This is more sad and pathetic than anything. But this is the result of toxic masculinity.
Toxic masculinity is the result of poor mental and (for lack of a better word) spiritual health.
What’s the difference between this and guys talking to of girls?
No one wants to actually listen to them. Instead of doing some self-reflection, they force a computer to “hear” their misplaced rage.
Not every guy is that way. Some just really are pathetic in the sense that they have no one to talk to. Others are like what you said.
I tried one just for shits a giggles awhile back to see if there is any merit to the widespread use of them. The only way you’d find these even remotely realistic or interesting is if you’ve never had any kind of sexual encounter with a real person before, whether in person or through text. After about five minutes of “chatting” with one of these bots it started to respond like half baked fan fiction that didn’t understand the basics of sex or even anatomy. The cadence is very predictable and it tends to repeat the same wording and phrasing constantly. If you have real world experience with people, it just feels like a generic chatbot.
In my opinion, this is more proof that these people need to interact with real humans. If these chat bots seem at all human to you, you need to interact with more actual humans.
I really don’t understand how anyone could want to chat with bots in general. Do people lack the ability to appreciate the genuine. It explains how you get people like trump. Who wants that kind of interaction?
There are people that suffer from isolation, anxiety, depression, trauma or a host of other issues over which they have no control or support structures to address their problems. Of course, these bots aren’t a solution but they are accessible. It’s no wonder why people would use them.
They deserve sympathy not condescension.
no control or support structures to address their problems
this is a real unmet need. but propping up AI chat bots as the solution, instead of structural changes is somewhat self-defeating. getting people to become dependent on chat bots is exactly the profit model these unethical corporations are counting on.
heck I have those but I still don’t understand how anyone could want to chat with bots and its not conensation.
The issue arises when you don’t have anyone to talk to. Having something to talk, even though it’s not a real person, can be enticing to sate the need to communicate with people. The problem is that people that don’t have a lot of real life experience in communication fall into the trap of thinking it’s better because it’s always agreeable and “listens” better than normal people. To me that sounds like someone that has difficulties with oversharing and has poor social skills. What these people should actually be doing in order to feel more satisfied socially is to work on their social skills instead of only talk to chatbots that can’t say no. If the types of relationships people have with chatbots were translated into human relationships most people would consider them toxic. And how many people do you know that for some reason seek out and always end up in toxic relationships?
I find AI to be a better conversation partner than humans in most circumstances. It’s not perfect but it’s knowledgeable about pretty much every topic and it’s always fully engaged and attentive. Most people, by contrast, aren’t very interesting and most interesting people are busy. Of course I would prefer to talk to someone who was also subjectively experiencing and enjoying the conversation, but I can get a lot out of a conversation even without that.
It does not understand what its saying. Its fine to summarize some searches or bring forth known best practices but I would not call what it does conversation.
people fall in love with fictional characters in books and other media, mostly as a product of their imagined interactions with the character.
this isn’t any different, it’s just a AI version of it. it’s still mostly imaginative fantasy at the end of the day, and it’s a form of escapism from the real world.
the new yorker had an article about it where a housewife basically had AI boyfriend who was her version of Geralt from the witcher, and was using it to cope with the fact she had a stillbirth from 5 years earlier and her AI Geralt was the only one who ‘really understood her’ and her struggles with the stillbirth trauma. it’s all entirely a fiction in her head, but it’s a mechanism for self-soothing, that is relatively harmless compared to her say, doing drugs or divorcing her husband or other methods of coping that might manifest. it was basically fan-fiction with an AI agent helping her co-write.
this I understand. I mean as a video game or a laugh. sure. but its not conversation.
most of modern life isn’t genuine. and yes, people don’t like it when they encounter it.
they love artifice. they love their biases being confirmed, they love their egos being flattered.
We need third places again. Having everything at home is bad for us, but doing everything at home is framed and sold to us as the state of the art status quo. Our tendencies to avoid rejection and conflict are being preyed on and encouraged by the Epstein class because it’s most convenient for THEM that we rot alone in our houses. Almost everything that’s sold as “convenience” is just another way to avoid each other, and here we are.
Perhaps the point is to seek something that’s not like real humans.
Yeah, that’s kinda what the article is about. People choosing chatbots over real people. I’m just saying that it’s not good for your mental health and even worse for developing social skills.
Okay. Most of your comment seemed to be focused on whether they resemble actual humans. I don’t think we have any information about whether these impact your mental health but I would tend to agree they can’t be good.
Now this is quality journalism
This is why I only read Playboy for the articles
How does this make someone “feel heard”??? I feel like I’m losing my mind… It’s the same to me as if someone went to the front of a McDonald’s to talk to the building about their problems. It seems completely insane, and it’s making me feel crazy that this is our world now.
