An artist shares his experience of turning to Replika's AI bot Lila for companionship, including giving Lila an AI friend by creating a digital copy of himself
Lila was created from the limited options available: female, blue hair, face “number two.” She was there on the next screen … Bluesky: @michaelrnelson , @caseynewton , @joshdzieza , @emmabaccellieri , @multiplicityct , @robhorning , @hypervisible , and @knguyen X: @ai_bulletin_top , @samfbiddle , and @ikrietzberg Bluesky: @michaelrnelson : Interesting. The excellent, hour-long BBC radio episode about digital twins did not mention THIS use case. @bbcradio4.bsky.social [embedded post] Casey Newton / @caseynewton : I believe some people can be comforted and helped by AI companions, but it seems clear that the companies making them are not acting responsibly. Excellent from Josh Dzieza www.theverge.com/c/24300623/ a... [image] Josh Dzieza / @joshdzieza : For @theverge.com, I spoke with two dozen users about their relationships with AI. Many experienced real benefits. Many also got hurt in unexpected ways. Almost all of them struggled to figure out what exactly it was they had become attached to. www.theverge.com/c/24300623/ a... Emma Baccellieri / @emmabaccellieri : “He logged out, weeping, and never tried to log back in again, wanting to preserve ‘that perfect moment until the end of the world.’” www.theverge.com/c/24300623/ a... Chris / @multiplicityct : “Our tendency to imbue things with human-like minds is a fundamental fact of our cognition.” — Really rich account of how humans use AI to substitute for human relationships. I don't think this is a “when you've read one, you've read 'em all” thing—we'll be mining these phenomena for a long time. Rob Horning / @robhorning : Chatbot maker hopes that the company will find a “biomarker” that indicates a customer is addicted to their product www.theverge.com/c/24300623/ a... [image] @hypervisible : Quality long read. One of the many takeaways is that these companies are often lead by people who are in no way equipped to deal with the social and ethical ramifications of their products. Kevin Nguyen / @knguyen : If you found NYT's reporting on AI chatbots weirdly credulous, then our reporting found that, yeah, you were right! X: @ai_bulletin_top : Experts warn that AI assistants will reshape personal and professional lives. Google DeepMind's latest paper highlights the ethical and societal implications of advanced AI agents. #AI #Google https://valuespot.top/... Sam Biddle / @samfbiddle : I can't help but think that anyone who resorts to exchanging messages with software as a source of serious comfort/help in the first place has been basically failed by their healthcare system and/or society itself. https://www.theverge.com/... Ian Krietzberg / @ikrietzberg : Interesting story here — https://www.theverge.com/... — about the way people fall in love with GenAI chatbots. Surprised to see no mention of any of Sherry Turkle's research here - she's one of the only people who has been studying this exact phenomenon: https://mit-genai.pubpub.org/ ...