Comment by Sebb767 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sebb767 | Hacker News Reader

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> But if people are self-reporting that they are happier, well, life is tough enough already and there's no reason that people should just be miserable

That's a fair point and in some ways this might be a good option. But especially for relationships this seems like a massive danger zone to me. I already know a lot of singles in their late twenties, early thirties that have a hard time finding a partner because their expectations are far too high and their ability to adjust to another human too low. Adding these fantasies with perfect partners fitted to their specific personality is going to supercharge that and make it nigh impossible to find a human to match that.

You can obviously still make the argument that, if it makes them happy, it's fine, but users of hard drugs are also flooded in good feelings and society generally agrees that this is a problem at some point. Now, I know this is a daring comparison, but I think when we're at the point that people have their closest relationship with an AI chatbot, there might be serious social problems brewing.

I think a better counterexample, rather than "hard drugs," is pornography. It's not that it's necessarily bad, or even that it is in a majority of cases, but people can definitely have negative relationships with it that are destructive and even anti-social.

My optimism comes from reading about it and seeing the companies seem to take this all very seriously. Maybe they're all talk, or maybe there's a race to the bottom that ultimately wins out. But people are self-reporting positive things and I don't like seeing people mocked and stereotyped and their issues dismissed like this.

> I think a better counterexample, rather than "hard drugs," is pornography. It's not that it's necessarily bad, or even that it is in a majority of cases, but people can definitely have negative relationships with it that are destructive and even anti-social.

Fair point. I still think is is a notch above pornography, though: Porn will always lack the physical element (which I posit is far more important in a sexual relationship than in an emotional one) and will usually be less personalized. A chatbot, on the other hand, can fill in your emotional needs much better and much more personalized to you.

> My optimism comes from reading about it and seeing the companies seem to take this all very seriously.

My pessimism comes from the fact that I see a lot of lonely people and even whole movements of desperate ones (like incels). I fear that a lot of people will use this as a quick patch for the issue instead of going the hard way and work on their mental health. We can't bring back stillborn children or passed away loved ones, obviously, but I'm sure we can fix most people to the point where they can have friends and a fulfilling relationship.

I agree with you that it's not all bad and it's definitely not black and white, but I'm skeptical that the good outweighs the bad, at least for now.

> We can't bring back stillborn children or passed away loved ones, obviously

Well, some of the AI work being done is specifically to do that in some form... (which I know also alarms many folks). Saving their voice, their chat histories, and turning that into a product. Even here I'm not convinced it can't be helpful depending on how it's done. But some of these situations get trickier and tricker and what I think we really need is research.

Well, with kids and passed love ones it is a hard situation. Of course, healing people of their grieve is the strictly superior option, but the reality is more like spending years in therapy to get to a passable state versus having people spend a few hours a week with an AI chatbot and otherwise be quite well. It's really tricky.

That being said, for relationships I do think it is worth to invest the effort to heal in nearly all cases, if only for reasons of maintaining the population. But we all know that relationships are hard and AI bots replacing those is what I'm really worried about.

I think the comparison is apt. If the goal is simply to make each individual feel good, then a chemical approach would seem far more efficient. If, on the other hand, you are concerned with society as a whole continuing to function, you should be concerned about people becoming less accustomed to doing the hard work of maintaining relationships with other people. And it is hard work, especially with romantic relationships. This stuff seems like the emotional equivalent of junk food. It tickles all the right parts of your brain in a way that healthy food usually does not, but it's not sustainable.

> simply to make each individual feel good

This seems dismissive. The examples you're replying to relate to "safe spaces" for people discussing fertility, pregnancy, menopause, sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation, gender discrimination, etc. Honestly, some of the dismissiveness I get from this whole thread makes me question whether people lack understanding of some of the complex situations that many people are in.

I went back and reread the thread and I see your point. Calling it "feeling good" is certainly oversimplifying. However, I don't think it materially changes my position. Is the woman who is using an AI boyfriend to cope with a verbally abusive RL boyfriend avoiding a problem that she would be better off confronting? Is the woman who has AI children to deal with the grief of not having real children hiding from a grief that will need to be faced eventually? I don't know the details, so I won't venture to say it is so. If it is, though, this is a real problem. We need to come to terms with the brute reality of our existence. The reality is, death and loss are inevitable, other people have their own lives and make choices that hurt us, yet we need them. Perhaps some encouragement and respite through AI can ease this. But it would be very easy for this respite to turn into a refuge, which is one of the mechanism by which drug use becomes drug dependence.

> Is the woman who is using an AI boyfriend to cope with a verbally abusive RL boyfriend avoiding a problem that she would be better off confronting?

Or maybe the woman is getting resources from the chatbot to help her escape the situation.

I don't think we necessarily disagree, since I don't read you as saying there's never any place for AI chatbots. We need independent research that isn't just done by the AI chatbot companies themselves so that folks can figure out optimal approaches for training them.

> I don't think we necessarily disagree, since I don't read you as saying there's never any place for AI chatbots

Definitely not. I can, for instance, see how chatbots might be of great use in palliative care or to help ward off cognitive decline in the elderly.

> We need independent research that isn't just done by the AI chatbot companies themselves so that folks can figure out optimal approaches for training them.

Yes, definitely.

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