Why would anyone use such a tool when you can go to church and read the Bible? Humans are incapable of meeting the infinity and infinite complexity of human need and pain.
I have no doubt that AI is going to do amazing things for and to humanity. Unfortunately, overall, the changes are going to be catastrophic: loss of self reliance, self thought, introspection (even if successful entrepeneurs don't need it!) and just any capability to improve. We will become just toys.
This reminded me a little of a post I saw on Twitter during the covid lockdown, when so many people were furloughed and confined to their homes- "It's lockdown. You'll never have so much time again. If you don't write that novel now, accept that you'll never write it." OK advice to a single person on furlough maybe. Meanwhile I and many people I knew were trying to manage full time work from home + home-schooling multiple children + additional domestic tasks (more meals to cook, more mess, lengthy queues to buy groceries etc). I'd never had less time for novel-writing.
It is incredibly easy to generalise from one's own experience and confidently advise others on that basis. At least when another human is doing it, it's easier to spot. Baking this into a technology that then presents itself as being personalised, adaptive and completely authoritative is likely to be disastrous.
It is disheartening that reasonably intelligent people ever imagined in the first place that such technology is grounded in anything like the personal reality human beings need to thrive in, that they would willingly participate in this massive technological experiment as if it were the natural next step forward, like a new iPhone or a new app...
This is merely an extension of what is happening with 'diagnosis' and 'treatment' in general, in the field of mental and emotional distress. Intuition, insight and adaptation is suspended, in favour of checking an ever more general collection of 'symptoms' against tick-boxes, and following the flow chart to see what to do next. Mental health manuals are merely based on the consensus in the room at the time, with little input from either hard science or philosophy. In a recent survey to see how one professional body's ethical framework could be improved, counsellors allegedly said they wanted to be told what to do in specific situations – almost 'if they say this, you say this'. Context and individuality, let alone life circumstances, play very little role in professional judgement now, and the tramlines of 'normal' get narrower and narrower. Instead, the person – often, tragically, a child – is told they have a 'disorder'. They may then be medicated. It is profoundly inhuman, deeply unethical and one of the primary reasons why I left school counselling.
This type of interface and application is unfortunately already playing into the perceived inadequacy of personhood propogated by social media - the discomfiting temptation of self-comparison with everyone else's apparently perfect life, leading to a compulsion to adopt and defend a victimhood stance on some personal issues or other to seek support on. Once I have abdicated my personal dignity and been seduced by AI exhortations about all the things I should be doing better I am captured. I have become a slave to the machine. I will believe anything I am being told or sold. Thank goodness Lucy still has the awareness to realise that something is 'off'. It is this discernment and natural scepticism that we need to continue to cling to as if our lives depend on it. Because they do.
It's inevitable, I would think. In fact isn't it the same as the school of feminism which measures success against access to the male status metrics? Which has certainly done a number on those young women who find themselves confused when that particular dream doesn't bring them what they wanted.
What if I use the chatbot as a dumping ground for my unresolved emotional issues? It's better not to do it on somebody else, just dump all that pent up feelings onto the bot!
Why would anyone use such a tool when you can go to church and read the Bible? Humans are incapable of meeting the infinity and infinite complexity of human need and pain.
I have no doubt that AI is going to do amazing things for and to humanity. Unfortunately, overall, the changes are going to be catastrophic: loss of self reliance, self thought, introspection (even if successful entrepeneurs don't need it!) and just any capability to improve. We will become just toys.
This reminded me a little of a post I saw on Twitter during the covid lockdown, when so many people were furloughed and confined to their homes- "It's lockdown. You'll never have so much time again. If you don't write that novel now, accept that you'll never write it." OK advice to a single person on furlough maybe. Meanwhile I and many people I knew were trying to manage full time work from home + home-schooling multiple children + additional domestic tasks (more meals to cook, more mess, lengthy queues to buy groceries etc). I'd never had less time for novel-writing.
It is incredibly easy to generalise from one's own experience and confidently advise others on that basis. At least when another human is doing it, it's easier to spot. Baking this into a technology that then presents itself as being personalised, adaptive and completely authoritative is likely to be disastrous.
It is disheartening that reasonably intelligent people ever imagined in the first place that such technology is grounded in anything like the personal reality human beings need to thrive in, that they would willingly participate in this massive technological experiment as if it were the natural next step forward, like a new iPhone or a new app...
This is merely an extension of what is happening with 'diagnosis' and 'treatment' in general, in the field of mental and emotional distress. Intuition, insight and adaptation is suspended, in favour of checking an ever more general collection of 'symptoms' against tick-boxes, and following the flow chart to see what to do next. Mental health manuals are merely based on the consensus in the room at the time, with little input from either hard science or philosophy. In a recent survey to see how one professional body's ethical framework could be improved, counsellors allegedly said they wanted to be told what to do in specific situations – almost 'if they say this, you say this'. Context and individuality, let alone life circumstances, play very little role in professional judgement now, and the tramlines of 'normal' get narrower and narrower. Instead, the person – often, tragically, a child – is told they have a 'disorder'. They may then be medicated. It is profoundly inhuman, deeply unethical and one of the primary reasons why I left school counselling.
This type of interface and application is unfortunately already playing into the perceived inadequacy of personhood propogated by social media - the discomfiting temptation of self-comparison with everyone else's apparently perfect life, leading to a compulsion to adopt and defend a victimhood stance on some personal issues or other to seek support on. Once I have abdicated my personal dignity and been seduced by AI exhortations about all the things I should be doing better I am captured. I have become a slave to the machine. I will believe anything I am being told or sold. Thank goodness Lucy still has the awareness to realise that something is 'off'. It is this discernment and natural scepticism that we need to continue to cling to as if our lives depend on it. Because they do.
It's inevitable, I would think. In fact isn't it the same as the school of feminism which measures success against access to the male status metrics? Which has certainly done a number on those young women who find themselves confused when that particular dream doesn't bring them what they wanted.
I would love to know where I can obtain this “male-coded life pattern”. Can I download an upgrade to my male firmware?
The reveal (“US undergrads at Christian university”) makes more sense. And yet it is a chilling prospect.
Please send this directly to Richard Dawkins it seems he hasn't got the memo
What if I use the chatbot as a dumping ground for my unresolved emotional issues? It's better not to do it on somebody else, just dump all that pent up feelings onto the bot!
As much as it might be turning on, there's no tuning it, so let's just drop out. :D