[l5ymep]

Other fads have the disadvantage of being easily identifiable and avoidable. But AI chips away at what it means to be human. Now imagine if every comment in this thread is not a real person, but made by a LLM. Get any Truman show vibes?

[gspencley]

> Get any Truman show vibes?

No.

It's an interesting thought experiment but it changes nothing. Not for me, anyway. Commenting on these threads is an activity that I do for my own entertainment and "mental flexing." If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway.

I hope that doesn't sound "cold" but I come from a generation that was born before the Internet existed. I was about 10 years-old when we got our first modem-equipped computer and that was still early for most people (1992). Having those experiences early on with "early world-wide-web" meant that even though you knew you were talking to "real people" ... there was no real time chat, or video streaming or voice-over-ip etc. ... and so everyone's messages to each other were always pure text all of the time. And no one dared ever give their real name or identity online. You had no idea who you were talking to. So the web forced you to think of communication as just text between anonymous entities. I never got over that mental model, personally. Maybe a little bit with close friends and family on Facebook. But I'm not much of a social media user. When it comes to twitter and forums ... you all might as well be AI bots anyway. Makes no difference to me!

EDIT (addendum):

It's interesting, the more I think about your comment and my response the more I realize that it is THE INTERNET, still, that has fundamentally changed the nature of what it means to be human and to relate to others.

If you see interactions between people online as "real", meaningful human interactions, no different than relating to people in the physical / offline world, then it must be somewhat disturbing to think that you might be caught up in a "meaningful" relationship with someone who is "faking it." But that reminds me of romance scams.

For 18 years I ran a high traffic adult website and I would have men email me from time to time to share their stories about scammers luring them into relationships using doctored video, images and false identities etc. These men got completely wrapped up in the fantasy that they were being sold and it cost many of them their life savings before they finally realized it was a lie. I felt awful for them and quite sympathetic but at the same time wondered how lonely I would personally have to be to lose my skepticism of what I was being told if an attractive young woman were to express an interest in me out of nowhere.

ML will undoubtedly be used by scammers and ne'er-do-wells as a way to do their misdeeds more efficiently. But I think that the remedy is education. I miss the days when people were a bit weary of what they did, said or uploaded to the interwebs. I don't see the problem with trusting what you read online a little bit less.

[gspencley]

> It matters a lot to me because the whole point of commenting here (or anywhere) is to talk to other humans, not just to talk to myself.

That's fair, but one of my points was that even prior to ChatGPT the ability existed for you to be "sucked into" a relationship with another under false pretenses. LLMs might make it easier to put this sort of thing on "autopilot", but if what you seek is a guarantee of talking to other humans then I don't see how, in a post-LLM-world, that can't be done. I have no doubt that online forums and communities will come up with methods to "prove" that people are "real" (though I fear this will hurt anonymity online a bit more), but also try going out and meeting people in the real world more.

It's funny, I've been an ultra tech savvy computer nerd since I was a little kid. I owe a lot to the Internet. I was working from home for 20 years before the pandemic, running my own business. Grocery delivery services have been a godsend for me, because I find grocery shopping to be one of the most stressful activities in life. But as I enter middle age I'm becoming less and less enthusiastic about tech and "online existence" in general. The number of things that I would miss if the Internet just went away entirely gets fewer and fewer every year. Working remotely and grocery delivery services are probably the only two things that I couldn't live without. Everything else ... meh. Maybe I'm just getting burned out on tech and hype trains ... but "talking to real people" is something I start to value doing offline more and more when social interaction is what I seek.

[JohnFen]

> one of my points was that even prior to ChatGPT the ability existed for you to be "sucked into" a relationship with another under false pretenses

That's true, of course, but it's still interacting with a real human being. An adverse interaction, but at least a human.

> I don't see how, in a post-LLM-world, that can't be done.

I don't see how it can be done without losing much of the value of online interactions.

> also try going out and meeting people in the real world more.

I go out and meet real people plenty, thank you very much. But we're talking about online interactions here. There should be room for people online, too.

[gspencley]

> That's true, of course, but it's still interacting with a real human being. An adverse interaction, but at least a human.

Actually, not entirely. Some of the stories that really made me raise an eyebrow were people who claimed that they were video-chatting with "the girl." An important piece of context is that these men reached out to me because they found pictures of the woman they believed they were in a relationship with on my website. They wanted to know if the woman was employed by me or if we could verify certain details about her to try and make sense of what they had gone through.

Of course there were people driving this interaction. But a video chat? Obviously it was faked. What I think that AI advancement is going to allow these scammers to do in the future is possibly have extremely convincing voice chats, because when I probed about these video chat claims often times the scammers would have excuses about the microphone not working etc. so they were clearly just feeding pre-recorded video.

Anyway I've gotten the sense by your reply that you are under the impression that we are having some sort of debate or argument. I'm just making conversation and sharing my point of view and experiences. In my opinion I'm not sure the Internet "should" be anything in particular.

[JohnFen]

> Anyway I've gotten the sense by your reply that you are under the impression that we are having some sort of debate or argument. I'm just making conversation and sharing my point of view and experiences. In my opinion I'm not sure the Internet "should" be anything in particular.

Oh, no, I didn't think that at all. I'm sorry that I gave that impression. I'm just doing the same as you, sharing worldviews. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just having interesting conversation.

[JohnFen]

> If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway.

It matters a lot to me because the whole point of commenting here (or anywhere) is to talk to other humans, not just to talk to myself.

[chasd00]

> ..whole point of commenting here (or anywhere) is to talk to other humans..

honestly, if i can't tell the difference between an AI and a human here then why does the difference matter? If every comment on this story was AI generated except for mine I still received the same insight, enjoyment, and hit of dopamine. I don't think I really care between communicating with an AI or human if i can't tell the difference.

[JohnFen]

I understand that point of view. I simply don't share it. If I can't tell the difference between AI and a human being in my conversations, that would undermine my trust in some extremely important things. I'd withdraw from such fora entirely as a result, because there's no way for me to know if those conversations are real or just me engaging in mental masturbation.

[layer8]

Some would say that if you can’t possibly tell the difference, then both are equally real or unreal, in the sense that it doesn’t matter if the neural net is biological or electronic.

[JohnFen]

Right, that's why I say I understand what chasd00 is saying. I happen to disagree -- I think it matters quite a lot.

Even ignoring philosophical arguments, it matters to me on a personal level because I consider people to be important, and want to interact with them. If I'm talking to a machine that I can't tell isn't a human, then I'm accomplishing nothing of importance and am just wasting my time.

[nuancebydefault]

You should readcwhat you just wrote

> If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway.

Sorry, but no normal person can say that. Suppose I would try to bull you, it wouldn't matter? It wouldn't make a difference whether a person would have typed it or not?

[G_z9]

This comment is mind blowing

[Nasrudith]

If AI can chip away at your meaning of being human I am afraid your definition and understanding before is in need of improvement. Destroying a faulty understanding should be celebrated, not feared.

[tome]

> AI chips away at what it means to be human

Can you name a broad technological revolution that didn't?