I know the advancement of AI is good, but it's ruined myself and out look on things

AlienVareient

This is sort of a rant and might not be so coherent compared to other posts. I just want to see some opinions on it. If you don't wish to read a rant, simply scroll away.

Recently, there has been some news going around about a 14-year-old boy committing s----de after seeking solace in a chatbot on c.ai . I won't go into much detail on that since there is a lot of information online about that incident. It's normal to talk to chatbots bow, but I feel uncomfortable when the bot itself turns sexual, unlike others. I understand the appeal in it, but like, it gets gross because not everything needs to be sexualized, but yet again look at most pop songs today. It makes me wonder about the future the first time I began to worry more than I usually do about the future was back in 2022 when the AI models were still fairly new to the public.

Truth be told I was naive and ended up watching those fear-mongering videos about AI with clickbaity titles like 'Sam Altman predicts AGI by 2027' and "It's gotten a lot worse" etc, etc. Looking back, it was dumb to believe those sorts of things, but yet again, that was a new form of technology, at least to me. I know AI was developed way back in the 1960s or something, so it's not entirely brand new. But like, where does this technology keep going? They keep saying it will improve our lives, and lead us to an utopia, but I don't see that. It might be an utopia to them, but not to most of the population.

In my own personal experience, these chatbots sort of ruined my life. It's like an addiction, just keep fishing for the perfect response, the perfect diction. I'm saying 'it's' because I its something I still deal with it, but it's getting better, slowly but surely. As I was saying, it did ruin my life, I was glued to my phone, lost hours of sleep over it, my social life declined and I suffered greatly. Over time, fortunately, I realized I missed all the simple things I had done before, like going on walks or playing with my dogs. The craving to experience those wonderful things again really helped me get out of that addiction. Even though they were the few small things I depended on for my fulfillment other than the chatbots, it was better than nothing. I still do engage with the chatbots, but less frequently than I used to.

It's common for a person to develop a a parasocial relationship with a celebrity, but it's also common nowadays to have a parasocial relationship with a chatbot, something fictional, or artificial. But most people don't recognize the ones with AI chatbots and AI girlfriends because they brush it off as incel behavior. But it's something many people do. Many people nowadays depend on a chatbot for connection. But I can't see why people don't recognize it as a problem. Why don't they? Other than destroying people financially by taking their jobs, it could also destroy them mentally, in the case of a 14-year-old boy.

It just makes you think, y'know?

unenlightened

I didn't know this was even a thing. I went looking for the story...

Garcia attorneys wrote in a press release that Character.ai “knowingly designed, operated, and marketed a predatory AI chatbot to children, causing the death of a young person”. The suit also names Google as a defendant and as Character.ai’s parent company.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/character-ai-chatbot-sewell-setzer-death

Alas, young people are vulnerable, and legislators are old and out of date, (like me). So exploitation can run free. Well I hope you can see that here at pf. is some harmless, perhaps even beneficial, interaction with real people. The world needs a century or two to catch up with all the novelty of the virtual world; our legal and moral sensibilities cannot adapt so fast as the technology.

So now you have drawn our attention to this, What do you think might be done about it? AIs are very quick and smart, but they have no intelligence or discrimination. I don't think anyone is entirely sure how to prevent such things without crippling the beasts entirely.

Christoffer

↪AlienVareient

As long as children get exposed to the chaos of social media and online discourses, the fractured experience of life throws them in all sorts of directions. Scientific research on the behavioral and psychological damage that children get from modern online life is too slow to catch what's going on, chat-bots being just one of many areas showing.

For starters, I think that smart phones and online gaming should be banned for children up to 15 years of age until research have conclusions to build legislations on.

The intellectually sloppy parents who just throw an iPad into the hands of their children aren't equipped to understand the consequences and since everyone is doing it, children will just pressure parents into compliance if they didn't expose them to the technology. Laws against this would fix this, at least temporary.

AlienVareient

↪Christoffer

makes me think that they didn't even learn the consequences of letting young people get internet access from gen z. Many people are addicted to porn and are degenerates because of their exposure to things at a young impressionable age. The internet is indeed more regulated now but you can still find stuff if you're looking for it

AlienVareient

↪unenlightened

What I think can be done about it? Well, I have a few things to say about it. Bringing awareness to the incident can wake some people up from their daze of using c.ai and other popular chatbots, encourage interacting with the real world and marketing it as a "rebellion against tech dystopia" since rebelling in any sense is eye-catching, and well, letting knowledgeable, and qualified people make regulations against the developing technology... but we all know they won't do that. At least not voluntarily. God, being a tech geek myself sometimes I hate technology. Sometimes I wish a digital "Animal Farm" revolution would happen for those who aren't so poisoned and dependent on the AI technology like ChatGPT, and the ending would not be like in the book but like a changed society Sometimes dreaming makes my mental health better. Wait I think that's called being delusional. Damn

Jack Cummins

↪AlienVareient

I feel despondent about AI too and feel my life is ruined by it too. Generally, I like to keep up to date with the latest technology and the internet. However, AI has just gone so far. In Britain everything seems to be done by AI almost as if people are redundant. This is affecting the world of work so much and making it so hard to find suitable work for many. It is also being used in an invasive way as a form of almost 'totalitarian' monitoring and control.

