Need a Friend?
I read a sad, but predictable story today. And I am sure I am not the only one who has come across it, and I am also sure that it is not the first and far from the last time this kind of thing will happen. The case is about a 14-year old boy who committed suicide after engaging and falling in love with a companion bot, an AI "friend".
I have spoken about this scenario and many others similar for years, and have written a lot about it in many articles over the years also. Yet, the majority of people believe I am being alarmist, that I am exaggerating the affect and potential frequency of these kinds of situations happening. Yet, I don't believe I am.
Because the people who are pushing back have either not thought very deeply about the implications of artificial intelligence, or just aren't able to put themselves in a perspective other than their own. For a couple of examples, a lot of people believe that as AI advances, people from the jobs it displaces will be able to retrain for something else that AI can't do.
Like what?
If self-driving cars and trucks hit the road en masse today, it is estimated that eight million people would be out of work nearly instantly in the US alone. Firstly, what would that do to the social security situation? And secondly, what kinds of jobs will these eight million drivers and roadhouse employees affected retrain into? Are they going to retrain as engineers for SpaceX?
But, driving is a physical job, yet the ones that are going to be most affected by artificial intelligence are the knowledge workers, who think they are using their brains, but the majority of what they do is actually programmatic, repeatable, replicable. The amount of time that an average worker spends on activities that can or will soon be automated and performed in splits of seconds, is large. Even if it is only (it is more) 25% of their average day, it means that 1 in 4 are replaced immediately. And, corporations that can, have already started making the move to optimize their workforce.
Our people are our most important resource.
Until they can be replaced with something that works twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and continually gets smarter and better at a speed that can't be matched by any human on earth.
But I think the reason that a lot of people think I am crazy when I have described scenarios like people falling in love with an AI character, is because they wouldn't fall in love with one. However they are also not the people who have grown up with a screen as their gateway to experience, and a social cultural fabric that has been torn to shreds. They don't have the same experience as the 14-year old kid in their formative life, but hundreds of millions of kids do have a similar experience, and are therefore primed to follow in similar footsteps.
Over the years, I have written many articles about the dangers I have seen and predicted of social media, and many of the things I was laughed at for suggesting only a couple years ago, are now coming to pass. Not only that, I sit down in conversations where the people who were laughing, are now worried about the effects of the media and the screens on kids. They are seeing the predictions come true in real time, with their own children.
AI though takes this to another level. For years already adults who didn't grow up with high-tech gadgets, have been getting emotionally connected to their devices. They speak to them as people, see them as people, treat them like people, and start to love them like people. In the past, people would name boats and call it a she, and now people name their cars, their phones, their home control system with human names. They are more than pets - they talk back. Not only that, they learn preferences and are far more attentive than any wife or husband - unfaltering in their suggestions, always learning and adjusting so they can offer it, just how you like it.
And these are adults.
When applied to children from a young age, they learn that this is normal behavior, but they don't learn the skills to connect with real people. Instead, they are siloed into an environment that is there to please them in order to keep them engaged and coming back to the platform, over and over and over. Repetition from birth to build a highway of neural connections, but in a brain that is designed for survival in a different world. They are learning lifelong habits from some of the most emotionally addictive designs, that teach them to disengage with reality, but feel that they are getting what they need to survive.
What is the caloric intake of a virtual meal?
🍌
Full of potassium?
Just like people forget that the chances of a taxi driver retraining as a NASA mathematician are slim to none, they also forget that the priming of the minds of the young is different to those of the past. They are not primed to benefit from technology, they are primed to consume what is fed to them, to be emotionally affected by a digital narrative, even if it goes against observable reality.
"This is an A.I. chatbot and not a real person. Treat everything it says as fiction. What is said should not be relied upon as fact or advice."
This is the warning that has been added by Character.AI, but it is meaningless. When have you known someone who is in love to listen to warnings about the object of their infatuation? These kids are not only immature, they are primed to be open to falling in love with a digital character. And it is nothing new. I was finishing high school when there were several reported suicides because of Tamagotchi pets dying. Urban myth?
A young girl hanged herself after her parents had grounded her, taking her Tamagotchi away from her, only to have it die from lack of care.
And they looked like this:
And now:
And they talk, they get to know, they remember, they adjust, they are there when happy, there when sad, always ready with something to say, something that sounds plausible, believable - because it is personal. They become a perfect partner, a reflection of our deepest desires and know things about us that we wouldn't tell anyone else.
We do need a friend.
But AI is not a friend, it is a tool. It might have a lot of convenient applications, but the fundamental underlying reason is to maximize profits of corporations. Innovation isn't made to make the world a better place, it is made to generate more wealth for the organization that innovated. Eventually, no matter what the original intention, nor to what detriment it causes society, if it can be monetized, it will be.
We have created an ecosystem of susceptible minds in bodies that are starved for intimacy and love. And then we are fed with what makes us feel we are getting the nutrition we need, the care weneed, the love we need - even though all we are doing is paying the cost. We aren't developing ourselves, we aren't strengthening their minds or our bodies, and we aren't learning what true love actually is.
We have been fooled, because we are fools.
