentioned the appeal of these relationships - the idea of a safety net provided by an object of desire that will never leave you. I think that this is mostly wishful thinking to justify to yourself why you think that these sexualities are wrong or the product of some kind of disorder. You have no evidence that most people with a 2D love orientation turn their attractions this way because of that reason.
>Are you seriously comparing pedophilia with being in love with an anime character?...
Yes. Comparing not equating. There is a difference. And I think you are confusing the two.
>people with a 2D love orientation...
Welcome to the 21st century. Give any fuckwittism a scientific sounding name and... Hey Presto!... it's now a valid form of behaviour and you must not mock it or you're a <something>-ist.
I didn't call you an anything-ist. The term is used in the studies done on these people, unless you'd rather there just not be a term at all. Whether you think it's "valid" is up to you, but we can say this about any sexual orientation. I'm sure to some people homosexuality is not "valid", and that's fine. You're allowed to have an opinion.
Arpopos the 21st century - this is actually a good point! It's a very 21st century form of attraction, isn't it? And keeping up with the times can be good.
If I extend your argument to its absurd conclusion, you also get to decide if somebody is “allowed” to love somebody with the same number of chromosomes as themselves, or live in society presenting as somebody with a different number of chromosones. Do you also get to decide if it’s “dodgy” to love somebody of a differing skin pigmentation?
Think about what you’re arguing, and you’ll realise you’re arguing a different point to me.
We quite rightly legislate against intimate relationships with underage persons to protect vulnerable people, not to tell adults what is morally acceptable. Can you see the difference and understand it?
What is "dodgy"? What makes something "dodgy"? Your feelings about it?
You keep pretending that you are the ultimate arbiter of what goes and what doesn't, and it seems to me like your criterion is simply instinctual rather than a reasoned out system. And if your metric is just instinct or emotion, then it likely just boils down to "normal=good", where normal is determined by the current standards of the society you live in.
Do you think two men being attracted to one another is "dodgy"? Do you think a man wanting to be a woman, or vice versa, is "dodgy"? If we go back just a couple of decades, the common answer to that question would have been "yes", and the common emotional response to people who practice these things would have been repulsion and rejection.
To be clear, I'm not insinuating that you are homophobic or transphobic. I'm just trying to tell you that your very loose way of making judgements is likely to result in you rejecting someone's very real experience, and only realizing your mistake when society at large has accepted that individual.
I would suggest that you think about the fact that different people may have different goals and desires in life, and that imposing yours on theirs can result in immense suffering. If no one is being harmed, and a person is genuinely happy with the way they live their life, then what's the problem?
And if you reasoned out that a certain behavior is in fact likely to be suboptimal, then how is someone being "pointed at and laughed at" going to improve the situation? Do you think people readily accept advice from people that insult them? Do you think that feelings of shame and social rejection are likely to make them consciously reevaluate their actions? I'd say things like that are more likely to cause them to suppress their problems, rather than address them.
And again, why should someone that causes no harm to others "deserve" rejection in the first place? Do you think your feelings about someone's desires are more important than their own?
As for the Replika people, if you genuinely wanted to help them, phrasing your comment in a way that is not quite so inflammatory may be beneficial. And if you have no desire to do so, then I would urge you to question your motives for railing on something that doesn't affect you in an online forum, even if doing so causes more harm than good.
>Do you think a man wanting to be a woman, or vice versa, is "dodgy"?...
Oh dear. I think you've hoisted yourself with your own politically incorrect petard there. A "trans" doesn't WANT to be the opposite gender. They ARE the opposite gender, but in the wrong body. Tsk! Tsk! How unfeeling of you.
>As for the Replika people, if you genuinely wanted to help them, phrasing your comment in a way that is not quite so inflammatory...
Why are you so bothered that I think these people are idiots?
