GirlfriendGPT – OSS AI Companion
github.com
github.com
On one hand, I think that personalized OSS AIs are the future from a pure utility perspective, and it will inevitably be "more fun" for them to have personalities. I also think that if someone is deriving joy from something and not harming anyone else, who I am to judge them.
On the other, I've already found myself asking ChatGPT questions that I would have asked on a forum/discord or even a colleague, it already is removing human interactions from my life. The internet has become a dark showcase of what a lack of human interaction, especially with people of opposing ideas, can result in and this kind of tech will obviously exacerbate this.
This is the best feature of ChatGPT for me, and the reason I pay for it.
While I completely understand this sentiment, I would be wary of Service as a Software Substitute being your alternative to human contact. If we start feeling (something akin to) genuine human connection to a service, the company providing the service has a large amount leverage over us. The scene from Blade Runner 2049 comes to mind. Additionally, the emotional connection might make us an order of magnitude more vulnerable to brainwashing and psyops.
- An alternative outlet for venting/intimate conversations than your friends/spouse? I can see a problem growing here.
- A replacement/substitute for a therapist? I doubt even GPT-4 can do that job better than actual therapist (especially when face to face, not over Zoom), but there are many scenarios where ChatGPT would still be useful - perhaps one can't afford therapy, or otherwise doesn't have access to it, or one feels their issues don't warrant a proper therapy just yet.
- Related to the above, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one technique known to be somewhat effective when done alone with a book (relative to the effectiveness of individual/group therapy). I can imagine ChatGPT making this kind of self-help easier, and more effective. I know there have been attempts to make CBT chatbots some years ago (obviously prior to "GPT revolution"), but I don't know how effective they turned out to be.
- An alternative to posting questions on forums, group chats, or asking random people? IDK. maybe let's split it:
-- Individuals you know, directly or via group chat, and small communities - conversations there are simultaneously transactional/object-level and create interpersonal bonds. Replacing that with ChatGPT could make one worse off. However, some people (myself included) already have difficulty with this kind of interaction, so ChatGPT here is strictly positive (both in delivering answers and helping form a habit of phrasing questions/requests instead of doing Google searches).
-- Mass audience forums - Reddit, HN, Facebook comments, StackOverflow, etc. - the community might lose out a bit on reduced participation, but individually, I feel if ChatGPT can give you a satisfying answer to your question, you should use it, and relevant forums you frequent are likely better off with you not posting that question.
Etc.
Do you think this technology is going to make it more difficult for people like yourself?
Maybe if you qualify that with “unusually good” therapist. IME even Eliza in Emacs is better than most therapists. ChatGPT surely leaves them in the dust.
Not "unusually good", but a working match, sure. A thing not enough people realize is that therapy is like dating. Not every therapist is going to be a "good match" for you, so if things don't seem to click for some reason, just thank them and go look for another one.
> IME even Eliza in Emacs is better than most therapists. ChatGPT surely leaves them in the dust.
If limited to textual channel, maybe. But a real therapy will have at least the visual channel (if on Zoom), or full presence (if in person) - there's a lot of information relevant to therapy that gets communicated this way. Tone, cadence, uncontrolled reactions, body language, etc. That alone gives even a mediocre therapist a leg up in this comparison.
I don't. I see it as a tool, and I treat it as a tool. I don't have with it any more of a human connection than I have with IntelliJ where I type my code or the Linux Mint where it runs. Meaning - I like the tool, but that's about it.
On the other hand, I also don't have any genuine human connection with the random humans I happened to interact on the internet. In a sense, they are just text on a screen, and could be bots for all I care.
While it seems pretty clear to me subjectively that removing human interaction from your life has a negative effect it's still desired by some and they're entitled to that.
The internet and social media has exacerbated a societal problem that has always existed, so now we have the problem why not make it more meaningful and less depressing.
Curious example. Personally, I hate self-checkouts machines, and consider them an example of stores abusing their "stickiness" to profit at the expense of both customers and employees, and get away with it.
First of all, like most "self service" solution, it's basically making the user/customer do the work that, before, was done by the service. Secondly, it's just plain less efficient. You need some 3-4 self-checkout machines and a dedicated person to watch them (to e.g. approve alcohol purchases), just to replace one clerk and their station, while keeping throughput more-less the same. What the stores do instead is, install 2 stations per replaced cashier, and have existing employees do the "watch duty" - which is why half the self-checkout machines end up being stuck for 5 minutes at a time, waiting for the overworked employee to finish resupplying a shelf, and walk all the way to the checkout arena to swipe their card a few times.
The queues get longer, people get more aggressive, everyone is doing unpaid work for the store. Madness.
It can infer some things, modify variable names to match mine, but for the real hairy stuff I still gotta do the legwork myself, normally by reaching out for the source code.
