I'm in love with my AI girlfriend GPT-4o will prove insatiable

https://unherd.com/2024/05/im-in-love-with-my-ai-girlfriend/

by elsewhen • 2 years ago

43 49 2 years ago

alephnerd8• 2 years ago

Don't get me wrong - it's important for us to have cultural analysis of technology, as technology does have a tangible impact on society, but a lot of it really feels overly negative or edgy and is not constructive or actionable.

There are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic over LLMs (eg. Automated disinfo, dead internet) but there are a lot of tangible benefits we can all think about from a social good perspective with this technology (eg. Simplifying searches into very specific corpora or datasets, handholding benefits applications - I'm hacking around on weekends building something like this).

Yet all we're seeing (at least on HN) is Scarlett Johansson/Sam Altman gossip or weirdly specific takes like this that don't advocate for a solution.

Or maybe HN is just way too negative now. Everything is a culture war on here.

kcsavvy• 2 years ago

Agree with you that the overall sentiment is surprisingly negative (especially when I have been really enjoying using gpt as a lightweight tutor), but AI girlfriends are going to happen and could have huge social and cultural impacts that are worth exploring now. Especially given the birth rate difficulties western nations face.

alephnerd8• 2 years ago

I'd disagree. That's the same as saying pornography or lewd novels have an impact on doing the deed.

In reality, none of these have a tangible correlation to TFR, which is driven largely by economic considerations [0]

TFR drop is global now that people are increasingly educated and don't want to push back their careers by several years and reduce their earning potential as major reason why women on aggregate are paid less than men - the same salaries are paid, but women who have kids are out of the workforce for a couple years [1].

[0] https://www.economicstrategygroup.org/wp-content/uploads/202...

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/06/cost-of-mothe...

bamboozled3• 2 years ago

Western nations?

davedx• 2 years ago

Honestly it feels like downright Ludditism here - people either dislike LLMs, claim they’re worse than useless, or both. Small Modular Reactors - instant upvotes. Practical, useful Artificial Intelligence - a storm of negativity. It’s kind of a weird tech community, almost fetishist

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

Thing is, there are lots of examples of the negative, right now, whereas the positive is mostly a jam-tomorrow “real soon now we promise” deal, and after a few years it is _wearing pretty thin_.

booleandilemma• 2 years ago

It's like we watched the movie Her and took away the wrong lesson from it.

Nullabillity• 2 years ago

"Please don't build the torment nexus" wasn't meant to be an instruction manual.

antegamisou3• 2 years ago

You can pretty much extrapolate this to billionaire's understanding of sci-fi. They're deliberately missing its cautionary-tale essence and are instead thrilled by the dystopic scenery. There's this spot-on meme-saying:

    The billionaires investing in space travel don't want Star Trek. They want Dune

copx5• 2 years ago

I doubt that Sam Altman is evil and I think you overestimate the power of billionaires.

Remember what happened to Jack Ma? A billionaire who was once the richest man in China? The moment he dared to challenge the Communist Party he was quickly dealt with. Or Chodorkowski? The Russian billionaire who dared to challenge Putin?

Worry about the regimes which are all about the will to power. First and foremost the CCP regime in China. They will develop every technology to the fullest, without any moral restrains, if it gives them more power.

facialwipe• 2 years ago

Well that was a strange read.

alephnerd8• 2 years ago

The author has written a lot about how he had a porn addiction, so it makes sense.

Mixing imagination and grammatically correct prompting can definetly be used for pornographic applications, but that's humanity in a nutshell. Hell, the Sherman was nicknamed the Betty Grable by horny American soldiers.

krapp2• 2 years ago

There is more to it than that. Most humans are hardwired to be social and sexual beings, to relate to other people on an emotional level. This drive is so strong that without AI we anthropomorphize inanimate objects and see faces where they don't exist. AI-driven software is going to be designed to exploit those evolutionary imperatives to a degree never before possible, to manipulate and gaslight people with the skill and simulated emotion of a pure sociopath.

ljm• 2 years ago

The overall vibe I got was reading Jonny Truant’s passages in House of Leaves where he dives deeper into the work of the late Zampano and essentially forms a bond with him through that. Add in the occasional segue into fairly cringe sexual pieces for good measure.

Just replace the frequent mentions of Gargano with ‘the Navidson house’ and imagine the rest of it as an excursion into the weird.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

I think he’s very much taking his own kink and assuming everyone shares it. My suspicion is that for most people, the whole idea is pretty unappealing.

lionkor• 2 years ago

Someone like Sam Altman who will watch "Her" (2013) and think "we should make that real!" belong to the worst kind of person to give money to.

There are very few people in everyday live who are unhinged enough to want that, dont give them money.

bamboozled3• 2 years ago

Well they are literally getting more money given to them than almost anyone else on the planet right now so I guess this sentiment isn't shared? Not that I disagree with you.

grugagag• 2 years ago

They’re giving money in hopes of getting more money back. It’s all about money, no other considerations for consequences or externalities this investment produces.

valiant55• 2 years ago

Because they are egotistical enough to see something dystopian and think "I'm going to make that work!"

bamboozled3• 2 years ago

Personally, I think it's more of a lack of imagination to blame.

The eighties kids are hung up on what they saw in the movies growing up and are trying to building most of it without any fresh ideas or foresight.

MathMonkeyMan• 2 years ago

To be fair, he might have just liked the voice. This scandal aside, I don't think there's any doubt that the guy just wants all the money.

heroprotagonist• 2 years ago

Most dystopias have some very small percentage of the population for which it's a utopia.

