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Comment by MattGrommes | Hacker News Reader

The problem I see is that since the chatbots are so easy to chat with, some people use them before they even try to do the work at getting human companionship. It almost never true that it's impossible for a person to find other people to be friends with or chat with. I've known plenty of people who said they would never find a companion due to X, Y, and Z intractable reasons but who stumbled into strong relationships anyway. A chatbot is "companionship" in the same way candy is food.

I think animal companions are a different class than chatbots since they're not trying to be people so I make no comment on those.

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> before they even try to do the work at getting human companionship

Why do they have to "do the work" to be deserving of companionship when most of us don't have to do anything because it comes natural to us and we can relatively easily regulate the amount of companionship we want.

I fail to see the bad thing. For some people it's either a chatbot (or a dog) or no interaction at all. Should people starve instead of eating at McDonald's because that's "not real food"?

Everyone deserves companionship, it's just that chatbots don't provide it. What I worry about is people who don't want to have conversations with people at work, or go do a hobby with other people, etc. and use a chatbot as an alternative when it's just a parrot pretending to be a person but providing no actual interaction. A chatbot has no needs, tells no embarrassing stories, requires no compromise, makes no promises, does no favors. That's why I said it was candy, not McDonalds. They provide no nutrition but sure taste good.

That sounds similar to me like the argument against anti-depressants that it's "not real", and you're not actually better, you're just addressing symptoms, not the cause. But my experience is very clear: that's a huge improvement.

Clearly people have needs, clearly they feel chatbots satisfy those to some degree (otherwise they wouldn't use them). To those people, it's an improvement, I don't see how that's a negative.

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