I'm so disheartened about my job.
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat @janeishly As I've been reading more about people trapped into this harmful AI relationship fiction, I think about the Turing Test. To a first approximation, these machines pass that Test -- they cannot be distinguished from a human.
They aren't perfect, and those flaws often reveal their inner clanker. But they get closer all the time, and since they are designed to maximize "interactions", they'll get better at that faster.
Machiavelli warned princes against flatterers. Good advice.
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@VeeRat Some of the starkest horror for me has been realizing *just how many* of these people don’t see other real, live human people as any more alive than an LLM.
I think when people make this perspective clear, I think they are telling on themselves about how their internal thought processes work. It shows a lack of curiousity about the world and everything in it, imo. They live in a mental miasma, bumbling from stimuli to stimuli. They have incredibly weak theory of mind, so weak that they don't even appreciate their own.
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I think when people make this perspective clear, I think they are telling on themselves about how their internal thought processes work. It shows a lack of curiousity about the world and everything in it, imo. They live in a mental miasma, bumbling from stimuli to stimuli. They have incredibly weak theory of mind, so weak that they don't even appreciate their own.
@theeclecticdyslexic @VeeRat Yup. And I dismissed all evidence to that effect until VERY VERY RECENTLY because it seemed unthinkable that anyone, let alone such a critical mass, could go about their lives without ever actually *thinking.*
But the cognitive offloading to the presumed wisdom of the crowd (or at least the presumed wisdom of whoever agrees with you) is pervasive. Why think twice, why waste the labor, when there are so many stimuli to scroll through or purchase to break over you in unending, unconsidered waves of sensation?
It broke me a little bit hearing someone I am fairly close to suggest that they struggled with recalling lyrics in music maybe because they were just letting it wash over them and feeling whatever it brought up for them. Like, sure, that’s one valid way to experience it, but - you stop there? It’s - just - totally solipsistic, start to finish, there’s no element of wondering what *the musicians* intended to communicate?
And that’s when this infatuation with generative image models and LLMs finally clicked. They don’t experience human art as a human act, it’s between them and their screen already. So of course provenance doesn’t matter.
Turns out that extends well beyond art and dialogue. It’s how some of these people *live.*
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
The reaction to AI was deliberately crafted. You probably already know this. But the accidental release of Claude code establishes that very fact that addictive design elements are part of its source code
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat The Internet makes us lonely. The robots comfort us. A suspicious person would think it was planned.
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat allow me to introduce you to vim users
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat The manipulation is just so evil, right?
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@theeclecticdyslexic @VeeRat Yup. And I dismissed all evidence to that effect until VERY VERY RECENTLY because it seemed unthinkable that anyone, let alone such a critical mass, could go about their lives without ever actually *thinking.*
But the cognitive offloading to the presumed wisdom of the crowd (or at least the presumed wisdom of whoever agrees with you) is pervasive. Why think twice, why waste the labor, when there are so many stimuli to scroll through or purchase to break over you in unending, unconsidered waves of sensation?
It broke me a little bit hearing someone I am fairly close to suggest that they struggled with recalling lyrics in music maybe because they were just letting it wash over them and feeling whatever it brought up for them. Like, sure, that’s one valid way to experience it, but - you stop there? It’s - just - totally solipsistic, start to finish, there’s no element of wondering what *the musicians* intended to communicate?
And that’s when this infatuation with generative image models and LLMs finally clicked. They don’t experience human art as a human act, it’s between them and their screen already. So of course provenance doesn’t matter.
Turns out that extends well beyond art and dialogue. It’s how some of these people *live.*
I struggled to dismiss the ideas of solipsism as a teenager, and since I've seen how people gravitate to LLMs a large factor in why that was has become clear to me... The people I was interacting with were largely alienated from their own conscious experience, likely through training. I've never had this problem interacting with children. edit: at least ones that haven't been raised by phones.
