shortsighted AI praise II
Thereās something else in AI praise that I find shortsighted at times. I read opinion pieces about how AI improves us and our communication - a better e-mail, a better birthday message, good advice for a friend, what to say to resolve a fight, wise words when you tell it your problems and more. Whenever those come up, the authors seem to see some kind of intent, genius, consciousness and personality that just isnāt there (yet?). They act as if the AI perceives us and forms an opinion, and is sharing its own wisdom with us in a way thatās portrayed as hardly possible with a human. And that concerns me.
In normal companion conversations, itās not like AI picks the best of humanity and transforms it into something better and unseen before, not now, at least. It knows what words are most likely to follow the other. As it is trained on us and our data, it can not be better than us, especially when itās about conversation and advice.
When people think emotional support and some enlightened therapyspeak is something uniquely impressive about AI, it saddens me. These are sentences people wrote in forum/Reddit advice threads, in self help books, in romance novels, in fanfiction. Thatās where the AI gets it from.
Itās not that AI is uniquely better at this - these are things people get told in good therapy sessions, by strangers, or by supportive friends and family. We send that stuff to each other in games like āKind Wordsā. What the bot just printed on the screen is an expression of love between humans. And you credit the AI for that and act like this isnāt found in humans?
These impressions in an article say more about the author than AI. Itās clear there is currently a lack of human support in their life or if there is, the author isnāt comfortable to message them as openly for advice or venting as their AI support. But I promise, what the AI says isnāt uniquely good at āthisā, whatever it is in the conversation that particularly stirred you.
Iām not mad at the authors for their circumstances and marvel at technology, Iām more miffed at how much heavy lifting it does to sell AI as better than humans when all they do in these chat apps is copy humans while being created, trained and curated by humans. Never forget this.
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Published 12 Feb, 2025