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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely Do Not Want.

EDIT: Tell us what characters you want to see in the comments and we can make them for you to talk to (e.g. Max Headroom)

Sure, that kind of thing is great fun. But photorealistic avatars are gonna be abused to hell and back and everyone knows it. I would rather talk to a robot that looks like a robot, ie C-3PO. I would even chat with scary skeleton terminator. I do not want to talk with convincingly-human-appearing terminator. Constantly checking whether any given human appearing on a screen is real or not is a huge energy drain on my primate brain. I already find it tedious with textual data, doing it on realtime video imagery consumers considerably more energy.

Very impressive tech, well done on your engineering achievement and all, but this is a Bad Thing.

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The dichotomy of AI haters and AI dreamers is wild.

OP, I think this is the coolest thing ever. Keep going.

Naysayers have some points, but nearly every major disruptive technology has had downsides that have been abused. (Cars can be used for armed robbery. Steak knives can be used to murder people. Computers can be used for hacking.)

The upsides of tech typically far outweigh the downsides. If a tech is all downsides, then the government just bans it. If computers were so bad, only government labs and facilities would have them.

I get the value in calling out potential dangers, but if we do this we'll wind up with the 70 years where we didn't build nuclear reactors because we were too afraid. As it turns out, the dangers are actually negligible. We spent too much time imagining what would go wrong, and the world is now worse for it.

The benefits of this are far more immense.

While the world needs people who look at the bad in things, we need far more people who dream of the good. Listen to the critiques, allow it to aid in your safety measures, but don't listen to anyone who says the tech is 100% bad and should be stopped. That's anti nuclear rhetoric, and it's just not true.

Keep going!

The primary purpose of generating real-time video of realistic-looking talking people is deception. The explicit goal is to make people believe that they're talking to a real person when they aren't.

It's on you to identify the "immense" benefits that outweigh that explicit goal. What are they?

I don't think that's the primary purpose of realistic interactive avatars, any more than deception is the purpose of CGI. Deception requires intent to mislead — if users know they're talking to an avatar, it's not deception no matter how realistic. Just as moviegoers aren't "deceived" by CGI. It's an experience they opt into.

As for benefits: language learning with avatars, scalable corporate training, accessible education for kids, personalized coaching, and certainly entertainment, which has real value too.

Well put - and thanks, we'll keep building. Still chasing this level of magic: https://youtu.be/gL5PgvFvi8A?si=I__VSDqkXBdBTVvB&t=173 Not to mention language tutors, training experiences, and more.

I am not an AI hater, I use it every day. I made specific criticisms of why I think photorealistic realtime AI avatars are a problem; you've posted truisms. Please tell me what benefits you expect to reap from this.

> this is a Bad Thing.

"Your hackers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

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