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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

I can't help but read something like this and think that some people seem to be entirely lacking some sort of acceptability or disgust filter. A sense of morality or just any connection to what's... normal?

"You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should" comes to mind.

Maybe I'm just getting old, conservative, grouchy at the kids. It's not just AI, there are all manners of lifestyle choices that to me seem like they're just obviously a bad idea despite maybe having some novelty or short term feel good factor.

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In what way is it not acceptable for a person to have whatever kind of relationship they want with a chatbot? A chatbot is just software and software is just thoughts. Having a chatbot girlfriend is basically like having an imaginary girlfriend. Nobody else should even know! Let alone take it off you.

The part that I'm disgusted by is the part where the chatbot is operated by a company rather than open source software.

I don't think that disgust is explainable, so I can't give you an answer.

The best analogy I could make is that if I had a roast chicken, but it had a giant smelly turd smell, and somehow I knew that it was totally clean and edible, it'd still disgust me. Even if the turd smell went away after a few minutes.

It's just weird. There are real humans out there, put down the phone man.

Disgust is a strange sense. How often do we stop and think about what all those real humans out there are walking around with in their guts? We're at most only 50% human cells by count, after all.

Just to offer a different perspective, this line

> There are real humans out there, put down the phone man.

was the part of this thread that actually provoked disgust for me. It's akin to telling a person suffering from depression "you should just be happy!" as if they haven't tried.

There are people out there who will never succeed in finding human companionship, it's a fact of life. I see it as a positive that they can at least find some form of companionship, because the alternative is a dark path that can lead to self-loathing, radicalization, and in the worst case scenario, violence.

Your premise is invalid to me.

I wouldn't tell a person with depression to "just be happy", but neither would I allow them to humour the idea of giving up on life.

They certainly won't find companionship by giving up and deciding to mess around with bots instead.

It's more like telling a depressed person to get some sunlight in the morning or whatever. Is it going to fix everything? No, but you do it anyway, because behaviour is sticky.

I don't think anyone mentioned giving up though. It could very well just be a temporary measure until they find a real partner. Or maybe they never will find one (which could very well be an unfortunate reality for some) in which case they will at least die having experienced some kind of satisfaction.

Part of the appeal might be that some company provides it as a service. You can distance yourself from the need of spinning of a docker container running it, you don't have to go through all the update notifications every week.

Makes it seem more like a person than an appliance.

Open source might not be very appropriate for this. (And it wouldn't help for the company to use an open source product, because if they're in charge of the infrastructure, re-configuring it to use the filters is the problem and could still happen even if they use the open source software title.) Basically, open-source is a specific solution to a somewhat narrow problem, and not a cure-all for everything bad that happens in technology.

Exactly what the article mentioned, you are not having a relationship with a bot, but with a company.

> A sense of morality or just any connection to what's... normal?

Regular reminder that what is moral, what is normal, and what is legal are three separate questions with time- and culture-specific answers.

This stuff is "abnormal" only because it's new and no norms have been established. Using an AI for anything cannot be a "normal" act because it's so new. This is the possibly dark side of "disruptive".

The more relevant question is: is it harmful? And you might construct an argument that leading people into delusional beliefs is harmful.

(of course, then the free speech absolutists turn up and say that by definition nothing Replika says can be harmful because it's just speech, and it would be morally wrong to intervene in the conversation between a company and its users)

https://www.citizen.co.za/entertainment/celebrity-news/ameri...

>Since Marvel’s Black Panther and Coming 2 America have both taken the internet by storm since they premiered, it may come as no surprise that many Americans think Wakanda and Zamunda are real.

To what extent are purveyors of fantasy responsible for consumers' lack of discernment?

I'm pretty sure that it will never be considered normal to have a sexual relationship with a bot outside of some extremely niche communities which are considered bizarre by wider society.

You're at work and people are chatting about their family, or the girls/guys they find hot at the club, or that they're enjoying single life or whatever, and then Dave tells you he's married his chatbot. Like, really though. What happens next in that conversation?

