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Help. (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (27 children)

I heard about this in the radio the other day. People pay a monthly fee for an AI that becomes your "digital partner".

The reasoning behind, according to them, is that the AI is less dangerous than a human partner because they can't cheat, can't abuse you...

And I can't but wonder where did we take the wrong turn to end up here. Because while I can understand that people can go through some traumatic shit that would made them wary of the opposite sex, considering a machine your sentimental partner can only lead to some extremely fucked up scenarios.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    People are lonely and dating sucks. Humans provided a similar one sided relationship service as well. (Sugar babies come to mind)

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yes, yes. And yes.

    But

    Do you think openAI or Google, or X or whatever billionaire behind the AI involved in these "relationships" cares even minimally about the mental well-being of these people?

    The problem is not just the dating an AI thing, but who is managing these AIs.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do you think openAI or Google, or X or whatever billionaire behind the AI involved in these "relationships" cares even minimally about the mental well-being of these people?

    No, but I wager neither does anyone else, or they wouldn't be dating a datacenter.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not really sure these people fully understand what they are doing or they wouldn't be doing it at all.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    The bizarre thing is, some of them do understand how LLMs work. There was that article about a married woman with an LLM boyfriend. She's very active on Reddit (edit: or at least was until a month ago), and based on her comments I saw back when the article was published, she seems to know perfectly well that it's all just a statistical model of smoke and mirrors, and yet continues with the extreme emotional (and financial) investment 🤷

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    can’t cheat, can’t abuse you

    That is a dangerous assumption. The ones controlling the models can definitely manipulate a person through some minor tweaks which would definitely count as abuse. And it’s it more polygamous since they’re probably all using the same model? Not like each one has their own unique model

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I mean, media has depicted this sort of relationship for pawbably as long as sci-fi has been around? Think like the Star Trek: Original Series episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" that depicted sex robots ~60yrs ago. This was always coming, it's just technology might finally be getting there in a rudimentary way.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    While I agree with your point of view... Do we really trust the present AI providers, in the present economic system, to not pull some bullshit that ends in extremely fucked up scenarios?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh, absolutely not. That didn't seem to be the crux of your argument though.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You are right, my main comment didn't include this part. When I was talking to other users I developed the argument a bit more and I realized that my first comment didn't convey my argument fully. While I was writing the first comment, it made sense in my head, but the reason why I considered it an awfully bad idea was not clear.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    It happens multiple times in Star Trek. They kind of breeze by it but Riker was so infatuated with his holodeck girlfriend when he was captured by Romulans they thought she was a real person.

    Thing is, it never seemed unbelievable in Star Trek. Just, a kinda weird thing that people will do.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Wasn’t there a guy who married his 3DS dating game girlfriend a while back? I’m not sure this is exactly a new phenomenon.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It was more of an oddity. Right now, the numbers are not just "some random guy" but something in much higher numbers.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not to be that person but... source? I don't follow this topic much, but I imagine its actually a very small amount of peolle being amplified into a way bigger issue than it actually is.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I'm trying to find an English source as the one I can offer right now is in Spanish. If i find another one, I'll post it, meanwhile, this is my source: https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2025/02/28/es-rentable-y-da-mucho-miedo-la-reflexion-de-javier-ruiz-sobre-las-parejas-de-mentira-cadena-ser/

    apparently, there's this Replika company that offers artificial boyfriends and they are growing rapidly.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    We have engaged in gender centric tribalism for the last decades. Feminism, counter-movements, topped with a bunch of social media induced dissociation and social isolation.

    Now women are scared of men, men are scared of women, and everyone is lonely and miserable.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What the fuck. You're taking one anecdote and generalizing it to the whole human race, and what's more, you're attributing it to some sort of "novel" gender differentiation, like that shit hasn't existed since the times we all huddled in caves.

    Touch some grass.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Oh i'm sorry, I forgot to specify that I'm not talking as an absolute, and that I am refererring to the western/capitalist cultural hemisphere and not uncontacted tribes or Islamic societies. Didn't think of the average lemmy nitpicker deliberately interpreting any possible uncertainties in communication in the worst possible way.

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