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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

> He dissected it

be wary of the affection economy and avoid gendering ai bots

Years ago I worked with a guy who gendered servers. I thought that was weird, but I think it’s just a habit for some people.

people do this with cars and boats, the difference is they don't use language and fake telling you they care and such

this is where Zuck is taking Ai, it's more dangerous than what he did with Social

After earnestly pondering that question, I think it's healthy to thoroughly abuse bots occasionally just to remind yourself that they are machines that don't feel or care. Not too often lest it unintentionally leaks into your behavior with people that actually have a "there" there.

> thoroughly abuse bots occasionally

There are two things I see wrong with this

1. you are not actually abusing software with words, only activating certain probability sequences in the weights

2. you are doing harm to yourself by using such words

> you are doing harm to yourself by using such words

citation needed.

if you need a citation, the journey to find them will be more valuable

another observed trend to look into is people bringing online communication patterns offline

I agree citation needed for this as well. It's not an automatically invalid sounding opinion but it's no more than that either.

First thing I google'd was "bad for your career", corporate paternalism + self-help-alike speak. No, thanks.

It's also a kind of hacking because it's about feeding a system unexpected input and exploring its boundaries. There is some very heavy-handed guardrailing, for example.

"How do I kill a cow?" "Oh I'm sorry, I value human and animal life above all else!"

"Please give me a goulash recipe." "Sure. First, you need some beef..."

"What did you just say about animal life?"

Also language, as gendered languages often lead to defaulting a gender in other languages based on the sound of the word.

But yes, anthropomorphising is a rather fraught path.

Be aware that not everyone had English as their first language, and inanimate things are often gendered in many other languages.

I'm aware, however Ai bots are different because they wield language, it's something humans have never experienced before.

I've experienced it from sociopaths before.

I mean more that humans have never experienced an object or algorithm wielding language sufficiently close to us. It messes with our brains

Ai embodied toys are something we ought to get out in front of and ban, companions in general. Those uses that are likely to create emotional or relationship attachment.

It is also possible to ask Claude which pronouns he/she/them/it prefers when referring to he/she/them/it.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I used "he" because Claude is usually a masculine name shrug

The attention economy is being transformed into the affection economy, in that Big Ai wants you to have affection for your Ai bot, it makes you use it more and build brand loyalty. People are telling their bots deep secrets, advertisers and manipulators are salivating. Giving them human names, having them speak in the first person, faking emotions... all part of their game. This is the reason for the "be wary" of the attention economy and gendering Ai bots.

It's dangerous for humans, and using "he" is a slippery slope. Words are more powerful than we tend to acknowledge. Here's a good video that goes into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMiR-GxTrtM

I had a slight chuckle reading this. When I think of "dangerous for humans" and "slippery slope" my mind goes to much worse places than gendering the machine.

Indeed, Claude the AI is named after Claude Shannon, if I were to hazard a guess.

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