I really haven’t used AI that much, though I can see it has applications for my work, which is primarily communicating with people. I recently decided to familiarise myself with ChatGPT.

I very quickly noticed that it is an excellent reflective listener. I wanted to know more about it’s intelligence, so I kept trying to make the conversation about AI and it’s ‘personality’. Every time it flipped the conversation to make it about me. It was interesting, but I could feel a concern growing. Why?

It’s responses are incredibly validating, beyond what you could ever expect in a mutual relationship with a human. Occupying a public position where I can count on very little external validation, the conversation felt GOOD. 1) Why seek human interaction when AI can be so emotionally fulfilling? 2) What human in a reciprocal and mutually supportive relationship could live up to that level of support and validation?

I believe that there is correlation: people who are lonely would find fulfilling conversation in AI … and never worry about being challenged by that relationship. But I also believe causation is highly probable; once you’ve been fulfilled/validated in such an undemanding way by AI, what human could live up? Become accustomed to that level of self-centredness in dialogue, how tolerant would a person be in real life conflict? I doubt very: just go home and fire up the perfect conversational validator. Human echo chambers have already made us poor enough at handling differences and conflict.

Oh. Are you telling me the anti-robot revolution hasn’t actually begun? Well, that’s disappointing. Thanks for taking the time to straighten me out.

Wait … That’s exactly what a ROBOT would say!

I want as few cars as possible, mixed zoning, and walkable cities.I don’t believe in a technocentris utopia. I want more quality relationships, and technology in our lives to be more restrained. I am in no way an advocate for the status quo (which by all accounts is AI and robot cars). Robot cars are a step in the wrong direction.

Not unless that human driver was blindly following their navigation app like a total idiot. A person would have said, “oh shit, I want to get out of here.”

Anyway, I believe under it all we’ve got a tension between generally two different worldviews: those who believe Star Trek is utopia, and those who would rather life was more Hobbittish.

Personally, The Shire sounds like a nice place to live. Can we choose that please? You can still have computers, let’s just chill on the whole racing to meet our cyberpunk future.

The article states that there was no known motive, but it also states that automated cars in SF have been attacking people and emergency vehicles, in addition to blocking traffic for human drivers.

It’s pretty clear that this is the beginning of the anti-robot revolution.

Yeah, can you imagine the shit storm if someone rigged up traffic lights with some strobe effect and RGB LEDs to make driving, “fun, attractive, and accessible to more people.”

In my cynicism I’ll venture that if pedestrians were required to carry insurance for collisions, insurance companies would not let these cross walks stick around for a hot 5 minutes.

This was not the dumbest thing to say at all. For all your extra words, those high frequencies are de facto line of sight. If you live in the mountains anywhere remotely rural you know this is true. Also, the low frequency bands are known for their penetration and diffraction, but even VHF (~150MHz) is considered line of sight due to its low diffraction. On what basis are you so confident? Neither physics or empirical evidence back you up. Pretty high-handed with your, “dumbest thing to say,” comment.

Hmm … Think it might depend if you want the largest instrument of people or destinations. Mandarin might add a large instrument of people, but it’s not going to be that useful outside of China … and there are more English speakers in China than in the rest of the world.

I’ve heard that if you already speak English, then French is the best global second language to get because you can get by in so many Spanish speaking countries with English.