Something I use as a heuristic that is pretty reliable is "am I treating a thing like a person, or a person like a thing?" If so then, maybe not necessarily bad but probably bad.

It's not about whether it's "real" or not. In this case of AI relationships, extremely sophisticated and poorly understood mechanisms of social-emotional communication and meaning making that have previously only ever been used for bonding with other people, and to a limited extent animals, are being directed at a machine. And we find that the mechanisms respond to that machine as if there is a person there, when there is not.

There is a lot of novel stuff happening there, technologically, socially, psychologically. We don't really know, and I don't trust anyone who is confidently predicting, what effects that will have on the person doing it, or their other social bonds.

Wrestling is theater! It's an ancient craft, well understood. If you're going to approach AI relationships as a natural extension of some well established human activity probably pet bonding is the closest. I don't think it's even that close though.

But you know that the alternative is a lot of other mental illnesses, including things like suicide. Everyone tells people "get mental help" but is neither cheap, nor accessible to most people.

I've seen no evidence that this sort of relationship to AI use is an effective alternative to mental health treatment. In fact it's so far looking to be about the opposite: as currently implemented LLMs are reinforcement tools for delusional thinking and have already been a known factor in several suicides.

The inaccessibility of healthcare in the US is a serious problem but this is not a solution or alternative to it right now and may never become one.

To me what you're saying is akin to "I see no evidence lab grown food is healthier than real food, so people under famine and malnourishment should instead wait for someone to give them aid instead of eat lab grown food".

I don't think AI can replace mental health treatment or human relationships. But it might be a viable stop-gap. It's like tom hanks talking to "Wilson" the volleyball when he was stuck on island in "cast away". Yeah, it's weird, but it helped him survive and cope until he was rescued. I want these people struggling with mental health to survive and cope until they get real help some day. I want less suicides, less people contracting chronic illnesses,etc.. and to hell with any "appearances" of weirdness or stigma.

You're not engaging with my comments in favor of arguing with words I didn't say in defense of positions I don't hold. I don't really see a role for myself in that activity so I'll leave you to it.

I don't think that's fair, i was mostly respond to your first sentence and:

> The inaccessibility of healthcare in the US is a serious problem but this is not a solution or alternative to it right now and may never become one.

My response was clearly not your words, but my understanding of your conclusion.

The few suicides that are reported pale in comparison to suicides caused by loneliness. An argument can also be made that they just haven't trained/found the right companion model yet.

We're stuck in a really perverse collective-action problem. And, we keep doing this to ourselves. These technologies are not enriching our lives, but once they're adopted we either use them, or voluntarily fall behind. There seems to be very little general philanthropy in this regard.

I think that's a false dichotomy. tech isn't good or bad, it's what we do with it that is. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So many of today's problems could be good in principle, but the surrounding facts (laws, human nature, etc.) render them awful. Did anyone think 20 years ago that algorithmic feeds would be so bad? I don't see a reason in principle that they must be bad, but it's clear that we'd be far better off without them.

we're not better off without algorithms either, they've vastly improved the quality of lives for many. My point is that it is us humans who are corrupt and evil, that is the problem that needs fixing, not our tools and instruments.

The first thing we did with nuclear power is mass-killing and weapons. But if only we used it for power generation a lot more, we could have even avoided the climate crisis happening now.

Lots of harm caused by fire, but it is a pillar of human cvilization.

Nevertheless, you can't unspill milk as they say. It is even more pointless than the "war on drugs". you can regulate the models though. and stop telling people to seek mental health, it isn't something you seek and magically you go "poof" and you're cured. If you can be a friend to someone instead of some AI, do that! be the solution. else, get out of their way. If they can google chatgpt, they can google "mental health". people have been making friends with inanimate objects since forever. lonely people talk to dolls and puppets. There is a huge market for human like doll wives that costs >$5k. There are even mainstream movies with a-list actors in them about this like "lars and the real girl" and "her".

Life is hard and then you die. people grasp at straws to last as long as they can, because everything that lives wants to continue to live. and I hope they fight their best fight instead of giving up early after being dismissed by society to "seek mental help" lol.

P.S.: "mental help" is like lawyers, they're there for the corporations and the ultra-wealthy. everything accessible by normal people, to the most part that is, is not useful unless your goal is to get pilled-up, in which case I doubt that is better than just talking to some inanimate computer.

> Is this neccesarily a bad thing?

Yes?

For the sake of discussion, it would be great if you can expand on that.

Okay, if you want me to write more...

The direction we're headed, humanity is going to become utterly isolated pods, never interacting. We're going to end up with humanity being one rich dude, a staff of robots, and some humans under his patronage. The other bit of humanity is a rich woman, with a staff of robots, and some humans under her patronage, because nobody can deal with there being other humans that are as gross and sloppy and suck, just as much as they do.