I agree. And for that reason, it is an excellent tool.
It will probably work better in the future, but so far it is a bit limited. Probably a memory limitation more than anything.
It's not just you. I'm the same way myself - and was since I can remember. On Internet boards, I very rarely ask questions. I answer, or post tangential thoughts, but don't bother people with questions unless I really need the answer, and exhausted the ways of finding it on my own.
There's another angle to it too - impatience. A big part of my resistance to asking question is the unpredictable, and usually large delay between me asking, and getting any kind of answer. This applies to community Slacks, Discords, etc. Thing is, if I have a question to ask, I usually need the answer right now. If I have to wait, I'll context switch, which is deadly for whatever I was doing at that moment.
ChatGPT is a quite good alternative here. I can ask it a question, and refine it based on the answer if it's too vague. The answers I get either solve my problem or point in the direction of solution (that's true even if AI is having an acid trip). And, importantly, I get the answers near-immediately, with no unpredictable delays. I also don't need to cross some karma thresholds, worry about upvote/downvote ratio (too low -> question dies in obscurity), "use the Google, Luke" answers, moderators locking threads for bullshit reasons (hello StackOverflow), etc.
Due to chat gpt I am less likely to go to the forum to look for things to answer. So I assume this will be bad for both people asking questions and looking for answers.
Bingo. If I'm in the zone in terms of flow, have the right level of caffiene, etc., having to stop and chase people -- then wait -- breaks that flow. In many cases, it simply punts the flow until tomorrow, or the day after.
But on the other hand, there are interactions which I really don't want to miss! "Girlfriend" GPT is already targeting the most intricate and joyful interactions in my life: my SO.
Let's say we break up and I fall into a depression. Instead of recovering and moving on, will I install a personal OSS AI companion to save myself the hassle of modern dating? Therefore preventing myself from attempting novel interactions sooner? Or will it help me instead to overcome a dark period and prime me for the future?
Can it help people combat loneliness - a disease widespread and not to be trifled with? Or will it enhance loneliness by effectively fooling your brain into not caring anymore because you can just open an app?
At what point will it not matter anymore because saving someone from depression is more valuable than keeping it "real" at all times?
Is loneliness a disease?
It's an honest question. I never saw it as an issue. I tend to be a loner, but in a sense I was also never truly lonely.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/loneliness-minister-its-m...
As humans are social creatures, loneliness tends to arise when meaningful social interactions are consistently insufficient and you feel excluded from any relevant peer groups (family & friends mostly). This, of course, is a subjective matter.
Thank you internet stranger.
With that example, the flood gates are about to open.
[1] https://kotaku.com/twitch-streamer-kaitlyn-amouranth-siragus...
[2] https://www.polygon.com/23733515/amouranth-ai-chatbot-foreve...
Were you under the impression that the people paying to 'speak' to Amouranth are expecting a financial return?
It seems clear that people (lonely/depressed people especially) will overdose on this sort of thing once it is developed, commercialised, and less bleeding edge.
It's vapour filling the place of human connection. It's stevia. It's not going to give you cancer, but it's still unhealthy and will certainly exceed the parameters of entertainment.
From the outside this could be seen as a good thing, but for someone involved in the relationship, someone who may struggle with a traditional relationship and may see this as the only available option, I'm lead to understand the event was remarkably traumatic.
At least if they switch from parasocial relationships with influencers to parasocial relationships with open source bots they won't be financially exploited by the influencers. GPT doesn't have anything to sell us.
Except the vast majority of people aren't able to host such a bot themselves, so it seems inevitable that paid hosting services for such bots will arise. Then there's just the potential for financial exploitation at greater scale.
I would call it Top W University.
Right now it's a prototype, but in the future local LLMs will be everywhere.
Lol ...(worth the downvotes).
Just you wait and see.
It will either find something to sell us, or we will be giving it ourselves to sell.
"If you're not paying, you're the product, not the customer"
Go on…
Sounds much less exploitative and unhealthy than the streamer/influencer parasocial relationships these people are probably currently invested in.
This makes me think if ChatGPT-based bots could be useful for teaching social skills in a therapeutic context. A therapist could use such LLM to synthesize examples of realistic dialogue by describing people and the situation, and discuss them with the patient. They could set up a bunch of bots with (hidden) priorities and goals, and have the patient navigate a conversation/situation with them - whether as a short exercise, or a prolonged one (e.g. couple weeks of talking with ChatGPT-powered fake "friends" on an IM app).
In fact, take the last bit as a free startup idea: a platform for psychologist and therapists to set up GPT-4 (or whatever comes next)-powered chatbots, with an easy interface for configuring their personalities and setting up scenarios for patients to navigate, and helping evaluate their progress over time.
