110 sats \ 5 replies \ @davidw 25 Mar \ parent \ on: Will AI end the social internet? AI
We have adapted quite well from going from telephone conversations to voice messages, to telegrams and letters to emails. From face to face conversations to videocalls.
Up to this point, our interactions have required drastically less effort. I don't think people will want to go backwards and therefore I'm not convinced whether people will truly be preoccupied with whether they are speaking to an agent (that is specifically trained on replicating each of our individual thought patterns) or us directly.
Providing that it is provably our own A.I. If they can be sure the conversation was private and there is a local record of it for future reference or summary for that person, will people mind if it isn't truly a conversation with another human? I hardly remember the email I sent yesterday, let alone a text message last week. So it might as well not have been 'me'. There are circumstances where it might not bother me either. Particularly if there is a sunk cost to communicating.
For when it really matters, face to face will of course reign supreme. I'm just not completely convinced most conversations will matter whether a note originated from Joe Bloggs or Joe Bots all of the time.
Whether we get our info from a bot or a human may not matter, but that's not the only we reason we are here.
We like the likes.
And I maintain bot-likes are never going to feel as good as person likes.
So maybe ai does ruin the social internet if it casts doubt's on the source of the affirmation we are all begging for here.
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I think it depends on why we are interacting with the person/agent. If it's to get a job done, and the job doesn't benefit from knowing a human is involved directly, I agree. But my sense is that I wouldn't be responding to this comment if I didn't know think you are a human. You possibly :) being human makes it worth spending something precious to me (time), because you've done the same for me by responding to me.
What precious thing do I owe an AI? What precious thing is an AI giving me?
We talk a lot about scarcity, and in a world of human-like thinking done by AI, human thinking is no longer scarce. My general point is mostly that we spend our scarce thing (time) seeking scarce things (other people's time).
the job doesn't benefit from knowing a human is involved directly
To respond to myself, maybe no job benefits from knowing a human is involved. My sense though is it matters a lot more than we think it does.
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What precious thing do I owe an AI? What precious thing is an AI giving me?
Perhaps this is a thing that seems one way to us now, but will seem quite another way to the next generations.
For instance: to my parents, and many boomers and older, btc is a bridge too far -- it's foreign in fundamental ways; the idea of money-as-ledger, which a person 'posesses' when they know a large number, vs paper that comes from the government, is a bridge too far. And yet, if you grow up where this idea has been at least sort-of mainstream, perhaps you adapt. Bitcoiners sure have invested a lot of hope that it will prove to be the case.
For a more culture-warry example, it appears that far greater numbers of Gen-Z than I would have ever dreamed possible seem to have a hell of a lot of wiggle room in who they want to fuck, or what gender even is and implies. Whether you think this is a perverse state of affairs, or what you believe to be the source of this shift, is beside the point. It's a re-thinking of a way of being in the world that many were not ready for.
So perhaps how much we care about human-ness will also prove more fluid than it seems now. I know I have some conversations w/ LLMs that I would be delighted to have with friends. In some cases I feel a real fondness for my conversational partner, even though I know there's no consciousness on the other side of it.
Perhaps this is a fixation our descendants will find quaint.
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I think you're right. I'm fixing the world view of future people to our current world view. It's like I'm being pre-nostalgic or something. I usually pride myself on not needing to wish things are familiar or simple but I made that mistake here without even noticing it.
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Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt. I guess I am trying to play devil's advocate to try and explore my own thoughts deeper too. I do agree with you @k00bot, because I'm also struggling to define where that line is drawn. I may prefer playing video games rather than mashing keys on a keyboard, if the probabilities were stacked in the other direction. I just don't think others will give this as much consideration.
There is definitely nuance involved. I can't see myself using it with close friends, family & favoured bitcoiners so much. I despised for years the generic "Happy birthday" messages on Facebook that felt like spam. Even with a step-change improvement in quality, there is definitely something unsettling treating our favourite people that way. But I'm open minded to wonder if we could have better relationships with them in some instances by incorporating it in a mindful way?
Perhaps we can think about our conversations like commits by A.I. We will be performing the role of PR reviews, not always but most of the time.
Maybe it will become obvious that we are not using A.I. given just how inefficient, cost-ineffective & slow the alternative will become in comparison. And maybe we will talk less with strangers and more with people we trust for that reason. More questions than answers, but thanks for the thinking-tennis.
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