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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I suspect nothing short of AGI would bring AI gfs/bfs into the mainstream. The problem is that it would be common knowledge that these AIs don't actually understand what we're saying. But I could see people using it secretly as a kind of stand in until they get a real gf/bf.

Edit: to be clear by mainstream I mean having an AI bf/gf is normalized and not considered cringe. I think that was the interesting thing about the world in Her. It makes sense because in that world AI is fully conscious.

The problem is that it would be common knowledge that these AIs don't actually understand what we're saying.

Surely the bigger problem is that they don't have functioning genitalia?

I'm predicting a simple solution to this one: 'doll'-style sexworkers. They cosplay as your waifu, your AI instructs them through an earpiece like a porno director, and your augmented reality equipment fills in the gaps as best as possible.(Soon to be fully arranged by your AI waifu herself, to avoid breaking immersion - you give her an allowance, she surprises you with 'date night'.)

No technological reason why we couldn't do this right now, especially with GPT4 already having built-in img2text. Whether social pressure is applied to stomp out this sort of thing is another matter, I think AI is going to disrupt gender politics more profoundly than birth control, & institutional feminism is very quickly going to come down on the anti-AI side.

Sounds like something we'll get before 2049.

Sounds like a meat puppet from the 80s scifi book Neuromancer

More like Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)

Electronically controlled sex toys are a thing.

Indeed!

I saw a link the other day for something called The Handy: https://www.thehandy.com/products/the-handy/ (obviously nsfw)

It's basically a combination of the whole Silicon Valley 'algorithms and apps and connection and api and remote control' ethos with a sex toy. They advertise video sync, presumably so you can self insert. I reckon that if you had your waifu in VR, you could effectively give her 'genitals' with this off-the-shelf technology.

I don't think so. I expect society to be quite accepting of a relationship between two people that don't have functioning genitalia, perhaps due to birth defect or accident. I don't expect society to be accepting of someone who is in a relationship with a sex doll even if it's anatomically very accurate.

I think that @Primaprimaprima was saying that it's the lack of genitals, not social acceptance, which is the bigger obstacle to people adopting AI bf/gfs. People want to have sex, can't do that with a computer program.

I'm saying that the biggest problem that would keep most people from dating an LLM is that you can't fuck it.

That doesn't stop people from forming parasocial quasi-romantic relationships with Onlyfans models.

People probably won't broadcast it loudly and it's an imperfect substitute at best, but it's a substitute nonetheless.

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