I wasn’t aware, thanks

The US should have humane worker rights.

I didn’t mean it makes sense as in I agree. I meant, ‘oh, a lot of this is going on and it fits in’

Ah well that makes sense then

I get it, but also can you imagine a foreign country banning Amazon because “it means the US can see what you’re up to and it gets to choose what deals to push at you” etc?

I mean… Facebook for god’s sake…

Being protectionist makes sense sometimes but it screws you over when other countries start banning your apps in favour of home grown alternatives…

Unification of European and North African economic areas

Minority rights for whites in America

Losing track of how many of your friends are AI

I don’t think that the time difference between the two events would be significant enough for the drop in birth rate to be that damaging

Let’s hope so!

Yes true. But people need friends, sometimes an assistant too. That’s the kind of role I imagine it slotting into. But I agree in many cases it could get overly parental and actually hinder people from being independent. I don’t think it would be an LLM though, they’re wholly unsuited to the task. Some as yet unreleased model of AI probably…

Any% enshitification speed run GO!

When a mental health issue affects men and women equally you end up with more women at the doctor and more men dead.

But that’s besides the point. Schmidt is calling out his concern for young men in particular because I think he knows a thing or too about what people google and what obsessive behaviours they can fall into especially regarding sexual fantasy.

He already has a front row seat to stats on porn addiction and how this fuels male isolation in particular. If you read the article you’ll see it cites an example of a young boy committing suicide through his romantic interactions with a chatbot.

Women are exposed to impossible beauty standards and have higher anxiety, OCD and other disorders than men. But Schmidt isn’t referring to that.

Men are lonely, have lower life satisfaction, and are far more likely to get sexually addicted to increasingly sophisticated immersive porn.

At some point they’re going to have to depart from the “single name” branding. Because the selling point is going to be how unique the AI is for you, how different from all the others. I wonder how they’ll handle branding at that point? Maybe if you create “Marla”, Apple are still going to say it’s a type of “Siri” if that’s the base technology. But I think we may start seeing weirder more organic things like “your AI Marla - a daughter of Siri - is ready”

True. But I’m not talking about fooling people. Just lowering the amount of “willing suspension of disbelief”.

I think the part that feels ‘sad’ to you is what’s going to change socially over the next 50 years. I think it’s going to become extremely normal to at least have a “mental health AI friend” who knows you really well and keeps you going through the day, is someone to talk to, someone who’s always there, someone who’s the first to detect that you may be in danger. Overall I think society’s going to receive that as a good thing. And it will, I think, be normal because it will be so believable, and so useful, and for a large number of people, keep them well and feeling good about themselves. In that context some of those attachments turning romantic, or people just being sexually into whatever that assistant can say or do will be increasingly normal. It will also feel really good, let’s not forget that. We’re really only at the very start of what immersive VR is going to be. Once AI becomes not a little better but 50-100 years of innovation better I don’t think we can really underestimate how much it’s going to feel like you’re actually interacting with [insert fantasy here]. Once tactile feedback sees similar improvements we’re about 75% of the way to what people would use an actual holodeck for anyway. I can’t see how that doesn’t have a dramatic effect on how people view human-human romantic relationships. Over time the proportion of people who can have a believable experience of their absolute sexual fantasy is only going to grow over time. With how ubiquitous that will be I can’t see how in most relationships people know they’re “second best”. I think that has a profound effect on how people make attachments to one another. I think once “having a real girlfriend” is seen as the secondary way to get your sexual needs met, that that will have a terminal effect on how many young men even want to be in relationships let alone stay around to be a father.

I understand where you’re coming from now. Yes I agree. Though I’ll add that I’m pretty confident that the sex industry is going to be at the bleeding edge of AI / VR as things progress. At least, I think the bar for making people interested in what an attractive AI has to say rather than another disappointing night on tinder is far lower than automating all human labour. Even if we’re talking physical “sexbots” I think, practically speaking, that’s more likely to be rudimentary ‘equipment’ greatly enhanced by augmented VR. Again, far closer to reality than Boston dynamics + son of chatGPT replacing the workforce. My point being that the bar at which young people become disinterested in physical reproduction is far, far lower than a post scarcity society in which all labour is automated. And that’s the risk. That we start to have a shortfall in workforce replacement long before we can manage without it.

You’re looking at the AI equivalent of where stop frame animation was in 1930. It’s a few years old and rudimentary. Give it 80 years. That’s the time frame I was talking about.

Spending all time dating AI partners means that we have achieved labor post scarcity

Bit of a weird non sequitur

What I’m saying has nothing to do “labour post scarcity”

I’m referring to immersive VR and AI overall contributing to a falling birthrate. If immersive realities become truly immersive, it’s reasonable to believe they will occupy leisure time. This has nothing to do with people’s relationship to work. They’ll still need to be economically active, whether or not this takes place in the VR is neither here nor there.

It’s a point about what people will do with their time when they are lonely, want connection, or pleasure. And if VR / AI (whatever other technologies) becomes believable and more satisfying then there’s little reason to believe people will continue the “unreliable” tradition of dating. And even less to engage in the mucky and very biological habit of reproducing.

Witness Japanese culture. And then just add 100 years of immersive believable AI personality and sexual fantasy. Do you think that will make people get married and have babies or do you think it will help them being content being single and childless?

I have been saying for a while, I think hyperealistic vr and believable AI personalities are going to be the ‘great filter’ that limits advanced civilization.

Given the chance to have your sexual and emotional fantasies fulfilled in a satisfying way, many many people will take it. Especially when ‘real life’ is getting harder with everything from the cost of living making the dream of ‘married with home and children’ less obtainable to hyper competitive online dating disenfranchising increasing proportions of both men and women.

Having a believable relationship with AI is far closer than we think. It doesn’t have to perfectly replicate real life, it just has to be satisfying enough in a few key ways that people begin to prefer it.

casually looks at male suicide rate

Lol

Never even heard of it, I’ll have a look thanks