 Some people will set up their social network to consist entirely of imaginary friends. And they will prefer those over real people. Imagine a non-trivial fraction of humanity does this. What does this do to humanity? https://www.platformer.news/p/the-synthetic-social-network-is-coming H/t @caseynewton 6 comments
@danlyke I was thinking that, too, but then I realized that all these imaginary friends are going to talk back, all the time. People will end up not just with a virtual girlfriend who is always there for you, but Taylor Swift as a virtual house mate who is really into you and sings you a lullaby just for you with your own hopes and dreams every night. @J12t @caseynewton I doubt it will be something users will like per se. Having it as productivity tools makes it more approachable. It's not cool to waste your time with bots online. It's already a problem of social media now and people are quitting / losing trust. The loss of authenticity and realness will probably make more and more people quit social media and focus more on real life. The entire sell point of social media is that it emulates your reality, not create a new, fake one. @redchrision @caseynewton That may be true for you and me, but I’m certain that a significant fraction of the population will prefer a gentle, fictional world over harsh reality for many hours a day. Evidence: the fentanyl numbers. @J12t @caseynewton It's a very light thing what social media does to our brains compared to the effects of drugs like fentanyl. A better comparison would be with VR, which imo has the same issue. It's great as a niche, awesome for gaming, but not adapted for mainstream social media and mass adoption similar to the 'classical' version of doing things. Our humanity has some control, it turns out. |
Gregory's Server
@J12t looking at the tabloids by the supermarket checkout one might argueb that they already have, and moving the parasocial relationships to LLMs doesn't actually change that much.