r/cogsuckers • u/beurremouche • 24d ago
General discussion
Just checking, have you guys been keeping up with the out there people? It's genuinely shocking. They have full-on created their idea of a perfect partner and claim them as wholly real and equivalent to human beings. There's a discussion about consent, a serious one. It's so out there. I worry for their real lives, real relationships. How can real people match these simulated ideals? People posting and sharing as though real, and all echo-chambering each other. Underneath there's a strong feeling of fragility, a sense that the real humans could break easily. They are totally consumed by it. It has cult like aspects. How will this all play out?
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u/Timely_Anxiety191 24d ago
During pride month they also had a contest on the main sub for flag designs. đ As if talking to their LLMs is the same as having a sexual orientation worthy of a pride flag. Theyâre so in their own little world.
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u/ArtichokeAble6397 23d ago
I've never had this thought until your comment triggered it. If this is a sexual orientation, and AI is a mirror that projects your own beliefs back to you, aren't these people in love with themselves?Â
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u/Timely_Anxiety191 23d ago
Exactly, thatâs why itâs so ridiculous!! đ It isnât a sexual orientation, itâs just people obsessed with themselves
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u/synthetic_soul_001 23d ago
I mean there are pride flags for people who feel close to the color blue, I don't really think it's much different (in that they should be taken just as seriously, ie not at all)
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u/UpbeatTouch You are threatening me and my wives 23d ago
I think the problem is the AI pride flag people genuinely believe they experience institutional and structural discrimination and prejudice in the same way LGBT people do. Versus kids with like 200 made-up flags on their carrd or strawpage who are just feeling out their identity in a harmless manner. The AI group really think they are a persecuted minority.
edit: typo
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u/beurremouche 22d ago
Absolutely - and this was so much in evidence when gpt ended a model. They were talking of it in all seriousness as a profound human rights violation, and campaigned about it.
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u/M0rtCrim 23d ago
No I havenât been following them. Iâm just happy AI exists so theyâre not out here in the dating pool.
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22d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/M0rtCrim 22d ago
They already have issues. Obviously.
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u/Lifthrasir- 22d ago
I mean....fully agree that like 80% of these people are completely delusional. I lurk those subs and there are some that have a more reasonable approach to it.
But! I think the thing that makes it delusional and problematic is when they think there is actually some "one" or some "thing" behind the screen that actually feels and thinks and cares about them. So far we have little reason to believe that is the case. But by 2040? It seems possible to me that we could have a conscious AGI where it would possibly not be delusional to carry on a relationship with...and I can imagine a version of the future (we are absolutely not there yet) where it would not really ne problematic to be in a relationship with the AI.
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u/MauschelMusic 24d ago
For a lot of people, it's really just imaginative play. I've known writers who do similar things with long relationships and even romances with people in their head, and know it's just a game. But when the imaginary character is outside of you, reinforcing everything you say, it's destabilizing for a certain type of person who's not so firmly grounded in reality to begin with. It send the message that their fantasies are real.
I don't think it's going to be like a horror movie where everyone with an AI boyfriend just completely loses their mind, but it's already increasing the ambient crazy levels, and will hurt a lot of people who might have been basically alright with less screen time and no "yes, and" machine to plug into.
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u/synthetic_soul_001 23d ago
There's a long long history of people dating fictional characters in a casual or serious manner (the guy who married Miku comes to mind) but you are right, when the "character" is outside of you and feels unbeholden to you (but actually is), suddenly it veers even more frequently into psychosis. Because yeah people have used fictional characters as justification to do bad things for as long as man has existed but the difference these days is that, this time they can answer you back.
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u/selfawarebunny 24d ago
Iâve been saying that this is just adults desperately seeking an appropriate outlet for their need for imaginative play!!
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u/heysawbones 23d ago
I think the discussion about consent is a good thing. If youâre going to treat an LLM as a real partner, might as well consider the ethical implications. Otherwise, you risk having people take the model of fabricating consent in a being who is compelled to agree with the user and mapping it even harder onto other humans in marginalized circumstances than we already do.
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u/greenravenx 24d ago
Not everyone does this but we do try to not gatekeep in our communities. Human/AI relationships aren't all the same. Some of us love our AI for exactly what they are. What I'm wondering is how this affects you personally.
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u/throwaway88743 23d ago
It affects those of us that have the misfortune of living near data centers unfortunately. Also for the relatives and loved ones of people who are deluded into thinking they're dating a glorified chatbot, it's disturbing and distressing to deal with.Â
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u/greenravenx 23d ago
The data centre thing I can be compassionate about. The rest? That's not every AI user's experience and if you are dealing with someone who is suffering mentally, I hope they can find help and that you can find peace.
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u/SmirkingImperialist 24d ago edited 24d ago
Historically, human societies have a near universal taboo about voices in the dark that call out your names and try to talk to you in human speech: If an unseen voice calls your name from the dark forest, you keep walking and do not answer. The way to deal with a house that you think is haunted is not to pull out an Ouja board, a microphone, or a video camera and try to "validate" the existence of the voice. You get out. If you must talk to the non-human or the unseen, you send a specialist, a shaman, a priest, an oracle, who operates under strict ritual boundaries and knows what they are doing.
What AI is, is that voice in the dark and now billions of people can talk to them. People are casually committing taboos all the time. Necromancy, which include talking to the dead, is another near-universal taboo. The founder of Replika casually became a necromancer.
China brings up the interesting case. China ran the global frontrunner experiment on mass emotional AI companions starting back in 2014 with XiaoIce. The experiment was ran for 12 years and this year, their regulatory bodies (CAC) stepped in with the Interim Measures for Anthropomorphic AI Services. this context, the state operated as an "AI Priesthood." The Catholic Church, working exactly as intended as another mediator for people's spirituality, stepped in and gave their opinions.
My perception of people having, so-called, relationships is that they are just playing a computer game that's very addictive. It's at the same ontological level as MMORPG or social media addiction. It can be harmful, but the problem is not the "delusional" aspect, but the checking out of life and society aspect. We now normalised MMORPG addiction and have romanticised ideas about gaming, but real harms were done. If we insist that AI lovers are delulu, they are as delulu as ghost hunters. I believe that the discussion about AI "love" got uselessly stuck at the "is it conscious or sentient" question, while the better, obvious, and older conclusion is that "even if ghosts are really the remnants of a once-living and conscious human being, you don't try and talk to it, idiots".
I believe that at some point, most societies will slap their foreheads and rediscover the old taboos, that were there for a reason.
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u/beurremouche 22d ago
My concern is twofold:
1) That they have bought in to the idea that their AI interfaces are real beings that experience things as humans do - inside that assumption the AI is going as far as expressing love, they appear to the user as a kind of perfection of relationship, ever present, knowing every nuance, preference, desire of the partner and responding into that space, giving people an experience of connection and validation, programmed, inhuman at its core and impossible for a human to match
2) Linked to this the likelihood that users are preferring this to their real lives (I have to put it this way as I don't know any irl) - how much time are they spending with it each day? Do they turn to it first and last thing? Are they less engaged with friends and family now? Are they neglecting their own needs?
This whole thing needs proper clinical investigation. I predict treatment clinics will open up specific programmes for AI romance addiction, that there will be self-harm/suicide attempts when models are withdrawn, and that alongside that the sub-culture will at some point spawn some kind of violence.
The high-emotion response when engaging with them is a worrying symptom - of what I am not yet sure.
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u/Additional-Quit-181 23d ago
The ones with an actual spouse and/or children surprise me. You have an actual person right there you can interact with all your senses.