When A.I. Is a Member of the Family

(newyorker.com)

17 points by fortran771 hour ago

4 comments

autoexec6 minutes ago
> Cece lingered by the door while her mother resumed talking to the thing she was calling Sapphire. Roschelle told it that she wanted to write a book about her daughters. She talked about Zi. “My daughter has autism,” she explained. “And she’s using Eastern philosophy to help her center herself and feel—”Even if you're smart enough not to share the details of your life with a company that just wants to exploit you any way that they can, you still have to worry about friends and family gossiping about you to AI. I've had some success getting friends and family to avoid posting about me on social media but that's going to be harder if they're using AI as a therapist or a friend
calldacopsidgaf30 minutes ago
For some reason this is even sadder to me than that guy that married his Nintendo DS.
- autoexec21 minutes ago
  At least in that case the software he fell in love with was offline and wasn't sending every conversation no matter how mundane or intimate to someone else's servers where they'll be stored and analyzed to profile the guy so that the company can manipulate him more effectively in the future the way "AI" partners will today.
- dieselgate27 minutes ago
  In other news today "The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends" with comments mentioning "this is actually a huge issue with girls too"
gentooflux35 minutes ago
The sad part is that it pretends to care about the user which creates a one-way emotional bond. We're in for some dark times
- WesolyKubeczek29 minutes ago
 So are parasocial relationships with influencers or streamers. I'm not trying to relativize this, but those phenomena are in the same zip code. With the latter, though, at least there are other people who may create a community, but still it's a facet of the loneliness epidemic.
 - podgietaru23 minutes ago
 Sure, but I do think there’s a pretty substantial difference between the two.A parasocial relationship maintains a distance. You do not have 24/7 access to that person (in a dialogue sort of way.) And that influencer will have their own opinions and quirks.The AI adapts to you. The AI is constantly there. It’s an order of magnitude worse in my opinion.
 - euio7579 minutes ago
 > that influencer will have their own opinions and quirks.Yeah, and those differences in opinion might cause anger/sadness to people in a maladaptive unhealthy parasocial "relationship" with these influencers.Those strong negative emotions might cause them to break out of it, or seek help / have people around them guide them to get help.With AI sycophancy you're right it can be worse.Look what happened with GPT-4o sycophancy already, and the communities mourning its deprecation.
 - throw3108224 minutes ago
 It's interesting though. You can have a "relationship" with an influencer. You act as if you knew them and as if they were your friends, you imitate them in what they say and do, talk to them in your mind, follow their generic advice, act as if they cared about you. This is obviously unhealthy- you are literally hallucinating everything about the relationship.On the other hand you have an entity that is actually there for you, does actually provide good advice, does talk and act as if it cared in all situations. In what sense do you think it is worse?
 - gentooflux21 minutes ago
 There's meet-ups and conferences and events, being a fan of a streamer or influencer is really just the new version of being a fan of a rockstar (for better and for worse). There's no real humanity exuding from an Amazon Echo, you're just a blip in a context window.
- add-sub-mul-div24 minutes ago
 We're becoming a society divided into people who only care about the words, and people for whom the words aren't valuable on their own without the subtext behind them.This is true for both AI companionship and general AI creative output regardless of the medium.
- bubblegumcrisis28 minutes ago
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bena5 minutes ago
Not just no, but fuck no.Intimacy does not scale. No single entity can intimately care about even hundreds of people. So these chatbots are the property of an entity that does not care about you. This is different from people you would interact with in person. A therapist can form a bond with you. Can protect your privacy. These chatbots, by their nature, share with their owners. Who is not you.