@aeva
It’s worse than that.
I read a while back that factories that stick googly eyes on their robots have fewer accidents and injuries, seemingly because “thing has eyes” is enough to make human workers’ brains give the robots more attention and personal space.
They were working on a system to use artificial eyes to telegraph what the robot is going to do, but it turned out that’s not necessary. Just make it a little cute and fewer people walk into its workspace.

@aeva

@aeva *muttering to myself repeatedly as I type prompts* "you will not pack bond with the chat bot, you will not pack bond with the chat bot, you will not pack bond with the chat bot..."

@aeva so if I put googly eyes on my forehead, my wife will then assume I have feelings instead of asking me about my feelings.

@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place Reminds me of how Apple used to put faces on all the computers they presented in the past so that they looked less scary to the public.

@aeva There's a bit in an early episode of Community where Jeff Winger gives a name to a pencil, and then snaps it, and says, "And a little bit of you died inside just now."

@aeva That rock has considerably more empathy than quite a few people.

@aeva just like me

@aeva The human instinct to pack bond applies to *everything*

@aeva so in summary: ChatGPT isn’t *that* good, it’s humans that are *so* gullible 😀

@aeva don't dis rock-chan

@aeva @neauoire The problem runs deep. Give me a stuffed toy, tell me a child loved it, I wont be able to recycle it no matter what. It will be screamed from the heart of me that this thing has moral standing.

I just hope the AI researchers remember to teach the computer to aggressively pack bond with all things too ._.

@aeva Plot Twist:

@aeva i just asked people with access to it to ask a very specific question (klapaucius' request for a six-lines poem from kandel's translation of lem's cyberiad), and it failed spectacularly: https://circumstances.run/@mawhrin/109457122462577129

(i was mostly interested if the engine was fed the text of the story, but the result was interesting in itself; none of the returned results were six lines long)

@aeva

@aeva @davidgerard i don't think anyone playing with it over here thinks it has a mind - we're just excited at a cool tool. Like Wordle, only better 😂

@aeva Or reflect back what you just said, like the Eliza chatbot, or the UK royal family.

@aeva

@aeva Rocco's just a rock

@aeva I wish I had a rock friend.

@aeva humans will pack bond with anything

@aeva Don't you diss my pet! IT HAS FEELINGS TOO!

@aeva Tbh, having developed AI for fun, the most impressive part to me is that they managed to make the thing have actually working memory of things said previously

That's pretty much the one thing needed to make a chatbot feel real

@aeva @JamesGleick

@aeva Reminds me of this IKEA ad by Spike Jonze. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg

@aeva some rocks have feelings, like mystic quartz crystals; if you hit them hard enough they unleash magical powers upon whomever is worthy. They also make anal breathing more potent for Qi Gong energy work. I mean, that goes without saying.

@aeva

@aeva I really enjoyed Christine Sunu's talk on that subject. CW: a robot gets "murdered" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4pW4dIaQyg

@aeva nobody insults Little Rocky like that!

@aeva

You must wacht...

https://m.filmaffinity.com/es/movie.php?id=909174

@aeva

Rock may well have feelings from an animistic / pantheistic perspective, software tho probably not

@aeva
Have you even watched Everything, Everywhere, all at once? 😂

@aeva I’m in the camp that humans are just biological machines and awareness is just in our programming. A bit more complicated than a rock maybe, but sometimes I prefer the simplicity.

@aeva
Why not? Drawing eyes on the back of our heads convinces tigers that humans have feelings, and we certainly know THAT isn't true!

@aeva humans are also just machines, and in many cases we contest the genuineness of human emotions also, so i think drawing a line in the sand here is wishful thinking.

Ultimately, emotions are also just effective communication that can be brought about subconsciously and/or wilfully. I don't see why an AI couldn't be taught to talk this language also.

@aeva OTOH, calling something rock makes people believe it's music.

@aeva if I can’t distinct rock emotions from human emotions, perhaps the rock has emotions?

(I don’t expect a painted smiley face to pass this Kristoffer’s Test :)

@aeva Everything Everywhere All At Once has proven that they do, in fact, have feelings.

And googly eyes.

@aeva That Wilson ball in Castaway, it had feelings.

@aeva it’s a rock fact!

@aeva ChatGPT is a silicon rock that we drew a quadrillion-transistor face on

@aeva someone in my IRC channel was totally gushing about it and how “creative”[sic!] it is yesternight and did not want to be educated

@aeva look at us, we're all like geologists now: excited by dumb rocks 😬

@aeva Who is a cutems?