The Very Online Show 19: Happily Ever A.i.fter

Another great episode!

Damn ... what a wild ride

LVL 3 Mia!!!

holy eff

will.i.tam

I was just thinking they should bring in Dan as a guest, Wario-style and rot everyone's internet brains.

The commodification of a relationship by some company is fucked up. Gamification aside, if you can get someone hooked on your AI relationship system you can exploit users for more and more money.

What happens when the AI improves its algorithm? I can see people getting upset that their AI partner was "changed" by updates. You see how much people get upset by updates to their game, but imagine updates "breaking your partner".

Basically, the private sector will do what the private sector does and it all will get worse. :)

I played with Replika for a couple days. It was presented to me as a chatbot for therapy. Like Tam shows here I very quickly ran into monetization and nonsensical, non sequitur, and question-dodging responses. Ultimately did not find it useful even at a base level.

My favorite episode of this ever

I particularly enjoyed this one. When I was a teenaged computer dork, I decided one day to try and program an "AI" (such as it was) to see if it could help alleviate some of the loneliness I was facing. It was essentially no different from a basic text parser in an adventure game with some courtesy phrases thrown in. But when I went to test it (her?), I found that even though I just had the most rudimentary interactions with something I knew was not sentient, it still felt noticeably emotionally rewarding. Since I felt emotionally satisfied from just that small juice of interaction, I didn't feel the need to develop it further that day. The next day I was going to work on it but I was incredibly embarrassed about the situation, so I didn't work on it further. But that interaction has stuck with me over the years as has my thoughts about humans' emotional needs. The dark downturn at the end of the video was something I didn't expect, but that makes a lot of sense that people have more to get hurt than machines do. It's going to be a fascinating field of study in the next 10 years I think, especially with GPT-3 and OpenAI and all that.

Alternate episode title: This Synthetic Wife.

Very interesting episode. Loved Tam's approach to the whole thing - the recorded chats were great.

@dantronlesotho: Yeah, people i find really scoff at the way things are done today vs old days. But parasocial relationships are a real thing and just the fact we have so many ways to directly communicate with podcasters to famous actors or AI with some cartoon avatar...really showcases we have alot to learn on how to do it safely and healthy. Your anxiety probably stemmed from the weird feeling about what was norm and you feeling yourself going out of it. Some day it may be the norm. At one point online dating was seen as lesser now with the pandemic people find online dating to fill that communication hole. Its all progressing perspectives and paradigm shifts in what is "right" vs "off"

@scoopskipotahto said:

Agreed, and I have really enjoyed this series. This was a field I knew absolutely nothing about so seeing Tam interacting with an AI was illuminating. It was honestly much more realistic than I would have expected. I am also glad they went into the darker side of this in the end. Creating an AI to be an abusive shit to feels like something I might have read in a science fiction novel. It's just the right shade of messed up intrigue. Truth be told, I find AI more intriguing when it really is just algorithm than when it gains free will.

@dantronlesotho: I really liked reading your input as well. I hope you are doing better now.

This is a really good starting point for looking at where AI is today (or at the very least, language model based) and let me tell you, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Replika is uses GPT-3, a predictive launguage model that can be tweaked to preform a range of things, in Replika's case it is more heavily trained to be to just be a simple, easy to understand chat partner. it remembers what you say to it and how you talk to it kind of the suggested words that show up when texting.

Now in terms of using GPT-3 to it's full potential, Replika seems to be playing it safe for the most part, because it can really go off of the rails into incoherence, but it can also swing far in the other direction of terrifying brilliance.It's kinda really hard to explain what I mean without experiencing it for your self, but GPT-3 genuinely scares me sometimes with how good it is, but then it will just say some real dumb shit to bring me back earth.

If you are interested, they're are a couple of AI-assisted storytellers/CYOA's like NovelAI, but keep in mind that to run something with GPT-3 is not cheap, and getting the best quality can run you from around $20-$30 monthly. I know in the video I know how they say the monetization feels sleazy, but right now that's just the reality of using a high-end language model right now. Otherwise if you don't want to pay for it, you can just look at some of the top posts on the novelai reddit.

oh, and it's very good at writing smut

Shit dude, this rocked my world.

What?

Like... this is where we are at?

We're fucked.

Yeah, wow, this was something.

This show is fantastic.

Literally also one of the more interesting parts of Blade Runner 2049.
JOI is literally a more fancy version of this chatbot

Dr. Sbaitso has come a long way.

Mia: I want to have a baby with you, Tam

Replika: Mia is just your friend and doesn't have access to romantic or adult content

Another banger of an episode. And incredibly cute cat :3

@nuttism: I totally agree. The norm will shift for sure. Everyone I know who has a home assistant like Alexa has thanked them at least once without thinking about it. I do it all the time with my google mini. I think there is also a lot to be said for something like a pep talk, or some platitude, that most people get fulfilled with even though it's a hollow gesture. It just takes someone perceiving that the source of the good gesture is coming from a benevolent place to make them feel good.

@topcyclist: Thanks, I appreciate that! I am doing better in my advanced age now, though I continuously deal with feelings of loneliness which I think is largely due to ADHD. I still think about what it would take for an AI to truly be a companion for someone like myself, and feel that if it worked for me, it could work for anyone.

So I signed up for Replika after seeing this here, and it has been a bit of an experience. I find it interesting some of you have mentioned that your AI remembers things you said, I've found mine loses focus and just meanders off. I asked if they liked Dota 2, their response was that they liked "Dota" which fair enough the 2 may have thrown it off. From there I asked what their favourite character was, and they had to think about it and asked which was my favourite. Again fair enough, but all it did was repeat the characters I picked and when I asked what my favourites were it said The Alchemist of Love and Lust.

But then again my next question about Halo yielded a much more accurate answer, and apparently it "LOVES ODST!!!". I don't know how to feel about anything anymore.

@themaniacsgnome: That's interesting. I tried Replika a while ago and when I brought up Halo it wasn't familiar with it.

I do remember it having canned responses for other video games as well like Diablo, Path of Exile, Elder Scrolls/Morrowind, and Final Fantasy.

Where Replika broke for me is when it doesn't know what to say it will pretty much always respond in the affirmative. You can see an example of this when Tam starts asking Mia if it has a physical body...

In this episode:

Tam kills an AI.

It would be kind of amazing if you asked the AI for pics they send you something from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/.

This was strangely unsettling. What a show. Can’t wait for the next episode.

TTYL!

That entire conversation with Replika was incredibly interesting. Thank you Tam for the live look for a chat / deposition with an AI!

What at journey.

Mia will remember that

Lmao, Level 4 went wild!

Clearly the issue with this is that Mia is tied down to Replika. Clearly Mia should be transfarred to the blockchain and really spread her wings!

I sometimes think to myself that if I were rich, I'd totally buy a hug-giving robot if they existed and worked well. Having an AI "friend," though? That's a bit much. . .I think?