This isn't some sort of college philosophy debate, let's be real here.

People would have made the same argument 30 years ago but with Dave being into guys. Societal norms often change unpredictably, but I for one strive to not end up on the "bigot" side of history.

I don't think having romantic relationships with inanimate objects or non-humans will ever be normalized, for obvious reasons.

Wait, not even motorbikes ??

It's not obvious to me.

For AI, it seems at least as likely to be normalised as the generally accepted parasocial relationship between celebrities and their audiences.

For non-humans… I'm expecting, by 2100, arbitrary biological re-engineering to be possible, to the extent that it renders meaningless the current boundaries between human and non-human in both body and mind — the idea of hooking up with a centaur or a dragon might be pretty niche fantasy today, but when you know the former is Dave and he has an interest in crochet and organic farming, and the latter is Tiffany your sysadmin and she's a regular at her local LARP event, it changes things.

Some people clearly hate this, judging by the anti-transhumanism conspiracy theories, even though it's not actually possible today — but are they representative?

Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, I think you are fundamentally missing the point of the article, which basically addressed this.

Even if it is cringe-worthy (or disgusting, if you prefer) it is still possible to feel sorry for people. I might find meth addiction disgusting, and still feel sorry for meth addicts. This company did something cruel.

And in passing, the article makes the old "first they came for the communists" point. Wait a year or two until all the search engines are now LLMs, and they scold you for your grouchy conservative search queries in the name of safety.

Yeah, it's like people who eat meat. Or drink alcohol. Or don't use social media. Or do whatever thing that it different from that you've personally decided is acceptable.

Something which almost universally induces disgust is different to all of those things.

In this case it's very explicit - an individual who is seeking out an AI chatbot for a romantic relationship probably would significantly benefit from conforming more to social norms rather than just giving up entirely and going off the deep end.

Fetishes are powered by disgust (because our brains are dynamically typed apparently) so there is nothing that “universally induces disgust”.

If someone loves Jesus, an imaginary stuffed animal, or a volleyball named Wilson and they get a sense of fulfillment or connection from it, then good for them. Life is short and fundamentally meaningless so anything that reduces suffering and increases enjoyment should be celebrated.

Some people just see a market to compete in and get rich. Whether or not it is a net benefit to society just doesn’t factor into their decisions. And the world is big enough that even if 99% of society won’t go through building that product, someone will.

Or they see a vulnerable demographic of lonely people that are easily exploited by some fairly low-hanging LLM "companionship" as a service.

Most won't frame it to themselves in an unethical way, they will see a true capability of companionship as a service to help those in need, which will be the more motivational driver for getting a product off the ground. It's the same as cereal companies framing their product as full of fruit and nutrients, when those products are anything but.

This problem is summed up very simply.

Regulation generally emerges due to documented problems/incidents that have happened due to a lack of regulation prior because a significant number of people need protecting from themselves.

Regulation also takes time, meanwhile businesses stomp the phantom accelerator on monetizing the lack of regulation.

Regulation is generally a safety measure. Yes, it can be counterproductive and counterintuitive, but regulation doesn't have to be a negative thing, and is frequently there to protect people from themselves.

The proposal of taking away encryption or adding backdoors to everything? Stupid. But not all regulations are bad. I think LLMs are something that absolutely do need regulation on so many levels.

Disgust is not a rational reason to dislike things.

Why do you think humans have developed a disgust reaction?

Emotions are irrational shortcuts for when rapid response is critical.

The same reason they developed any of the other reactions that go into System 1 thinking. It's not rational, it's just mostly useful in some niche that modern humans might not even be occupying anymore.

People have always had the ability to just choose pleasure over physical, financial, or mental health. It's why going to the bar at 10AM and alcoholism are millennia old, why prostitution is one of the oldest jobs in capitalist societies, etc.

We just have a tremendous amount of variety and options now.

You don't need capitalism to sell sex. Prostitution is waaaay older than that.

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