Relationships are hard. They're a lot of work. Not just romantic relationships, but all other kinds of relationships: family, friendship, mentorship, chosen family, colleague, manager, mentee, client, neighbor, teammate, student, citizen, creative partner, audience. Instead of having any kind of relationship with people, I can just hide away, work remote, become hikikomori.

Where does that leave humanity? As Ms Deejay says, do you think you're better off alone?

Because individual humans no long need to coexist with their neighbors, it means the best and worst will flourish. For every supportive person that accepts gay people, there's another person that wants to stone them. Interacting with lots of other people is the only way to develop nuanced opinions of groups of other people, and without any kind of forced interaction, there won't be any, further isolating everybody from everyone else.

I think there is a lot of hypberbole in your argument. People interacting because they have no other choice is not a good thing. Do you think forced arranged marriages are good? Do you think being stuck in a toxic relationship of any kind is good? Even on the milder side, boomers and gen-x are chok full of marriages that started because people didn't want to be alone, or because it's "what everybody else does" and then they end up in divorce, and you have all sorts of messed up "children of divorce" left behind.

I don't think anyone would choose a relationship with a computer, or isolation when the alternative is a healthy relationship of their own choice. There is still no replacement for real and authentic human relationships.

Relationships are hard, but entering them should be voluntary, not coerced. and my answer to Ms Deejay is: Yeah, we're better off alone than being stuck in a coerced toxic relationship. No one goes "hikomori" or "forever alone" when they could have just put up with some disagreements and uncomfortable situations.

It's important for people to learn to be alone and ok with it. to be content and happy with your own company. If I was being a reductionist, I would even claim that most of the ails of the world are rooted in coerced relationships. Conflict as the default state of a relationship is not better than solitude. But solitude as the default state of a person isn't healthy either.

Balance is key to most things. Have relationships, put up with the messiness of people, but up to a point. Be comfortable with solitude, but up to a point only. Be your own friend first, so you can be one to others.

People are being more isolated, but not because they want to be to the most part, and not because of techonology, but by the reconstruction of society so that the most labor and capital can be extracted from a person. Public transportations, public spaces, walkable cities, social media that isn't a brainwashing machine, AI that isn't trained to manipulate human psychology,etc.. those are the changes we need. The false dichotomoy of "all or nothing" you eschew is anathema to the goals you seek.

Hermits have been around since forever. You can hunt in the woods, read books and chill with your dog in the Alaska or any number of remote places, and many have done that all through history. Your sentiment is similar to how they thought people won't even talk to each other anymore in person after the invention of telephones. People talked less in person for sure, but we still talk to each other in person, even when a call is easier.

> No one goes "hikomori" or "forever alone" when they could have just put up with some disagreements and uncomfortable situations.

Without interviewing a group of people that aren't looking to be interviewed, how can you make that claim? I can't say I've done that either, but in the total range of humans I've met over my time on Earth, there is a huge spectrum of the level of uncomfortable that people are able to put up with. As simplistic example, how much hot/cold humans are able to put up with before complaining varies from individual to individual. Some complain at the slightest temperature change. Other would rather pass out than complain. If there's such a wide variation on such a simple measure, so, too, we should expect variation on the level of ability to "just put up with some disagreements and uncomfortable situations."

I'm not here to try and somehow sell the idea that forced arranged marriages are a good thing, or that we should go back to the 1950's where women were more chattle than people. Or that people should stay in toxic relationships that are slowly killing them inside.

I seek none of those things.

The question is, how do we, at large, as a society, make toxic people less toxic? An absolutist approach towards it failed the 2024 US election.

What is increased polarization, in the people around me and in the world. I don't know how to heal that. How to lessen the toxicity being spewed about, even here. (Not remotely accusing you of it, mind you, just there are certain threads/topics that HN does not do well.)

> People are being more isolated

Some people are being more isolated simply because they can afford to. Part of the reason there is a housing crisis is that more people are choosing to live alone. If a house previously housed 6 people is now housing one, maybe two, the demand for housing shoots way up. That is not the only reason, but we can't ignore it either.

The telephone required another person on the other end of it. If people don't talk in-person because of the telephone, they still need to talk to another person, who's personality is lumpy and spiky and loveable in their own way. Anthropomorphization aside, LLMs aren't people and so my concern, which may prove to be "old man yelling at clouds", only time can tell; my concern is that we'll collectively get used to talking exclusively with LLMs and not need the social skills necessary to interact and live amongst other humans.

In a society that's becoming increasingly polarized, going no contact with the toxic people in your life is the right move for individual self-preservation, but those toxic people find other toxic people and become even more toxic. And we all each have one but one vote to give. Well, billionaires get a couple more because we worship the rich, but the rest of us; the rest of us each only have one.