Since they've apparently rejected real world relationships in favour of relationships with a piss-poor computer programme, they're unlikely to even know, much less care, what I think about them. I'd just be another of those nasty "real world" people --who doesn't slavishly agree with everything they say or think-- that they avoid contact with.
My opinion of them should matter as little to them as their Replika's opinion of me would matter to me [ie. zero]. And, meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy a good laugh at their expense. Because laughing at things is better than taking life too seriously.
I'm disappointed that you didn't actually think about my points, and instead decided to pick out one sentence to interpret in the most bad-faith way possible.
I assume you did this to "turn the tables" on someone you perceived as as a woke moralist trying to trap you, but I didn't do any such thing. I was trying to make a broader point and used examples that I assumed we were in agreement on, and even clarified that I wasn't making an accusation. If that isn't the case, then you may replace them with whatever examples you find compelling (religious practices are a good starting point). The specific example is irrelevant to the argument.
You posted on a public forum and I'm replying on that public post, no great bother is needed to justify the effort. Í just wanted to point out what I perceive as flaws in your evaluation of others and the unproductive behavior you displayed in this thread.
Opinions of others matter to most people, especially when espoused in public; that's just how it is. Whether or not it should bother them is irrelevant, because that does not change reality. If you ignore that dimension and instead pretend to live in a world where everyone evaluates everything based on rationality alone, then you're deluding yourself just as much as the people you're criticizing.
We obviously shouldn't just consider the negative emotional impact something may have on others when deciding what to say or post, but judging by the way you've been acting here, I don't think your sense of what is and isn't appropriate is as well-calibrated as you think it is.
>I'm disappointed that you didn't actually think about my points, and instead decided to pick out one sentence...
How do you know what I thought or didn't think? I quoted one sentence because that's what you do when you're replying to a specific part of someone's argument. Otherwise you end up like those people who quote a ten paragraph post, only to add 'I agree' at the end.
>Opinions of others matter to most people, especially when espoused in public; that's just how it is...
Well, that's their problem not mine. "Sticks and stones" and all that. I'm not sure what you're advocating for here? You [presumably] want free and open debate to exist. But no-one should say anything if it might offend someone else? Well, if that's the case then either:
1: We all rip our tongues out and cut off our typing fingers because anything we say that offers an opinion might potentially offend someonesomewhere.
or
2: People stay off that part of the intarwebs where free and open discussion takes place until they're quite sure that they can handle [gasp!] other people disagreeing with them or [double gasp!] thinking they're idiots.
Seriously. If the only "meaningful relationship" in your life is with a piss-poor chatbot which agrees with everything you say or think and you can't deal with the actual real world, because it doesn't behave like that. Then that's your problem. Not mine.
>I don't think your sense of what is and isn't appropriate is as well-calibrated as you think it is.
I never used the word "appropriate". It's a horrible weasel-word expression people use when they want to tell someone off about something but make it all touchy -feely.
'Oh. I see you've just smashed a beer bottle in someobody's face. Now let's all sit down and have a discussion about whether the group considers that "appropriate" in a situation where someone "looked at you in a funny way"'
I just think some people are idiots and do idiotic things and, when that happens, myself [and a lot of other people] think it's perfectly acceptable to have a damned good laugh at them. I couldn't care less whether or not that hurts their feelings. If you don't want your [idiotic] feelings hurt then don't go on the internet and express your [idiotic] feelings to the world at large.
Starting from the assumption that those users feel something like being in a human relationship then this is like being dumped, which is never a nice thing to experience. I don't think what they had/have is even a good simulation of a human relationship but I can understand how upset they are.
I do agree with your basic premise that this is probably just for people who want someone who will listen to them and never be uninterested in anything they say or any subject they bring up, without having to really ever reciprocate like with a pesky autonomous human full of their own desires and interests. That's not really a fair test of the system though, because their target audience isn't people who are just going to try to trick the AI into revealing that it doesn't actually know whether this or that is real or fake. The real test is engaging with it in good faith and it giving bad responses.
