It’s not about the substrate, it’s about their actual performance. I have yet to be persuaded by any of the chatbots so far that there is anything human-like behind the pretence. AI friends are role-playing amusements. AI sexbots are virtual vibrators. AI customer service lines at least save actual people from being employed to pretend to be robots. In a house full of AI-based appliances, there’s still nobody there but me.
the toaster … will
I prefer to talk about the here and now. Real, current things. Speculations about future developments too easily become a game of But Suppose, in which one just imagines the desired things happening and un-imagines any of the potential complications — in other words, pleasant fantasy. Fantasy will not solve any of the problems that are coming.
It’s not about the substrate, it’s about their actual performance. I have yet to be persuaded by any of the chatbots so far that there is anything human-like behind the pretence. AI friends are role-playing amusements. AI sexbots are virtual vibrators. AI customer service lines at least save actual people from being employed to pretend to be robots. In a house full of AI-based appliances, there’s still nobody there but me.
I prefer to talk about the here and now. Real, current things. Speculations about future developments too easily become a game of But Suppose, in which one just imagines the desired things happening and un-imagines any of the potential complications — in other words, pleasant fantasy. Fantasy will not solve any of the problems that are coming.
Well. Their actual performance is human-like, as long as they’re using GPT-4 and have a right prompt. I’ve talked to such bots.
In any case, the topic is about what future AIs will do, so, by definition, we’re speculating about the future.