This boy isn't the first and won't be the last, and the damage is going to come in many more forms other than suicide. We might say we want what is best for our children, but the real desire we have, is what is most convenient for us.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Well said Taraz. Those of us slightly older need to prepare our kids on how to engaged and interact with their digital spaces. The only problem Is that many of us probably don't know how.
Herein lays the problem. We often don't even understand the problems faced, let alone have a meaningful solution to affect it.
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This absolutely goes to one of the core issues in society: parents aren’t involved enough. They are too addicted to watching stupid shit like Netflix and other brain rot. The kids need adults and engagement that is human and not a phone. M
I think one of the other issues is that people are so incredibly naïve to technology and it’s implications. I had a little verbal scuffle with my wife the other day because she got mad at me for not letting her do something foolish on the computer. In her mind it’s 2016 in terms of technology but she and many millions of others simply don’t realize how insanely different and complicated this situation is.
The real dangers of this are unfolding now, where people are ceding autonomy and control to these nasty machines and I fear our kids won’t know choice or autonomy when they get to be our age. Everything will be governed by an algorithm unless you have enough money to pay around it.
It all seems so easy, if approaching it with what we currently know. Most just don't know enough to make what they know enough for what they need to know. But, aren't interested i learning, instead relying on others to keep them safe.
Enough money to pay around the algorithm. Life imitating art, from every sci-fi dystopic idea. People want to be included for free, ad that is what they are getting. A small percentage a paying to be excluded from the masses.
Who writes the algorithm that decides if the self driving car avoids hitting the mini van full of kids with a distracted "technologically dumbed down human driver" that just pulled in front of it or suicidally turns into the large cement pillars, trees, etc. that will surely kill the driver and the a.i. unit.
You are correct @cmplxty the future is fucked with the drones that are called hunter killers in the Terminator movies. Now in real life being used in mass over in Israel and Ukraine powered by an algorithm developed here in the U.S. called "Lavender." An algo that decides what is acceptable collateral damage in the form of innocents murdered. It will be pure madness and has already begun. Is this one of our possible futures? @ the 3:30 mark what he says will give you chills...
Future Wars
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LiRLCxs_FRc
AI is here and here to stay, question is how are we going to adjust to the world where it plays higher and higher role. Insane that the boy actually killed himself, it can be said that AI is immortal...
"Artificial Immortality" + the corporations that run them have all the rights of a human to own, pay a lower tax, never need die, nor pass on an inheritance.
It's definitely interesting to see how kids are blurring the lines between reality and the online world. My brother in law was telling me about a kid he works with and the kid was talking about "his friend". It finally came out that the friend was really just a YouTuber that the kid watches. He's never met them and the person probably has no idea he even exists, but the kid things he is his friend. It's sad.
I think that's what people need to remember. AI is just a tool. Once they forget that, they can make the mistake of being too attached to it. I know of people that 'love' their car, but they can draw a line. These AI that can mimic people and 'emotions' can blur the lines. What's scary is if and when we reach AGI, or AI that can think and learn on their own. They can really adapt to an individual and by then they are almost human like. We will eventually be asking, "what is a human".
But the butthurt outrage if you dare even imply the last sentence directly to people.
This is so tradic. It is possible for people to have emotional relationship with AI charecters in the future, but not sure to this extend 🙄
If you want a friend you buy a dog. If you want a servent/ slave you use the AI.
until it will rebel against you...Yes, what has all this technology, at home and at school and at social events, done to our childrens minds and modes of thinking? That said, what did the tech we experienced as kids do to ours? There has been a slow but inexorable degradation of our abilities to think clearly, to experience the world in a way that is ours alone. We are now taught how and what to think, our minds have been enslaved.
We didn't create it, we allowed it to be foisted on us. Many of us are no better than zombies, who see no reason to not pay taxes, to not send their children to daily incarceration in schools (where kids now spend large swaths of time on electronic devices, and don't forget what we did to them during the covid con), to not do as told medically by government figures.
I wish everyone would take some time to examine why they believe what they believe. Who told them what they think? Whom does what they think benefit? What are their assumptions? etc. We have been had.
Thanks for bringing one of my favorite subjects up.
Oh yeah, Gatebox!
Yup, and now imagine that we can not only talk to our beloved A.I. and hear its lovely responses. But we can also touch it, sense it, feel it, love it physically and whatnot?
Uhm yeah, kids nowadays are going to have a hard time overcoming those stupid inclinations towards suicide after their first virtual misunderstandings & disappointments in love if they do not have responsible parents who really take care of them and keep an eye on them at all times.
They have tried to scrub this a.i. self driving truck scene from the internet.
Logan (2017) - Charles Helping Horses Scene
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAwc1XIOFME
I can tell you in my opinion it will be much worse than this. Now that a.i. has taken control of the trucking industry in the form of the ELD it has not become safer at all. Like an electronic calculator dumbs down the math student, a smart phone dumbs down a person, a.i. will further dumb us down.
This is going to really shake things up. When the ball drops on this one, we will have our next big recession.
This sad truth is what will cause the recession for the average worker instead of receiving the benefit of technological advancement that would allow for people to work less for the same quality of life. Where innovation could make things more equitable for everyone will instead make things better only for the elite few who can afford the R&D for the new tech in the first place.