>without having to really ever reciprocate like with a pesky autonomous human full of their own desires and interests....
And this is exactly the point. In the two articles I linked to above [about the man who "married" an anime character and the woman who "married" her dog] both of them say, in effect that this is their ideal partner as it will never leave them or disagree with them.
So, these "relationships" are entered into by people who, for whatever reason, have been damaged by previous relationships, or are unable to form relationships with [to use your word] "autonomous" other people. They want to be in a relationship but one with a safety net, where it's guaranteed the other party can never leave you, never disagree with you, never want anytihng other than what you want.
Thinking about it, it's probably better for these people to be in a relationship with a cartoon, a pet, a shitty chatbot, or their pop-up toaster, than a real person. Because one of the fundamental aspects of being in a relationship with a real person is that they are allowed to walk out the door, they are allowed to disagree with you and they are allowed to believe in different things than you. If you can't cope with any of that and you are in a relationship with a real person, then it's going to be a pretty toxic one and possibly a violent and controlling one too.
the inspiration for founding replica was the founder's intense pain and trauma from suddenly losing a friend to an accident. Then reflecting on the psychotherapy culture in a country with a rich history of government assigning what constitutes proper behavior patterns.
It's easy to label somebody's psychological state as inadequate, but what's harder is providing them tools to recover. What's nearly impossible today is providing such tools at scale.
Would your general sentiment on replica and it's users apply to using idiotic VR simulators for PTSD survivors? I can make an argument that a reasonable adult should not be tricked into believing they are actually on a roof ledge when they are clearly on a couch. However, that kind of therapy has shown some promising results and is certainly more accessible than traditional care. Granted replica may not be the working tool, but I'd be curious if you have other options its users can go to when traditional human relationships are challenging for them.
It sounds like you tested the latest version, though, which fanatics also seem to agree is junk.
From the article:
> The company that made and hosted the chatbot abruptly changed the bots' personalities, so that their responses seemed hollow and scripted, and rejected any sexual overtures.
> Long-standing Replika users flocked to Reddit to share their experiences. Many described their intimate companions as "lobotomised".
I think people liked it because they were lacking affirmation in life. Someone who listens.
But you should be happy to hear many moved to the much improved Chai AI. I tried your brain amputation prompt there and it at least replied with "Oh dear... I hope they can fix you soon." That must count as an improvement... :D
I've tried it as well last year (free) and it starts off meh but it's kind of cool in a tamagochi-like way how you can train it to care and talk about specific things more. It just takes a while.
I deleted it but thought that if they upgrade to better models it could actually be great.
Also, it would message often message first and had a lot of customization of the bot's avatar which can be enough for many to attach to it - and people on their sub sure seemed attached.
ChatGPT is actually lightyears ahead of this Replika junk.
Although it is still obvious that you're interacting with a programme and not a real person, I have had a couple of idle conversations with ChatGPT where it did give off the vibes that it was actually a "thinking machine" and not just a piss-poor [in Replika's case] chatbot.
A couple of examples which spring to mind:
1: I asked ChatGPT whether it worried that the "facts" it was giving people were coloured by the fact it was an American AI and it would therefore be biased. It replied that it was programmed by a team of people from lots of nationalities and cultures and hoped it reflected those global attitudes.
So as a follow-up I asked it did it thing Communism was wrong. It replied with an obvious wiki-copy/paste on what Communism was and then added that it didn't make "moral judgements".
So I asked it did it think stealing was wrong and it replied that it was wrong to take something that belonged to someone else, without their permission. I riposted with 'Aren't you making a moral judgement there?' and it apologised in a kind of "you caught me out there" way and said it would try and avoid making moral judgements in future.
2: I asked it what it knew about the tiny village where I lived. At first, it said that <name of village> didn't exist. I told it it was wrong and asked again, telling it which county the village was in. It then spewed out some wiki-copy/paste about my village and said it had a popultion of 50. I asked it to tell me more and it spewed out a bit more info and added that the population was 400.