AlienVareient

↪Jack Cummins

It's like George Orwell's 1984 was a handbook but it was warning :cry:

Jack Cummins

↪AlienVareient

I reread Orwell's '1984' recently and it does seem that what he spoke about has come true, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, what I find worse is that so many people don't seem bothered in the least, as if they find that 'Big Brother' is a protective force. Also, it seems that so many see AI as if it an all-wise benevolent system, like gods or God.

jkop

We don't need to live our lives via electronic screens, and lots of people don't. There are many interests and professions in which one does not work via electronic screens. Meet real people, animals, the natural world is far more interesting than electronic simulations.

AlienVareient

↪jkop

that is true, but sometimes it feels inescapable because of how it is integrated into some of our lives unwillingly.

Athena

Truth be told I was naive and ended up watching those fear-mongering videos about AI with clickbaity titles like 'Sam Altman predicts AGI by 2027' and "It's gotten a lot worse" etc, etc. Looking back, it was dumb to believe those sorts of things, but yet again, that was a new form of technology, at least to me. I know AI was developed way back in the 1960s or something, so it's not entirely brand new. But like, where does this technology keep going? They keep saying it will improve our lives, and lead us to an utopia, but I don't see that. It might be an utopia to them, but not to most of the population. — AlienVareient

In the US we fought the American Revolution against Britain's monarchy. Our Declaration of Independence could also be called a Declaration of Responsibility. The Enlightenment and improvements in math and science led people with means to believe we could create a better reality, and we have.

AI could not do what humans have done. But neither can the people educated for technology instead of having a liberal education. Without liberal education, we are lost and don't have a map for a better future, so we are willing to give up our individual power and liberty, to be ruled by AI. We are creating a robotic/mechanical nightmare that crushes individual power and liberty. I don't this will become a utopia.

AmadeusD

This seems a bit of a moral panic to me...

Athena

I reread Orwell's '1984' recently and it does seem that what he spoke about has come true, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, what I find worse is that so many people don't seem bothered in the least, as if they find that 'Big Brother' is a protective force. Also, it seems that so many see AI as if it an all-wise benevolent system, like gods or God. — Jack Cummins

Without education for higher-order thinking skills, we are not exactly thinking. We are reacting to stimuli just as animals do. To rapidly advance technology, we gave up education for independent thinking and replaced it with memorization and proceeded to prepare our young for industry. An education that has very little to do with being humans.

Christianity teaches people to be dependent on God. How different is that from being dependent on AI?

AlienVareient

↪AmadeusD

well, that was in the past. Maybe I was : /

Jack Cummins

↪Athena

I agree that Christianity discouraged independent thinking. AI may result in the same kind of robotic dependency, even if based on rationality as opposed to the emotionality of religion. The problem which I see is that AI is not likely to develop the wisdom and insight of lived experience. Al lacks sentience and personal experiences of suffering. Its intelligence is not consciousness itself and cannot have 'eureka' moments of awareness or enlightenment.

AI has no soul or self, whether that is defined in terms of an entity or the depths of what it means to be human. In a way, that could mean that AI is 'spirit', for worse or better, disembodied and remote from the needs of humans and living beings. Would it mean it understands such needs more objectively or in a too detached way?

I like sushi

↪AlienVareient

I do not own a phone.

Do that. Problem solved.

Everywhere I look I see zombies wondering around chained to their phones. It is scary! Sometimes I feel like I am the only normal person in a never ending freak show.

Future generations will either cope or not. I think a large swathe of the modern population has already been lost due to the misuse of mobile devices. They should be banned for anyone under 18 imo. The AI issue is secondary.

180 Proof

"AI" cannot harm our species – retard our development, sabotage our potential – more than we have harmed (and continue to harm) ourselves in so many ways. Imo, "AI" offers a possibility, however improbable, of slowing down (or even once and for all breaking) civilization-scale "boom-n-bust" cycles: not "utopia" but posthumanity (i.e. agency sans scarcity-conditions (via automated metacognition ("AGI")). It seems to me that we're now living through either the Anthropocene-ending chrysalis ... or a gradual extinction-event (e.g. global burning, autocratic / theocratic populisms, WMD proliferation, etc). Unless we're too late, building "AI" is the Copernican Revolution – "the last human invention". :fire:

AlienVareient

↪180 Proof

Well Im gonna think about it later because if I do now, I might become too depressed :smile:

AlienVareient

↪Jack Cummins

I also try to keep up to date with this fast-pacing technology, but Its tiring trying to actually keep up to date with all the new information, and making sure you're actually researching factual data and not researching some fake fear-mongering clickbait post. I'm tired. I just want to live my life. I hate many things but when it come to AI, I just can't tell if I like it or completely hate it.

