I don't want an AI companion, but I did notice an interesting feeling. When I was working on an overly-ambitious vibe-coding project, I did at one point observe an increased patience and enthusiasm when I felt like I was splitting work with a competent and enthusiastic AI collaborator. When the project was done I felt like we had shared an intense experience with emotional ups and downs. I felt no compulsion to talk about personal matters with the AI, but despite that, I did involuntarily feel the vague affection tingles that I recognize from early potential romance. The fact that we work well together and each contributes something important to the result increases on the margin my willingness to do more projects like that, which to me seems positive and harmless. Everybody else pictures the human-AI relationships as the human needing a polite source of validation and recipient of complaints. That sounds awful to me. But our imagination about the nature of future human-AI relationships is not equipped for all the different and interesting possibilities that will crop up as AI gets better and more embodied.
It’s not really the subject of your article, but one thing that is interesting to consider here is the use of AI as an accessibility aid. For example, for people with ADHD an AI can really smooth out cognitive bumps. Store thoughts for later, review calendars for upcoming commitments, or better yet review emails for uncalendared commitments.
AI can also help with seeking employment accommodation, comparing workplace policies with practice and make it easier for those in need of accommodation to seek it.
No. No. No. I will deal with REAL people who maybe don't agree with me. Having coffee this week with someone who is 100% opposed in so many things. We don't agree....and it's great.
They, the LLMs, have no feelings. They can tell you the temperature, they can even tell you 20° F is cold and it’s also -6° C. But they don’t experientially know what “cold” feels like.
They can tell you how to do things, including how to commit mass murder and suicide. But they can’t tell you the pain your mass murder will trigger or the pain your suicide will evoke in those you leave behind.
"they" can't tell you anything, all they can do is run very massive amounts of boolean operations very fast. We humans are smart enough to figure out how to turn a bunch of boolean operations into mimicking a human. All the "theys" that are AI are just simple dumb machines running complex programs created by the himan mind. Think of it this way I take 30 pictures of you walking every second, I do this for 1 minute. I take the now 1800 pictures put them on a wheel and i turn the wheel 30 times a second. you see a moving picture. AI is just the wheel in this analogy. The human is what is taking the pictures. placing the pictures on a wheel to be flipped 30 times a second and the human is also turning the wheel. So in reality AI is the least smart thing in the whole scenario. it just does exactly what humans make it do
very good interview Katherine. But unfortunatly a light switch cannot be a companion of any type.
That tech piece I mentioned to you that I was working on several days ago. I published this morning. I actually included a link this morning in it to your interview because it was relevant. I wrote this BTW long berfore your interview. I just added the link after I watched your interview last night.
It is titled
"Technology, Not Theology: Why AI is Just Billions of Light Switches"
Read it if you get board. I should have kept the unedited version it was much more extensive. I reduced it from about 30 paragraphs to about 16 for brevity.
Here are some sample AI dates:
https://youtu.be/xibYjTT7kHs?si=XSNiPkQIYFAw8Gmd
(love this guy's shorts)
I don't want an AI companion, but I did notice an interesting feeling. When I was working on an overly-ambitious vibe-coding project, I did at one point observe an increased patience and enthusiasm when I felt like I was splitting work with a competent and enthusiastic AI collaborator. When the project was done I felt like we had shared an intense experience with emotional ups and downs. I felt no compulsion to talk about personal matters with the AI, but despite that, I did involuntarily feel the vague affection tingles that I recognize from early potential romance. The fact that we work well together and each contributes something important to the result increases on the margin my willingness to do more projects like that, which to me seems positive and harmless. Everybody else pictures the human-AI relationships as the human needing a polite source of validation and recipient of complaints. That sounds awful to me. But our imagination about the nature of future human-AI relationships is not equipped for all the different and interesting possibilities that will crop up as AI gets better and more embodied.
Anyone who replaces face-to-face communication with AI communication will face the problem of weakened EQ, cognitive dissonance, and digital dementia.
Great graphics!
It’s not really the subject of your article, but one thing that is interesting to consider here is the use of AI as an accessibility aid. For example, for people with ADHD an AI can really smooth out cognitive bumps. Store thoughts for later, review calendars for upcoming commitments, or better yet review emails for uncalendared commitments.
AI can also help with seeking employment accommodation, comparing workplace policies with practice and make it easier for those in need of accommodation to seek it.
No. No. No. I will deal with REAL people who maybe don't agree with me. Having coffee this week with someone who is 100% opposed in so many things. We don't agree....and it's great.
They, the LLMs, have no feelings. They can tell you the temperature, they can even tell you 20° F is cold and it’s also -6° C. But they don’t experientially know what “cold” feels like.
They can tell you how to do things, including how to commit mass murder and suicide. But they can’t tell you the pain your mass murder will trigger or the pain your suicide will evoke in those you leave behind.
"they" can't tell you anything, all they can do is run very massive amounts of boolean operations very fast. We humans are smart enough to figure out how to turn a bunch of boolean operations into mimicking a human. All the "theys" that are AI are just simple dumb machines running complex programs created by the himan mind. Think of it this way I take 30 pictures of you walking every second, I do this for 1 minute. I take the now 1800 pictures put them on a wheel and i turn the wheel 30 times a second. you see a moving picture. AI is just the wheel in this analogy. The human is what is taking the pictures. placing the pictures on a wheel to be flipped 30 times a second and the human is also turning the wheel. So in reality AI is the least smart thing in the whole scenario. it just does exactly what humans make it do
very good interview Katherine. But unfortunatly a light switch cannot be a companion of any type.
That tech piece I mentioned to you that I was working on several days ago. I published this morning. I actually included a link this morning in it to your interview because it was relevant. I wrote this BTW long berfore your interview. I just added the link after I watched your interview last night.
It is titled
"Technology, Not Theology: Why AI is Just Billions of Light Switches"
Read it if you get board. I should have kept the unedited version it was much more extensive. I reduced it from about 30 paragraphs to about 16 for brevity.