[marcus_holmes]

Isn't this about children attributing human characteristics onto the LLM, rather than the LLM itself pretending to be human?

And we do this with lots of things that are not human for children (e.g. Bluey and Peppa Pig). Do we need a "this is not a human" warning for them, too?

[estearum]

Do Bluey and Peppa Pig produce convincing human-like responses to virtually any human-generated input directed towards them?

If so, then uhh yeah we should definitely regulate that shit

[marcus_holmes]

If not now, then soon, yes. I'll bet money there's a toy manufacturer somewhere working out how to hook a Bluey doll up to an LLM to make it responsive.

I'm not completely clear on what we're afraid of here, though. We routinely project human-like characteristics onto non-human things for our children. We don't think this is harmful. Why are we worried about children projecting human characteristics onto an LLM?

[estearum]

Obviously the people who think LLMs should be forbidden from this use-case would think it should be forbidden from put-it-in-a-doll use-case.

We routinely give our children ibuprofen or acetaminophen, this does not imply that some vicodin or oxycontin would be fine.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that a fundamental skill of being a good social creature (which we know to be absolutely critical to good human health) is to be able to distinguish between human and non-human. Or more generally conscious and non-conscious.

You are basing your opinion off of e.g. anthropomorphizing cars or dolls which 1) are obviously not human, and 2) rely on the fairly intense imagination of the anthropomorphizer to "work." Once the imagination stops, the anthropomorphization stops.

In contrast, LLMs successfully delude even intelligent adults into anthropomorphizing them. This is especially problematic for a generation of humans that grow up where most of their human-to-human communication happens intermediated by technology, i.e. LLM-originated interaction looks more human every day, but also human-originated interaction looks more LLM- (or technology-)originated every day too.

We've been living with this pathology for a while now in the form of people treating those humans on the other side of a chatbox vastly worse than they would ever treat a human face to face. Now this is chewing away at the distinction from the other end too.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm always wary of extrapolating from the few individuals who experience that harmful interaction with chatbots to the general population. We have the same thing with every new tech, that some people react badly/too strongly to it and get into a mental health situation [0]. There's nothing unusual about LLM chatbots in this respect. So yes, some people anthropomorphise LLMs too much, but that's not a statement you can make about the general population as "even intelligent adults anthropomorphise LLMs too much".

We are also talking about kids, who will grow up with this technology around them and adapt to it better than we do as adults. We see it as a threat and a change to the natural order of things, because we grew up without it. Kids growing up with it will see it as part of the natural order of things and will learn how to incorporate it into their lives. That will take some adaptation, sure, but that's the same with every new technology. The answer is not to shield them from it, because we just put off the day that they get exposed to it with no training. We must coach and teach them how to deal with it healthily. Of course, that means that we ourselves as adults need to work out how to deal with it healthily first, which isn't always obvious ;)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder

[estearum]

Does this techno-optimist logic apply to all technologies, e.g. glyphosate or oxycontin, or only to technologies that you first presume are safe/positive, and then you can just argue from that presumption?

[marcus_holmes]

I know you're making a bad-faith argument, but it's a good question.

So yes, kids growing up in areas where Oxycontin abuse is prevalent will be much, much, more aware of what that technology does (both the good and the bad) than an adult who is encountering it for the first time. The adult will be way more easily lead into using it by the adverts and advise of the people selling it, the kid will not believe any of that.

All technologies are both harmful and beneficial. We have a Fire Department for a reason, but that doesn't mean we'd go back to eating our food raw.

[smcg]

We probably do, considering how many seem to treat it as companionship or therapy.

[marcus_holmes]

Yeah that's adults, though. Unless we go down the McDonalds coffee warning path "warning: this LLM is not human and can harm you if you treat it as human"