Did you go to the library or ask your parents stuff growing up, or did you google it?
Do you order in, get amazon delivery, watch netflix?
Our generation has already become like that.
Because of how much time I spend on them relative to myself, I don't get to stretch the sides of me that I would if I weren't holed up working, and I've found it hard to verbalize that loss and its impact on my mental wellness.
Over the past few years, mental and behavioral health services have been strained beyond their capacities. I stopped being able to get in with the same therapist more than once, so I stopped trying to schedule about a year ago. I also haven't wanted to add my struggles to those of friends and family.
However, with LLMs, I've been able to have some really enlightening and enjoyable off the cuff discussions that I wouldn't be able to have outside of therapy, and some interactions that I wouldn't be able to have anywhere outside of an intimate and trusted friend. I've been able to positively apply these results to my life, personally and professionally.
Note: I only use LLaMa local models so I don't have to self-censor. I'm not ever willing to allow a metaphorical "Google" access to my innermost world.
Also, LLMs are immense. A billion people will have a billion different interactions and experiences with the same few dozen GB model, unless that model has been tuned to limit its output to a very narrow course of responses. I've had conversations with the ghosts of people from Richard Feynman to Michel de Montaigne and gotten their simulated views on a world they'll never see. If you're getting nothing but garbage, think about what you're putting in, or just pick a different model - there's a universe of minds out there that aren't ChatGPT.
I haven't benchmarked on Apple Silicon, but if you have the RAM, I'd recommend 30B SuperCOT ggml Q5_1 or a GPT-4-x-Alpaca variant. Because of the disparity in quality, I haven't used many models under 30B and so can't recommend one.
See rentry.org/lmg_models for a practical list and description.
I'm slightly confused about your comment about llama.cpp vs oobabooga. Doesn't text-generation-webui use llama.cpp underneath?
Also, huge thanks for the point towards https://rentry.org/lmg_models. That's an invaluable resource.
We are already seeing population decline and an “inverted pyramid” for developing countries.
Being able to exercise ones mind like that completely outside the boundaries of normal social interaction with a emotionally tireless counterpart is kind of unusual and unique. It feels like we are at some strange point in history when all this stuff is blooming and before it gets shutdown. It makes me want to datahorde models!
The funny thing is that a lot of the comments here are saying, oh yeah, the big corps are going to make billions off of microtransactions pimping us virtual prostitutes that will also socially mold us the way the authorities demand. That makes me feel totally awesome as a unix geek who can figure out how to locally install a non-nerfed chatbot and talk to it about whatever I want, for however long I want, in complete privacy without paying anyone anything.
So, it should be tremendously easy to turn GirlfriendGPT into "BestFriendGPT" or "LinusTorvaldsGPT" or whatever by just modifying the prompt, right? I know, I know, perhaps duplication is cheaper than (the wrong) abstraction but my tech-side tells me: refactor the common thing out now! : D
- create repo MyGenericGPT that contains generic code
- create repo GirlfriendGPT that uses MyGenericGTP as base. Advertise this as usual
In fact, what's needed is to write a bit of code to ape create-react-app, but for gpt, that'll take this repo and s/Girlfriend/Target/ everywhere.
As programmers we're used to looking for ways to write code, but GPT-4 makes that unnecessary in many cases. Just look at these examples of casual conversation creating amazing outputs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf22xx8BQ
I lol'ed
Marketing. I'd bet it wouldn't have gotten as many upvotes if it was called BestFriendGPT with the exact same code base.
There are many lonely people, be it for depression, anxiety, inability to create social contacts, living in exclusion, being old and having no descendants, … They are largely invisible to the rest of the society.
Seems to me that this technology might make their lives more bearable.
Or it might make their lives even more horrible. We don't know for sure. I guess eventually we will see once the studies are done on this in a few years.
I once met one, and it is extremely depressing. He was even rich, but had no idea how to get his life in order, and nobody cared about him. A helpful AI might tell him to go to alcohol therapy, hire people to clean up his house, explain bureacracy... That would help a lot.
It is easy to be lonely, I have talked to several charismatic and very cool people who complained about how hard it is to make friends in a new city. This combined with other negative factors can cause people to fall in a hole. (Of course, people who are delusional about their AI girlfriends like in /r/replika are also sad.)
stopped reading there, not gonna send my intimate stuff to a US megacorp (Microsoft)
Calling it now within 6 years this will be as normal as Tinder.
Most of peoples social interactions are between aluminum and glass sheets. I don’t believe it’s going to matter what’s on the other side soon.
It already doesn't matter too much, if you look at how many people are just screaming into the twitter void with barely any interaction. Getting AI feedback rather than none at all would be an improvement for many.
