[ulchar]

Emotions are an axiom to convey feelings, but also our sensitivity to human emotions can be a vector for manipulation.

Especially when you consider the bottom line that this tech will be ultimately be horned into advertising somehow (read: the field dedicated to manipulating you into buying shit).

This whole fucking thing bothers me.

[maroonblazer]

> Emotions are an axiom to convey feelings, but also our sensitivity to human emotions can be a vector for manipulation.

When one gets to be a certain age one begins to become attuned to this tendency of others' emotions to manipulate you, so you take steps to not let that happen. You're not ignoring their emotions, but you can address the underlying issue more effectively if you're not emotionally charged. It's a useful skill that more people would benefit from learning earlier in life. Perhaps AI will accelerate that particular skill development, which would be a net benefit to society.

[komali2]

> When one gets to be a certain age one begins to become attuned to this tendency of others' emotions to manipulate you

This is incredibly optimistic, which I love, but my own experience with my utterly deranged elder family, made insane by TV, contradicts this. Every day they're furious about some new things fox news has decided it's time to be angry about: white people being replaced (thanks for introducing them to that, tucker!), "stolen" elections, Mexicans, Muslims, the gays, teaching kids about slavery, the trans, you name it.

I know nobody else in my life more emotionally manipulated on a day to day basis than them. I imagine I can't be alone in watching this happen to my family.

[jasondigitized]

What if this technology could be applied so you can’t be manipulated? If we are already seeing people use this to simulate and train sales people to deal with tough prospects we can squint our eyes a bit and see this being used to help people identify logical fallacies and con men.

[mrbungie]

That's just being hopeful/optimistic. There are more incentives to use it for manipulation than to protect from manipulation.

That happens with a lot of tech. Social networks are used to con people more than to educate people about con men.

[mrbungie]

With AI you can do A/B testing (or multi-arm bandits, the technique doesn't matter) to get into someone's mind.

Most manipulators end up getting bored of trying again and again with the same person. That won't happen if you are a dealing with a machine, as it can change names, techniques, contexts, tones, etc. until you give it what its operator wants.

Maybe you're part of the X% who will never give in to a machine. But keep in mind that most people have no critical thinking skills nor mental fortitude.

[achierius]

Problem is, people aren't machines either: someone who's getting bombarded with phishing requests will begin to lose it, and will be more likely to just turn off their Wi-Fi than allow an AI to run a hundred iterations of a many-armed-bandit approach on them.

[mrbungie]

Probably there will more nuance than that. And doomscrolling is a thing, you know.

[jimkleiber]

I think we often get better at detecting the underlying emotion with which the person is communicating, seeing beyond the one they are trying to communicate in an attempt to manipulate us. For example, they say that $100 is their final price but we can sense in the wavering of their voice that they might feel really worried that they will lose the deal. I don't think this will help us pick up on those cues because there are no underlying real emotions happening, maybe even feeding us many false impressions and making us worse at gauging underlying emotions.

[irjustin]

> Especially when you consider the bottom line that this tech will be ultimately be horned into advertising somehow.

Tools and the weaponization of them.

This can be said of pretty much any tech tool that has the ability to touch a good portion of the population, including programming languages themselves, CRISPR?

I agree we have to be careful of the bad, but the downsides in this case are not so dangerous that we should be trying to suppress it because the benefits can be incredible too.

[jasondigitized]

This. It’s mind boggling how many people can only see things through one world view and see nothing but downside.

[AnthonyMouse]

The concern is that it's being locked up inside of major corporations that aren't the slightest bit trustworthy. To make this safe for the public, people need to be able to run it on their own hardware and make their own versions of it that suit their needs rather than those of a megacorp.

[tonyhart7]

this tech isn't slowing down and our generation maybe hesitate at first but remember this field progressing at astonishing speeds like we are literally 1 generation away

[jasondigitized]

Why can’t it also inspire you? If I can forgo advertising and have ChatGPT tutor my child on geometry and they actually learn it at a fraction of the cost of a human tutor why is that bothersome? Honest question. Why do some many people default to something sinister going on. If this technology shows real efficacy in education at scale take my money.

[spiderice]

Because it is obviously going to be used to manipulate people. There is absolutely 0 doubt about that (and if there is I'd love to hear your reasoning). The fact that it will be used to teach geometry is great. But how many good things does a technology need to do before the emotional manipulation becomes worth it?

[ulchar]

I don't think OpenAI is doing anything particularly sinister. But whatever OpenAI has today a bad actor will have in October. This horseshit is moving rather fast. Sorry, but in two years going from failing the turing test to being able to have a conversation with an AI agent nearly indistinguishable from a person is going to be destabilizing.

Start telling Grandma never to answer the phone.

[trashtester]

AI is going to be fantastic at teaching skills to students that those students may never need, since the AI will be able to do all the work that requires such skills, and do them faster, cheaper and at a higher level of quality.

[SubiculumCode]

One may also begin to ask, what's the point of learning geometry? Or anything, anymore?