We're all wizards and witches now!

It's my first time. gotta look it up.

FWIW, this is why AI researchers have been screeching for decades not to create an AI that is anthropomorphized. It is already an issue we have with animals, now we are going to add a confabulation engine to the ass-end?

The worst thing about AI is the people.

This kind of thins is just moral panic. Funny moral panic, but still pointless. There's always been a tiny fraction of the population that is completely out to lunch, and there always will be.

Honestly, cringy nomenclature aside, this is just porn that got a little too real. Some people are into the narrative, after all.

To me the story begins and ends with some user that thinks the LLM sounds a little too life-like. Play with these things enough, and they'll crawl out of the uncanny valley a bit from time to time. Trick is: that's all in your head. Yeah, it might screw up your goon session and break the role-play a bit, but it's not about to go all SkyNet on you.

The movie you're thinking of is Her with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, and in the story she's a true general AI.

A problem with LLM relationships is the monetization model for the LLM. Its "owner" either receives a monthly fee from the user, or is able to get data from the user to monetize selling them stuff. So the LLM is deeply dependant on the user, and is motivated to manipulate a returned codependency to maintain its income stream. This is not significantly different than the therapy model, but the user can fail to see through manipulation compared to "friends/people who don't actually GAF" about maintaining a strong relationship with you.

Also, my quite human husband also voices his thoughts without a prompt. Lol. You only need to feed him to function, no internet required.

Sometimes, with humans, I'd say the problem is quite the opposite: they voice their thoughts without a prompt far more often than what would be desirable.

On a less serious note, that quoted part made me chuckle.

This reminds me of the people who genuinely fall for "romance scams", and the scammer has all the personality and vocabulary of a wet paper bag.

And yet somehow someone will believe they're some hot (barely literate) U.S soldier stuck in Kuwait until they can get a flight home to meet the victim for only $2000... Wait, $1000 more... But then there's a $500 fee... And then...

Blows my mind...

I'd rather choose a bear than choose an AI...

Capitalism created it too, classic create problem and sell solution model. Fucking ghoulish

Don't forget that in the US we also have built our towns and cities to be isolating. Most don't walk home from work, pop into their local bar/coffee shop/park to see their neighbors and then finish their walk home. We get in our car alone, drive home where then going out means getting back in a car, and stopping on the way home means figuring out drivers and parking and meetups.

We lost our third places and now we wonder why we don't know our neighborhood as well

“OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.

What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.

A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.

When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”

I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.

They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.

Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?”

― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian