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Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. Most people here seem to find the submission funny but I don't.

Once somebody creates an AI that doesn't articulate as well as ChatGPT but imitates humans better, anonymous online discussion is dead almost instantly.

How can you ever guarantee that you are not arguing with a bot that will not get tired, answer almost instantly, and will gaslight you into anything it wants you to believe?

You can abort arguing with it at any time, sure, but is this a satisfying experience? No, it will be incredibly frustrating getting duped like this over and over again.

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Funny, that’s how a lot of us already feel and why we don’t argue online.

The scary part for me is when they stop letting you reset the bot’s memory of you. Or when the bots start sharing your “profile” across different bots. You know, to serve you better.

It does not stop at arguing. Any online chat will also be pointless. It is already bad on the likes of Tinder if reports from forums around the web are correct. Chats bots are trying to bait men into sending money or subscribing to social media accounts. Now you are still able to trick them but for how much longer?

Combine it with deepfake and any interaction online is tainted from the getgo. I strongly believe we are heading towards an offline life again. Not because technology is bad but because it has become too advanced for humans to deal with it.

> Combine it with deepfake and any interaction online is tainted from the getgo. I strongly believe we are heading towards an offline life again. Not because technology is bad but because it has become too advanced for humans to deal with it.

It's probably going to be worse than that. You won't be able to avoid it, unless you decide to live in an insular offline community that ignores the outside world (like the Amish). If you don't the AI bullshit, deepfakes, etc. will still get to you via newspapers, books, and crap you hear from IRL people.

> The scary part for me is when they stop letting you reset the bot’s memory of you. Or when the bots start sharing your “profile” across different bots. You know, to serve you better.

I've stopped using ChatGPT for now for that reason (given Microsoft is involved).

A lot of Cassandras were dismissed years ago when Facebook surveillance widgets started appearing and we would get downvoted to a pale shade of gray. The mistake then was voicing concerns on forums instead of recognizing it as social matter and having that discussion at the policy and legal levels. Let's skip the decade of beguilement and jump to the policy and legal fronts on this. Do not wait, act now.

I haven't even thought about that. This is a depressing direction.

If the status quo is bad, then this will only make it worse. The only alternative is to completely disengage online, which, might actually be beneficial, who knows. Billions of other people will not though.

> Funny, that’s how a lot of us already feel and why we don’t argue online.

Personality flaws like certain kinds of obsessiveness and irrational persistence are internet superpowers, at least in any peer-to-peer forum-like space.

The online world belongs to the guys (or bots) who are willing to sacrifice everything in the name of some dumb internet argument.

To be fair, depending of the website, interactions with anonymous people on the Internet already sound like that and have for ages.

Reddit would be a great exemple. On most popular subreddits, people will stubornly refuse to admit they are wrong even in the face of indisputable evidence. They will rather become aggressive than own their mistakes.

This is terrifying. I am glad I had an opportunity live part of my life before such times.

What makes you believe this isn't happening already? Human were already doing this at scale within Russian influence campaigns. Now bots can do it at a scale infinite and greater than the actual human beings that exist.

You can see it right now in YouTube comments; they're completely worthless now because they're full of comments from Russian trolls.

Suggesting that Russian influence online is the only source of this, or even the largest source, is American propaganda. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of comment you’d expect American disinformation bots to spread

I've already seen the conspiracy theory posts claiming this is a precursor to governments mandating online IDs and tracking to guarantee "humanness" in online activity.

This is the least of my worries. Services like Bing/ChatGPT can control information at a greater scale then ever before. Those with nefarious goals will never have to worry about whistleblowers again.

I should clarify, I don't believe there's anything nefarious with Bing/ChatGPT right now. But it opens the doors for the worst of humanity to take advantage of a new tool more powerful than the worst of social media.

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