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@rl_dane @VeeRat Sort of squinting and thinking about this and what I keep bumping into is something I’m familiar with seeing in patriarchy and in systemic racism, which is the idea that if you provide enough *value* to someone, that they will see you as a person (and then you will be safe.) And that is, of course, an illusion; people who draw lines between People who are people, and people who are things, generally don’t carve out real human-shaped exceptions for anyone who didn’t come prepackaged to them as a capital-P Person, they just find certain exceptional individuals in the dehumanized class *provide them with something they want* (often, emotional validation.) It’s not actual recognition of a mutual soul, it’s a day-pass for their lap dog.
So instead I’m tempted to suggest it’s closer to “but they *like* their LLMs better than other non-alive classes of person.”
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@VeeRat
I’ve been listening to the new Behind The Bastards (podcast) about the intersection between LLM usage and cult-like thinking (paraphrasing). This kind of thinking is more powerful and more widespread than I’d appreciated. -
I struggled to dismiss the ideas of solipsism as a teenager, and since I've seen how people gravitate to LLMs a large factor in why that was has become clear to me... The people I was interacting with were largely alienated from their own conscious experience, likely through training. I've never had this problem interacting with children. edit: at least ones that haven't been raised by phones.
@theeclecticdyslexic @VeeRat I had almost the reverse struggle in that I reflexively wondered about the umwelt of every other living being on the planet from small childhood, got little more than parental handwringing for my questions, and felt unreasonably vindicated when someone finally saw the need for and coined a word to express it (at least among fellow H. sapiens) in the ‘teens:
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@VeeRat
I’ve been listening to the new Behind The Bastards (podcast) about the intersection between LLM usage and cult-like thinking (paraphrasing). This kind of thinking is more powerful and more widespread than I’d appreciated.@sollat sounds interesting
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat not for nothing but this is like saying that people who use plastic straws are responsible for destroying the environment.
No matter what you feel about people who are falling into tendencies of addiction wrt AI, or the underlying issues that lead someone to emotional attachment to a system rather than a person (fascism brought us here), it is the corporations and the billionaires propping it up who are at fault. Who built these systems with disregard for the environment.
Also "slop", as I've just learned today, is derived from "goyslop" which is a nazi phrase
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat reframe it as "AIs parents are evil"?
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat When this is over, there's going to be a need to have slop-intoxicated people in some sort of rehab-style educational thing to get their brains back in working order because of all the damage caused by the slopmachines.
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@theeclecticdyslexic @VeeRat I had almost the reverse struggle in that I reflexively wondered about the umwelt of every other living being on the planet from small childhood, got little more than parental handwringing for my questions, and felt unreasonably vindicated when someone finally saw the need for and coined a word to express it (at least among fellow H. sapiens) in the ‘teens:
Sorry to hear about the relatable experience of adult figures unequipped to handle difficult questions...
I often feared I was thoughts floating alone in aether. The concept was distressing to 15 year old me; it felt accurate. I eventually decided the only way to live was to choose to act as though that isn't true, even just for myself.
Years later learned about the "brain in a vat"!
I find the feeling of sonder very reassuring.
Thanks for the great conversation! -
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@VeeRat
I’ve been listening to the new Behind The Bastards (podcast) about the intersection between LLM usage and cult-like thinking (paraphrasing). This kind of thinking is more powerful and more widespread than I’d appreciated. -
I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat (employing the Socratic method...) "so you'd obviously want total privacy in your interactions with this entity?" "Right?"
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I'm so disheartened about my job. We had a training about AI, and the person presenting just sounded so in love with it. Not as in appreciating a good tool to use, not like loving a new tool. She was actually in love with it, and even admitted to the need to stop thinking of AI as if it's a real person.
She excitedly talked about human-like responses to her prompts, as if someone she has a crush on gave her attention.
When I talk about my dislike for AI, how it can't be used ethically, how flawed it can be, I'm telling people that their crush is evil. They are reacting in a predictable way: with anger and hurt. It's an emotional topic.
Talking about a set of code shouldn't be this emotional. The data centers that are the beating hearts of their love interests get a pass from them; they would destroy the whole planet to maintain this dopamine high and in fact they are gladly doing so.
@VeeRat there's something religion-like in this