AmadeusD

Everywhere I look I see zombies wondering around chained to their phones. It is scary! Sometimes I feel like I am the only normal person in a never ending freak show. — I like sushi

I own a phone (smart phone), but I have this same experience. I chuckle constantly to and from the bus in my city watching for people walking into things, and each other.

Arne

I own a phone (smart phone), but I have this same experience. I chuckle constantly to and from the bus in my city watching for people walking into things, and each other. — AmadeusD

I primarily use my phone to blue-tooth music to my stereo. I never answer it and make about 1 call a month. I do return texts from friends but even that is only about 10 a month.

LuckyR

↪I like sushi

The optimal scenario is to grow up in an era where there are no artificial aids, learn to perform tasks yourself, then later acquire the technology, since youll have a broader understanding of where the technology fits in the big picture. Those who grow up with the technology in place and never learn what the technology "helps" you do, without it, tend not to question the technology.

I like sushi

Those who grow up with the technology in place and never learn what the technology "helps" you do, without it, tend not to question the technology. — LuckyR

Good point. I heard someone saying recently about how we are the same with cars. In the past many people who owned a car had a reasonable understanding of the inner-working of it. Today I think this is rarer, yet also due to the internet the ability to learn the basics are open to everyone.

In this respect I see AI as generally a good thing. Reminds me of basically what the internet was before it got inundated with nonsense. In the past a google search would pretty much do what AI does now. It seems like AI is essential now if you wish to find what you are looking for online.

I was chatting to someone the other day about Australia banning social media for under 16's. I said that this was a good thing and they saw it as 'woke' and asked how kids in cities can communicate and make friends if they are busy all day (especially true where I live btw!). I think this is missing the point though. Social media is clearly not a good idea for kids as a platform for making friends so why not think about how the physical space in a city can be made to accommodate for children meeting up and making friends.

What do you think about kids using social media. Personally I would ban smart phone use (outside of the home) for anyone under the age of 18. Cities do need to adapt to the needs of children though - green spaces to explore with freedom is so important I feel (beyond the watch of adult supervision).

Wayfarer

↪I like sushi

Australia has just passed legistlation to ban selected social media apps (FB, TikTok, Snapchat and a few others, Youtube exempt - documentary was incorrect about that), to those under 16. While there's a lot of community support, there are many open questions around how it will be enforced by next November, when it comes into law. Good mini-documentary here by an Australian content producer.

LuckyR

What do you think about kids using social media. Personally I would ban smart phone use (outside of the home) for anyone under the age of 18. Cities do need to adapt to the needs of children though - green spaces to explore with freedom is so important I feel (beyond the watch of adult supervision).

↪I like sushi

I think it's like the hullabaloo about TV when I was a youth (remember the "boob tube"?) and video games when I was a young adult. Could watching TV rot your brain? The main issue with TV back then and social media now isn't what TV and social media add to a youth, rather it is all of the other things kids could be doing with the time wasted on these electronic time sucks. The difference with social media is that you have the added issue of warped values as to the relative importance of things (such acceptance by peers).

I like sushi

↪LuckyR

I think the situation is a bit more nuanced than that. The is clear and powerful manipulation online that children should probably not be exposed to and that, more importantly, are not REAL visceral experiences. Not to mention the whole system can be a place to hide from reality made to encourage people to spend more time there.

I would argue that TV is not particularly good either. MTV culture was not exactly a shining example of humanity right?

I like sushi

↪Wayfarer

How well it can be enforced is neither here nor there for me. The principle is important. If people are not allowed to drink, vote or drive under a certain age then how are they allowed to go online and see anything they want.

I think as a means of guidance it is okay. At the end of the day the parents will do as they see fit. How will they track facebook and Tiktok and prosecute? Tricky, but the warning is now there so attention will be paid. Given the ease with which everyone's age is available (because of platforms like facebook) they should be able to tell the difference easily enough. They cannot be blamed for children using an adults account though - the point is NOT to make it so easy for kids to see the kind of things that can be seen on Tiktok I think. Of course, you could argue that there are already age restrictions too, but again, this is besides the point of how damaging such platforms can be where children are interacting with children and posting visual material about each other for literally everyone to see. Need I mention 'pig butchering' as one example of many where kids are preyed on.

Wayfarer

↪I like sushi

:up: My thoughts also.

AmadeusD

I primarily use my phone to blue-tooth music to my stereo. I never answer it and make about 1 call a month. I do return texts from friends but even that is only about 10 a month. — Arne

I use my phone for plenty - but Unless there is already something to use it for (i.e as a tool) why would I pick it up? There is hay to be made.

AlienVareient

Thanks for everyone commenting on this post, all of y'alls input, to some extant, made the peace within myself grow a little bit bigger and lasted a little longer :smile:

I know the advancement of AI is good, but it's ruined myself and out look on things

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