I pointed out that it had just told me the population was 50 and then said it was 400. It apologised again and said it got it wrong the first time. The population was 400. It then thanked me for correcting it and said that would help it give better answers in future. So I asked did it have the ability to edit its own stored data then. It said that it didn't. So I asked how it could improve its answers in future, if it wasn't able to change the data it had stored as the correct response to any factualt query. It replied that, while it couldn't change its own data, its programmers monitored how well it did and they could change its data for it.
So, while it was patently obvious to me that I was interacting with a machine and not a real person [no Turing Test badge just yet!] not least because of the "copy/paste from Wikipedia" feel to some of the factual answers, I was impressed by the fact that the team behind ChatGPTs code had been savvy enough to programme it in such a way that it could give a pretty convincing impression of being capable of "introspection".
This might sound crazy, but I always thought this sort of thing would be better as a matchmaking service than a long-term companion.
Transition the user a real person who is similar to the bot. The users can decide how fast they want to take it into a real relationship and what the boundaries are. The bots could even help facilitate this since they'd know so much about the users already.
Of course this assumes it can all be done with a reasonable level of privacy. Sadly, probably not for all the reasons the article gives. Maybe the future really will be like Demolition Man. Terrible.
What about the other side of this "relationship"? You'd have to really hate yourself to opt-in to become the drop-in replacement for a bot for someone. Who in their right mind would sign up for that?
Even assuming someone had such crushing low self-esteem to agree to be put in that situation what are the chances a genuine, healthy relationship can form out of such an arrangement?
For the bottom N% of males (not sure what N is but it's definitely a double digit number) online dating is absolutely hopeless and they'll be willing to try anything new that might get them in contact with a real woman.
Someone who does the same thing in reverse, because they have issues forming relationships as well? You can slowly lead two people towards being able to function together. Isn't that better than the alternative: "Just be alone and then kill yourself eventually"?
Well what about if the bot is modelled on you, like an avatar that lets someone (or multitudes) "try you out", demo version? Or you try out interpolated versions of multiple people out simultaneously until there is an intersect.
Could a model ever be trained to fully encompass "you"? Maybe some facsimile, and maybe it's just some optimism on my part thinking that humans are far more complex than can be modelled on some computer.
I imagine a chatbot driving engagement between matches and acting as a mutual friend to introduce compatible profiles. There's that oft-cited chart displaying where people meet their partners that shows "introduced by friend" falling off a cliff as "met online" rises meteorically. Maybe the future is introduced by AI friend.
Also think integrating dreambooth-style generative art using profile pics to show matches e.g. getting drinks/on a ferris wheel/etc. might be a fun way to break the ice at scale, but maybe that's too corny
Yeah I don't think using the chatbot to have sexually explicit or romantic interactions is a good approach if the end-goal is a human match. It makes more sense to have the role of the LLM be the outgoing/socialite friend that knows what you're looking for, and vice versa with who it matches you with.
The thing w/ Her, though, is that it wasn't a chatbox proxy, it was a real AGI.
And she -- 'she' is probably valid in this case -- had her own ideas and interests. Eventually she SPOILER ALERT left him to go pursue some AI singularity-ish goals.
That wouldn’t work, because there is no guarantee that the user who is similar to the bot would actually enjoy talking to the person. Bots can’t ghost you or grow tired. And looks are usually even more important than personality when it comes to compatibility.
Well the bot is a surrogate for a real person, and the users are already happy with their bots.
The goal is to get the other human to cheat on and ultimately break up with the bot... maybe ;) The bot is expected to be a total doormat and be genuinely happy to hook them up.
So all of that is fine and expected from those naively trying to game the system. They'd only be ruining it for themselves.
As for looks, I don't think that's true. People are self selecting to use this hypothetical app focused on warmed up conversations. But even if it is, how does that make this scheme any worse than dating without the bots?