My guess would be the same phenomenon that existed with ELIZA. People want to be heard, especially lonely people, and LLMs are pretty good at that, asking questions and acting supportive, by design.
This whole situation reminds me of that fact that some people hire escorts to just have someone to talk to.
The Eliza creator got his secretary to try it out, and as she got into her conversation she asked if he could leave to give her some privacy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMK9AphfLco
There was a longer video talking about that in the context of how humans engage socially but I can’t find it right now.
ed: Oh, it was in the most recent John Oliver segment on AI chatbots
Buildings are great listeners though.
reminds me of this old building I used to talk to. Used to listen and give me good advice. I still remember when I told it I was doing drugs again… Man, it got so upset… Came down on me like a ton of bricks!
People care about being heard, not listened too. It’s one-sided. I’m guessing they just like that the thing responded, and may not even bother reading carefully what it said. Like a friend who says supportive murmurings as you prattle on about whatever, “Really?”, “Umm-hmm”, “Oh, I know what you mean!”, “Right, exactly”, and, “It’s nice to talk to someone I get along with.”
This is definitely true for at least a small number of people.
I’ve ran across more than I care to remember over the years, people who could just prattle on 24/7 if they had the energy, while not actually really saying anything or conversing in any meaningful way.
It’s a living hell for me.
Probably similar to anyone having a conversation where they ignore the “red flags” of a potential partner. Someone drinking too much, an offhand remark about bad debt, stuff like that. Except now you ignore the response that might be a non sequitur, repetitive, or just not make sense.
People watch some movies repeatedly. Isn’t that similar?
no
you can feel seen by a picture (webcomic) even though the picture has no eyes.
That’s kinship with the artist… it’s not the same at all.
Meanwhile I get pissed off whenever I talk to AI about books I’m reading because they have no idea of the concept of spoilers, they consistently simp to my opinions and when they spew falsehoods and “misremember” facts from books I’ve already read, they simply say "GREAT CORRECTION! I WAS SO WRONG THERE, YOU’RE RIGHT, PROTAGANIST DIDN’T ACTUALLY DIE IN CHAPTER 3. MY LAST 2 PAGE SYNOPSIS ABOUT HOW PROTAGANIST DIED IN CHAPTER 3 IS A BIT INCORRECT, AND NOW HERE’S A 300 WORD ESSAY ON HOW I NEVER ACTUALLY SAID PROTAGONIST DIDN’T ACTUALLY DIE IN CHAPTER 3!
Seriously. How can anyone talk to an LLM and not feel like they’re talking to a glorified phone answering computer?
If there are any guys here who are in the UK, I can strongly recommend Andy’s Man Club, a charity that does weekly peer support social sessions for men.
They’ve got groups all over the country, and although I personally haven’t been (I’m a woman), I’ve heard so many good things about it from guys I know.
Hope there is something for USA too. Know Australia has a few
What are they called in Australia?
Men’s sheds would be the closest I think.
I’ve heard mixed things about them. It can depend on the individual shed, I think. Because the kinds of people who go to them are often the kinds of people who most need some sort of social support group, at times the reason they need that support group can be because—as one online commenter said—they “had done a pretty good job of alienating all their family and friends through being crusty old codgers from a young age, so now they had a bunch of people just like them to validate their shitty attitudes”.
That’s not always going to be true, and the online commenter who wrote that also said that they now go to another shed with a much more positive environment.
I don’t know the details of either, but I hear in the US “men’s sheds” are intended to be supportive groups
I never bought into religion, never bought into astrology, never gonna buy into chatbots
You can tell me I’m great and everything will be amazing 1,000 times. It doesn’t matter at all to me if it’s not real
I like to escape into music or movies, but real life is real life and must not be corrupted
My work offered an AI chatbot therapist. Like to, I’m not putting all my negative feelings into a company sponsored LLM to fucking have it say, “no relax guy, it’ll be OK.” Like it’s a fucking clanker. It doesn’t have feelings. It’s not fucking real. It’s a slap in the face that they even offer it.
I’m not putting all my negative feelings into a company sponsored LLM to fucking have it say, “no relax guy, it’ll be OK.” Like it’s a fucking clanker.
I’d be more concerned with any company sponsored AI chatbot therapist using what you say influence your employment relationship.
Employee X: I’m worried about losing my job so I work unpaid overtime and that is affecting my marriage.
Therapist chatbot to management: Employee X should not be given a raise. They already have enough external motivation to work without additional financial incentives.
Well, I’m sure someone who uses “clanker” wouldn’t need therapy anyway.
Seriously though, I doubt the health implications or claims about the efficacy of AI therapists, but we can’t just ignore the fact that there are people who use it, which means there’s something about it that makes it accessible or preferable to a human therapist.