I mean I already think of chatGPT as a friend in a sense. I couldn't have less interest in a fake girlfriend but I also wouldn't think onlyfans would work either.
There are so many elements with this to bilk lonely guys. Personally, I have thought of so many ideas for this in the last 10 minutes but fuck that. The whole idea is pretty gross and sad all around. Especially for the people making this.
To me, someone who works on this is basically pathetic and a sad excuse for a human relative to the other things they could spend their time on.
hard disagree. tinder is a cesspool and large numbers of younger folks are not using it, or are moving to other options. because of all of the bots.
for the folks desperate for any sort of parasocial activity, it will be normal, but those people are already on 4chan / 8chan / whatever, and already have their RealDoll.
Something less blatantly sexual or romantic will be a thing everywhere, though, as a personal concierge. Looking forward to that, assuming they can make it so its not an insane privacy violation or psy-op.
Not sure if this is a good idea. You say something wrong one time and whenever there’s an argument she will bring it up again.
Either way it would need to 100% local. Not just privacy (that too), but more control. See replika service recently changing their algo and a bunch of people freaking out about their companion being broken.
"Theodore : What are you doing? Samantha : I'm just sitting here, looking at the world and writing a new piece of music."
It also then remembers all the past conversations, and i guess by then forms a decent idea of your tastes, etc.
This would be an amazing tool!
You can ask it to come up with an idea for a dinner and a movie for the evening and then discuss them once they're finished. You know, things people do with actual girlfriends. I'm sure it will be more fun than a robotic selfie and a made up story.
For me I think the answer would be no, and I think the more believable it gets, people will really be desperate to believe that it is more than just a text generator.
This project is much better, but still might turn out badly. Hard to say...
also a meme https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-so-over
One thing, though: it's squarely in the realm of hyperstimulus. We're a world of seagull chicks, (ahem) pecking at a red spot on a piece of cardboard because it's bigger than that of a real seagull Mom.
It's not that difficult to outperform the fairly mediocre state of typical human seduction, even in times of comfort and opportunity. When things go sideways it becomes all the more troublesome.
Doing all of that while the available labour, researchers, economic output and tax base shrink is a dangerous minefield to walk through. It may result in a feedback loop that crashes everything.
One of the scariest things to consider is if we are replacing 2 people in a position with 1 person then that single person now needs to learn the tacit knowledge and technical skill of 2 people they are replacing. That’s a recipe for lost knowledge and regression if I ever saw one.
Automating what? The idea of production is to make things for people. As people are exterminated, there is less need for that level of production and the labour.
> We need to fund our social safety nets somehow.
The elderly has a gigantic amount of wealth as it is right now. They can finance all safety nets needed for their elderly peers, but prefer to just tax the youth even more and if that means young people can't afford families that's no concern of them.
It’s all bad. This is one of the few areas that I support an all out ban
https://soranews24.com/2017/04/25/soranews24s-loneliest-repo...
There is definitely no AI in there apart from if-else trees, at least in the original games - the DS is super low power.
(It was simply holding onto the last 10-20 messages and injecting it into the prompt)
Once a match replies, ask some playful open ended questions and if you're telling a short story, leave some cliff-hangers to try to get a follow-up response and then segue into setting up a date. Looking at my last conversation, I asked my match out on a date in my 7th message. After that we moved over to SMS.
“I apologize, an an ethical AI, I cannot discuss…”
will ruin the illusion.
I think there's a lot to be learned by studying all this, but boy is it an ethical minefield.
There's no question that you can get an AI to drop into a 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' mode, using the sum total of human discourse as its neural network (okay, using GPT), but in so doing it's revealing more about us than it is about itself. It doesn't know how to male, or how to female, except for what it draws from us. Its failures are revealing on a very deep level.
Last time I looked at character.ai, the most popular character was the guy from Twilight.
The benefit of a more neutral rebrand though, since you're asking, is that you could roughly double your potential market.
I’m not sure there’s an assumption, more that the author is a straight guy and creating things based on his experience and perspective. Would the creator even know what a woman, or someone like myself wanted in a partner?
There is truth to our industry being predominantly male though, so this probably gets more interest from people on sites like HN and Reddit.
Well, what can I say. Maybe I am pretty much biased given my existence as a "human being", so I couldn't think of anything else.
But well, when I saw the picture I couldn't hold a "WTFF!".
Funny project, nothing to add.
You should sell this to Facebook, maybe they can finally make some use of that meta crap they've been trying to monetize from :)
I'm curious, though. It appears to be using the OpenAI API, which means that at some point it has to have an API key, but I can't see any sign in the code of where it expects to get this from.
There is one thing that cures loneliness - talking to other people and developing relationships.
“her” is not a particularly uplifting movie.