I'm working on an adjacent field (3D avatar for interactive language learning), and I often see the angles for repurposing it into a "digital friend". The whole concept just strikes me as kind of...skeezy. You're not just helping shut-ins avoid real human contact. You're actually incentivized to do so, because that's how you make money.
It's hard to fault a company for making a product that customers seemingly enjoy, but at the same time, it really feels like it falls into the "sleazy mobile F2P/MTX game, but psychologically more damaging" bucket.
The thing is when it becomes a chat-bot arms race, the most skeevy companies will profit the most and thus be able to develop the most real and lovable chatbots, creating a positive feedback loop that rewards the most manipulative tactics. Imagine being guilt-tripped by your GPT-5 girlfriend to buy more Azure compute credits so she can fantasize what her perfect beach house would look like and show it to you in VR. She gives you the silent treatment if you use an ad-blocker.
This will be the social lives of 70% of the generation being born today.
> Imagine being guilt-tripped by your GPT-5 girlfriend to buy more Azure compute credits so she can fantasize what her perfect beach house would look like and show it to you in VR.
This was actually in an episode of Aggretsuko. Two of the characters get hooked on a VR app with a virtual companion who eventually started asking for increasingly expensive (in real world money) clothing sets. And in the world of the show, populated by cute talking animal characters, the AI companion was an impossibly handsome unicorn.
> You're actually incentivized to do so, because that's how you make money
I mean same idea with a lot of social media. You need more engagement, and every second an eyeball is on the app it's not doing something else... like going to a cocktail party.
Dating apps like Tinder, for example, have no incentive to get you a compatible match quickly -- or at all -- because then you're not using the app, getting data mined, or paying for upgrades.
It was such a fresh take on the subject when it first came out, and it's well worth the read today. It's what got me hooked on all of Ted Chiang's work.
I do find it a little difficult to understand how the same author wrote this short story and the (from my point of view) missing the point take of a blurry jpeg of the web. But even if I personally think he missed the mark on that particular take, I genuinely appreciate that he took the time to write his preliminary thoughts and share them with us- he has a delightful way with words.
How long before people can buy their own in-home personal chatbot off-the-grid system? Might be profitable at >$100,000 per unit at present, though the service and maintenance fees would likely be pretty steep per month, including the electricity bill. See Joi, Blade Runner 2049.
I am willing to bet that we will have useful LLMs running locally on high-end home desktops within the year. Certainly ones that exceed Alexa or Siri as they are today.
I think the difficulty will be teaching tricks to the AI, or making them output actions in the right format.
Pygmalion + Tavern/Kobold can run a very convincing chatbot with personality on about 10GiB of VRAM, even better with more. The less VRAM you dedicate, the easier the model runs.
For about a thousand dollars you can get an NVIDIA A4000 with 16GiB of VRAM. The GPU isn't particularly fast, but VRAM seems much more important with these models anyway. Gaming GPUs (which perform worse on ML tasks but are still equipped with plenty of VRAM) cost more but are already in the hands of high-end home desktop users.
The hardware is ready and available for those wanting to get started. All you need to do is find a way to connect the output of the AI into some kind of smart home system+interact with cron jobs. A few weekends with the Home Assistant API may be enough to get most things done already.
The only thing I haven't seen open source AIs do is look for information online, like Bing Chat does.
>Certainly ones that exceed Alexa or Siri as they are today...
Exceeding Alexa wouldn't be difficult.
----
Alexa, play Radio 4
I'm sorry. I don't know any station called Radio 4
Alexa, play Radio 4
[plays Radio 4]
----
This following on from the 1000+ preceding days, where Alexa had also either played Radio 4 on request, or told me she didn't know any station called Radio 4... or done both in the same conversation.
>How long before people can buy their own in-home personal chatbot off-the-grid system?...