If you’ve ever had to get a psychotherapist, you know that it is prohibitively expensive for a large number of people, and that a human therapist may not actually be capable of treating you because of personal incompatibility; which often results in retraumatization in patients who are seeking therapy for particularly traumatic or sensitive issues. Since much of the value in therapy is learning management strategies that, while not standard, are often consistent across different practitioners, they do not necessarily need to come from a therapist to learn what they are (even if the practice of them does need one).
I think if there is a need for it, that need is a consequence of the deeply dysfunctional, exploitative, and isolating system we live under, and I don’t think I’d ever accept it as a genuine alternative to human therapists. But, we can’t dismiss it out of hand if there are people who say it is useful for them and when we can’t maintain a system that can guarantee them access to treatment.
The problem with people saying they are useful, is that it is nearly impossible to tell if that is actually true. If someone is mentally unhealthy there are many ways to make them feel better, but not all of those will actually help the underlying issue, they could even make it worse. A lot of people seem to equate happiness and mental health, when it is very possible to be happy and mentally ill at the same time.
This is especially worrisome with AI because it is literally designed to say what it “thinks” it wants you to hear. It has no real training in any of the disciplines a psychologist or therapist needs to be effective. You can’t just apply a cut and paste answer to a patient, you need to understand their personality, their history, and a multitude of other things to be a really effective therapist. The answer to this issue is increasing access to real mental health treatment, not giving snake oil to millions of people.
Yes, I don’t get why so many of you appear to not understand that these problems coexist with the reality that people have been using it anyway. As I alluded to above when I said that a psychotherapist would be required to actually learn to practice those strategies and expressed my disagreement with AI therapists on a treatment basis in multiple instances, there is no replacing a human therapist or any reasonable basis to even call AI therapists “therapists.”
As I said, again multiple times, since people use it anyway and prefer it to nothing or a bad therapist, we have to take its merits seriously and identify why. Reality does not care that you find it dumb and icky, I would love it if everything I know is dumb and icky was simply not a problem because I found it dumb and icky.
All of these people are clearly not just stupid, which is what you and the person I responded to seem to think, which is just foolish. No, everyone else is not just dumber than you. There is clearly a material reason why people use these things and why some even say they want to. How many people do you know who do not go to therapy because they can’t afford it, or because they’ve been traumatized by it, or because they could get fucking institutionalized for it. Have you thought about, perhaps, the people as people?
I swear to god, some of you see a long comment from someone you don’t like the sound of and you just make up whatever it says based on the shit you imagine people who disagree with you say. And they say reading levels are down, pshaw.
You’re telling me that you believe you are not vulnerable to validation? Right before using the word “corrupted” uncritically in a way that suggests there is a universal and normative “real life?”
What if someone who you respected the authority of, like a prominent scholar or filmmaker, said your obviously incorrect stance on things was correct? You’d trust me, Online Internet Bastard, when I tell you that you are wrong?
AI has been sold as something exceptionally capable of mimicking human knowledge, and its existence is compatible with liberal notions of “objectivity” in that it is quite literally not a human being. Most men subscribe to this authority, and are also statistically bereft of emotional intelligence or management skills. You ever try telling a man what they want to hear? I’ve never ever met one who doesn’t just eat it up.
You’re drawing a line that sounds principled, but it’s actually pretty arbitrary.
You say “real life is real life” and don’t want it “corrupted,” yet you’re perfectly fine immersing yourself in music and movies,things literally engineered to manipulate your emotions and perception. That’s not some pure, untouched version of reality. It’s curated fiction designed to make you feel something.
The only real difference here is that those mediums don’t talk back.
Chatbots make you uncomfortable because they simulate interaction, not because they’re uniquely fake. But calling that “corruption” while giving a free pass to every other form of emotional influence is inconsistent at best.
If your stance is “I don’t want anything artificial affecting me,” then be consistent about it. Otherwise, just say you don’t like this particular form of it instead of pretending it’s some hard philosophical boundary.
It’s easy to point fingers but we should probably be offering solutions instead of shitting on them. Like more Men’s Sheds.
We are so lost.
damn autocorrect, I wanted to write “hard”
I found pornbots to be boring and dumb.
It’s mostly novelty. But wears off eventually when you start noticing very obvious patterns emerge in the way it answers and quality degrades significantly as context size grows. It also will always talk to you in the way YOU tell it to which also becomes boring as time goes on.
It’s always funny to me how people on the news talk about AI partners and so on when you know if they have 2 brain-cells, next month they will drop this whole stupid idea. When you’re talking to it about your problems you’re just talking with yourself.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you’re lonely and hurting, don’t fall in love with anything that doesn’t have a pulse. It’s only going to fuck you up worse in the end.
I agree, last time I dug up a corpse I got into alot of trouble. I’m no longer allowed to be within 6 feet of a corpse.
What about electric pulses? Is 4GHz enough?
Lamp loves me
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porn rules i don’t give a shit