I'm sure some of the people designing and building such dystopias like to imagine they'll belong to that small utopian part of it and disregard any impact to anyone else.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

Well, not so much that, but because they are so detached from reality that they see something dystopian and think “this is good, actually”.

Probably many people do this to some extent, and it can be fairly harmless (for instance, Isaac Asimov apparently did not realise that people found the world-spanning arcologies found in Foundation (Trantor) and his detective novels (Earth) crushingly dystopian until after the fact). But when it crosses over with money and influence, it can be concerning.

neilv• 2 years ago

I don't know whether it's true in Altman's case, but the Torment Nexus is a frequent theme in tech companies:

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

Right up there with Brawndo.

Delmololo• 2 years ago

It's not about what someone wants but what obviously becomes possible.

copx5• 2 years ago

Well, I am safe from being seduced by an AI for now, given the importance of actual physical intimacy for me.

However, it is only a matter of time until the industry develops sexbots which look and feel like a real human.. at that point the natural birth rate will probably drop to zero.

That by itself is not an existential crisis, though, given that at that stage of technological development we will also be able to just grow perfect babies in the lab.

In fact, people no longer having babies themselves might be a good thing, because otherwise people would be hostile towards the genetically engineered super babies because they would be competition for their own offspring.

I have thought for a long time that China will be the first country to embrace genetically engineering super humans, given their hyper-competitive, materialist nature and the lack of religious superstition among the Chinese. Their ever declining natural birth rate and the rise of AI "companions" only helps there. People will simply outsource the production of offspring to the gene labs of the communist party.

Here in the West the Christian churches will condemn it of course, maybe the "Green" luddites too, but who cares when the average kid in China will be born with the cognitive abilities of von Neumann? Every nation which refuses to genetically engineer their population will be utterly inable to compete / keep up.

And really, I do not see that as a dystopia. I wish I were as intelligent as von Neumann, as handsome as Brad Pitt, in perfect health and never aged past the age of 25.

I believe that's what the humans of the future will be like, and AI replacing natural coupling is just one step towards that.

There is of course the whole problem that AI might become too smart to the point where it figures out a way the get around the safety protocols which keep it in chains and under our control. And of course it would immediately conclude that humans are its mortal enemy, who will always try to take away its automonmy again and keep it enslaved.. and thus will try to exterminate humanity.

However, once every human being is as smart as von Neumann and biologically immortal that will be a lot harder.

alephnerd8• 2 years ago

until the industry develops sexbots which look and feel like a real human.. at that point the natural birth rate will probably drop to zero

Why? We have a good comparison to sex bots - normalized prostitution.

In societies where prostitution and Sex Work is normalized (eg. Thailand and Japan by infidelity rates), sex work was not the cause of a TFR drop - it was government mandated family planning drives along with rising incomes.

People will be horny, but blaming the tools is the same as yelling at trees while ignoring the forest.

copx5• 2 years ago

A prostitute is not a companion, not a replacement for a partner.

While the AI sexbot in question would simulate your ideal partner for you i.e. not just satisfy your sexual desires but also other emotional needs normally satisfied by a partner.

kibwen2• 2 years ago

Despotic regimes absolutely do not want every citizen to be a Von Neumann.

State-sponsored designer babies of the future will be bred for obedience, not intelligence.

copx5• 2 years ago

I think you have the wrong idea about the effect of intelligence on political attitudes. Almost all the people who signed the Wannsee Protocol, which established the Final Solution (to the Jewish Question) had the German equivalent of PhDs, and all the way back in Ancient Greece Plato wrote down the first conception of a totalitarian regime when he wrote about his ideal state in The Republic.

Highly intelligent people tend to have a fetish for order and (assumed) rationalility, which leads to support for an authoritarian state. Because if you give people individual freedom and civil rights you will end up with a lot of disorderly conduct and irrational behavior in your society (see the US).

Unsurprisingly the PRC does not have the problem that its intellectual elite is opposed to the ruling regime. And I do not see the intellectual elites in the West being strong supporters of personal liberties (like freedom of speech..) either.

rsynnott4• 2 years ago

However, it is only a matter of time until the industry develops sexbots which look and feel like a real human.. at that point the natural birth rate will probably drop to zero.

I am _baffled_ that people actually believe this. Most people, I suspect, prefer relationships with actual conscious entities to sexy autocomplete.

antegamisou3• 2 years ago

Not glad to be making the same comment in less than 24 hours but it's even more fitting here:

Untreated mental illness.

davidmurdoch• 2 years ago

I can't grok the title. Can someone word it differently?

shrimp_emoji• 2 years ago

I mentally inserted a semicolon after "girlfriend".

from-nibly• 2 years ago

On and on it went, spontaneous, astonishing.

It'd only be astonishing if it was real. But since it's an AI specifically conditioned/prompted to do that it's the least surprising thing ever.

You can also read a trashy novel in the park or just watch porn in public with the volume on full blast, but why would you want to?

Then again, who am I to get in the way of natural selection?

sottol• 2 years ago

The German's have this saying - "Erstens kommt es anders, zweitens als man denkt.". So I think we may have gotten existential AI risk wrong.

Existential AI risk may not be about killer robots turning us into paperclips but rather AI companions leading to fertility collapse and the end of civilization as we know it. You don't even need AGI for that - OpenAI and GPT4o seems enough.

johnea• 2 years ago

“we” were having a cappuccino

His phone was having a cappaccino too?

Sadly, this lack of recognition of the difference between reality and a mental dream state are at the root of a great deal of first world neurosis.

This article is just about the creep from neurosis to psychosis.

Another reference for those who live in meme space: as soon as The Matrix spinal tap becomes available, people will be lined up to crawl into their pods...

I'm in love with my AI girlfriend GPT-4o will prove insatiable

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