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Fred Hapgood's avatar

The population is profoundly, profoundly, diverse. I think it goes almost without saying that some fraction of it is going to have any reaction you can think of, very much including having a relationship with generative AI programs that deals positively (by their own testimony) with loneliness and mental illness. (Do not forget there were people who thought they were getting therapeutic results from Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA. ) We will soon start getting testimonies to this effect, and by "soon" I mean this year. Then the question will be, what do we think of these reports? Do we categorize the people making them in some way that allows us to say "only people like that" feel that way and what they say has no relevance for the rest of us? Or will we be more open-minded? Beats me, But I think I can guess what my position will be.

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Dave Friedman's avatar

Interesting post. I wrote a bit about this here: https://davefriedman.substack.com/p/intimations-of-empathy-in-chatgpt . I found that ChatGPT seems to provide some explanation of how to empathize with others, given certain prompts. Intimations of empathy, if you will.

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