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Comment by batperson | Hacker News Reader

What about people with disabilities, physical or mental, who can't get out, old people with no family or family who doesn't care? In theory it would be great if everyone got some attention and socialized, in reality a lot of people in society are forgotten, no one wants to talk to them.

For some of these people even talking to a robot would likely be a huge improvement in quality of life, and that's just talking. If said robots could also help them out in real life, sort of like a personal assistant, that would be even better.

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These people are an opportunity for the rest of us to be better people, to show compassion and mercy. They are not worthless to the rest of society. Giving them LLM companions says that they are — that their only self-worth is their feelings.

Who’s paying for this? Nice sentiment, but last I checked prices weren’t coming down, and we’re talking about a cohort that doesn’t generally have a ton of extra cash.

> What about people with disabilities, physical or mental, who can't get out, old people with no family or family who doesn't care? In theory it would be great if everyone got some attention and socialized, in reality a lot of people in society are forgotten, no one wants to talk to them.

I mentioned in another comment that I totally get it for these people. You are using the extreme cases to justify opioid for the masses. The moment you "solved" human loneliness and interacting by giving them drugged up with chatbots, its over. I am telling you, it is over.

AI psychosis is bad enough as it is with really poor imitation. The moment it can imitate and fool the average person, I just don't see why most people need real friends anymore. We will NEVER be able to get it out of kids hand, the cats out of the bag. You think kids growing up with social media and ipad is bad? Lets see what happens if they live in actual fantasy land with their robotic friends.

I don't even know if I want to live in that world anymore.

Also, your solution to lonely people with disabilities or old age is to create robotic "Friends" for them? This is just sickening. You might as well just drug them. The _actual_ solution is to create a compassionate society where this doesn't happen. The solution to overworked society isn't more opium to relieve the pain.

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