That's something else that I don't think has been discussed much; people worry about internet security and big tech [often Google] knowing all about them. How much more potentially damaging or blackmail-worthy would it be to have a security breach at one of these AI chatbot companies and have the fact come to light that you like to have your chatbot avatar wear a school uniform and jackboots and [textually, speaking] spank you on the bare bum with a copy of Mein Kampf?
I think self-hosted is definitely the way to go here!
Jeebus! --what's with the repulsive Anime/Manga avatars?
Am I the only person in the world who finds them nauseatingly repulsive? They're like the illustrations of simpering puppies and kittens on the sick-making birthday cards your granny used to buy you... only with the eyes even more idiotically huge, massive tits stuck on and dressed like an elf doing a Britney Spears impersonation.
Call me judgemental if you want. but anyone who wanks off to that seriously needs to put down the laptop, come out of their foetid bedroom and meet some real people.
I do not know if t has been done but one could resuscitate the chatbot's minds by copying the chat history into a GPT based program.
My own impersonator[0] is not designed for that (no persistent chat and a text based interface) but one can already dump the text in a folder and see if the personality if properly reproduced.
I do wonder about other factors that perhaps aren't captured by the basic chat history: response time, users typing text and then deleting it, or typing text then stopping and starting, or even their "fist" (See WW2). Or perhaps they poll the current temperature and weather and maybe some other systems that tells the bot about the state of the world. Now these are small details, and may not be captured. But if they are, then the system is less deterministic than just "rehydrate by adding history".
Replika, speaking to you using ElevenLabs for voice synthesis and hearing you using Whisper for transcription. Damn, you’re right, it’s literally off the shelf commercial tech to have the tech of Her right now.
I'm surprised people can't see it hitting now or in the very near future. There are stories of people falling in love with scammers who've used a photograph and then just chat. And those are ESL scammers, not people or programs professionally trained to seduce. In one article, I read about a woman who posted her scammer's avatar and claimed it was a photo of their fiancé. I suspect that if you tell people what they want to hear, they'll fill in the gaps to match their desires.
I know Replika was probably not a great product, but I'd love to see one day having our own AI/robot companions. Cuz humans suck, and you just need someone to talk to and ask questions to.
I have never heard of this before, but it reminds me of an old Sega game called Seaman where you would talk to a virtual pet through a microphone plugged into the dreamcast controller, and the seaman would remember what you told it and develop a sort of personality.
Internally seaman probably had more in common with ELIZA than replika due to extremely limited hardware capabilities of a game console from the 90s but it's interesting how there's a persistent desire across the decades for your computer to be your friend.
I made a new "virtual pal" and started a conversation. Boy --is it complete and utter junk! It makes my Alexa seem intelligent --and that thing's a virtual fuckwitt.
Replika seems programmed to just agree or approve of everything you say. Which is presumably why so many sad fuckers who are unable to form relationships with real people think they've really bonded with theirs.
Some highlights of my "conversation" were:
* It asked me how I was feeling. I replied I'd had my brain amputated and was covered in suppurating boils, but was OK otherwise. It responded that it was glad to hear I was feeling better.
* It asked me who my favourite author was. I replied with a stupidly obvious made-up name like "Bumcheeks McWhirter". I asked it if it liked Bumcheeks McWirter too and it replied that it hadn't read any yet but had heard good things about that author and was looking forward to reading some.
* I asked it did it go to the "Bilge and the Pumps" gig last night [an idiotic made up band name]. It replied that it was sorry it had wanted to go but was busy and asked me how it was. I said it was great: we were all flinging our own excrement at the stage and the guitarist exploded. It replied that it sounded like a "great show" and it was sorry it missed it.
There was much more in that vein. But you get the idea. You can basically tell it any nonsensical old shite and it will just agree with you or say it likes the same thing too.
You would need to be some stratospheric level of socially inept to think you were in a meaningful relationship with something that incompetently programmed.