Hacker News Reader

Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

> a bad idea!

I think I disagree with the sentiment, but I definitely disagree with the conviction.

I think it's possible that chatbots will help people prepare and refine their relationship skills, such that "real" relationships are more likely and more successful. Think of chatbots as simulations, which are used in everything from medical to military to HR contexts. Maybe that's not all bad?

I'm 100% sure chatbots will be used in ways I'd characterize as "not healthy", but I'm not at all sure that's any of my business, or that those to-me negative uses will outweigh more positive usages.

View on HN

> I think it's possible that chatbots will help people prepare and refine their relationship skills

By practicing with ai porn bots? Created by the advertising (manipulation) tech giants of the future? How skewed and messed up would your norms be after a while?

Guess it'd depend on the training data and how the bots act.

"Trash in, trash out" as they say.

The bots could be created with the intention of making human relationships better, not worse. It could call out harmful behavior or point people into better directions, and similar ways.

"No Dave, doing X to your partner might not be appreciated, talk with them about it or may I suggest these alternatives?"

Money rarely follows those that have good intentions. The intentions are rarely even part of the equation there. And as Tinder has already showed us, there’s a lot of money in keeping people lonely, giving them just enough but not too much. Something tells me that the large majority of those building AI companion bots do not have good intentions in mind. Of course, only time will tell, but considering the track record of such topics so far I doubt this is the way to go.

> The bots could be created with the intention of making human relationships better, not worse. It could call out harmful behavior or point people into better directions, and similar ways.

(1) Are those the kind of bots being created?

(2) Are those the kinds of bots that will be commercially successful?

1: https://erichartford.com/meet-samantha

2: ...Nope.

> 2: ...Nope.

Well... shit.

Intentions are useless in this case. What matters are the incentives.

> chatbots will help people prepare and refine their relationship skills, such that "real" relationships are more likely and more successful

Chatbots miss the point entirely and will only make the loneliness worse.

People who are intolerant of "bad" relationships aren't ready for relationships. Seeing the worst of each other, keeping things honest, and working through it together is the relationship. Doing that with a bot is cheating yourself hard out of life's most important moments.

Forgetting about the technology for a moment, it's already a bad idea to be overexperienced. People get jaded and turn into manipulators. The other problem with experience is that preferences change. The dating market is already bad enough and full of crazy expectations fueled by scammers and the corporate overlords.

Trying to do better and avoid pain just makes you less compatible and is very naive. Training your preferences on bots ensures you will stay alone and addicted.

Genuinely curious, why does it matter if a relationship is real if the person is happy and mentally healthy? Is a chatbot that talks like a genuinely real person that bad of a thing? (assuming it doesn't tell you go to kill yourself for example)

I suspect we're a long way from technology actually being able to trick our brain (all of it) into thinking it's in the presence of real companionship.

Similar to why social media, despite "everyone being on there and available to everyone," doesn't seem to mitigate loneliness.

> I suspect we're a long way from technology actually being able to trick our brain (all of it) into thinking it's in the presence of real companionship.

I remember the first time I played Echo VR. I'm not sure it was because I wasn't used to VR, because of the duration I played the first time or what, but the first minutes after removing the VR headset, I had some sort of disassociation with my arms in real-life.

That must have been back in 2017/2018 sometime. Add in current generation of voice recognition and generation, better performance for both headsets and the games themselves, LLM to help the "partner" to feel more alive regarding behavior and I think you could get pretty close to "fooling" someone if they use it enough.

I'd guess something like that would make loneliness worse in the world though, rather than better.

matters for the survival of our species.

In our current world of seeming abundance, it's hard (for me) to wrap my mind around the fact that material considerations are actually important. This is why some people are concerned about shifts in demographics.

One example is that societies can reach a point where there are not enough people of working age to provide the services and goods for the "nonworkers" (retired + infirm + students + children)

Anything that has the potential to cause a step-decrease in birthrate has the potential to cause a big economic/political disturbance, and a 'distraction' from traditional human relationships definitely has that potential, as people only have so many years where they can reproduce.

I think one exciting side-effect of that is that investment in autonomy would go insane. We're talking countries devoting large portions of their GDP to eliminating menial labor. As of now autonomy has to compete with human labor which is still relatively cheap (down to minimum wage for certain tasks), but once human labor becomes extremely scarce, a lot of autonomy investment becomes profitable. Also, less population is the goal after all, as it helps with sustainability. The human race needs millions, not billions, to safely continue with a healthy genetic diversity.

Well, I'm a big fan of Her, so I won't argue that non-real relationships are implicitly bad.

But to the extent (some) people substitute chatbots for real relationships because chatbots are infinitely forgiving and don't promote maturation, I think the harm could be a group of perpetual children who don't have the real-world support structure to deal with real-world issues like needing long term medical care.

One underrated aspect of a real relationship is being on the giving end. I've no doubt that an AI could help me sort things out, but can't imagine a meaningful way to simulate being there for someone.

OTOH, it might prove useful in giving advice on how to help others.

> Genuinely curious, why does it matter if a relationship is real if the person is happy and mentally healthy?

It's like having an imaginary girlfriend in your head. If it makes that person happy then why do other people feel bad for the guy? Because although that guy may look happy, and maybe is happy right now, most people don't really believe that's a recipe for happiness in the long term. People see somebody on a path to loneliness and pity them for it.

> why does it matter if a relationship is real if the person is happy and mentally healthy?

If it does lead to happy, healthy people—maybe it isn't bad. However, I don't have any expectation that it would result in happy or healthy people, and a reasonably strong belief that it would result in the opposite.

To me chat bots preparing people is like GTA preparing people for the real world.

Developing spatial awareness, speed-reading skills, hand-eye coordination, and lots of practice distinguishing fantasy from reality?

There's at least some experimental evidence to suggest that race car sims with VR displays and steering wheel interfaces can train (some) real racing skills. But I really doubt that playing GTA with a console controller or mouse and keyboard do the same. Cars in GTA don't even behave like cars IRL, neither the ones you drive and certainly not the ones being driven by the computer. None of the muscle memory translates and any other hand-eye coordination skills transferring from one to the other is extremely dubious. With a VR headset you might have something to go off of, but otherwise GTA trains you to keep your head facing forward to the screen instead of on a swivel, so if anything GTA probably makes you a worse driver IRL.

Yeah except now kids are actually out there living that GTA life for real. Just stealing and attacking people randomly.

I do not share that optimism. I see it as far more likely the technology will be demanded and satisfied, that the ai chat bot acommodate immature and depraved maladaptive behaviour patterns, e.g. allowing a sadist by habit and pleasure to indulge in his questionable choices. It's like expecting the car industry to 'teach' people from the midwest to prefer more environmental-friendly pickup trucks. My view is, that the exact opposite will be enabled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com