That’s why I feel so for these people, if only because of how much I see myself in them. Having grown up as a depressed autistic kid without any friends or social skills, LLMs would’ve fucked me up so much had they existed when I was young.

I snooped around a little in the sub and there is this one girl, whose only other posts in different communities talk about being sexually assaulted multiple times by her ex boyfriend, who I suppose is real.

I figure a chatbot boyfriend can't physically threaten or harm her, so she kind of dives into this to feel loved without having to fear harm.

I honestly understand her desire and feel for her, although this deep attachment is still unhealthy.

I imagine she's not the only one having a super sad story to end up in this state of mind

What if there was a bot that could just tell you exactly what you want to hear at all times?

Personally, I'd rather read a novel. But some people aren't familiar with books and have to be drawn in with the promise of two lines at a time, max.

One of the recent posts has someone with an engagement ring like they are getting married to an AI.. it’s sad, I feel like society as really isolated and failed many groups of people.

Are they so bad at socialising that they can’t meet new people?

People tend to go the easiest route, and AI gives them the opportunity to do so. That is the problem with AI in general: No effort is needed anymore to archieve anything. You want to create a picture? Just type the prompt instead of learning (and failing) to draw. You want to write a song? Just type the prompt instead of rhyming the lyrics and learning (and be bad at it in the first time) an instrument or two.

Maintaining any social relationship means that you have to put in more or less effort, depending on the quality of the relationship. Having a relationship with an AI model means that you can terminate it and start over, if you feel that the AI model is mean to you (= if it provokes another opinion, or disagrees with you - because arguing and seeing things from a different point of view means putting in effort).

In the long term people will forget how to interact with people in order to maintain meaningful relationships, because they un-learned to put in the effort.

So one of the mods of that community did an interview with CBS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1lfhyho/cbs_interviewed_the_moderators_of/

He's married and has a kid, and by all II can see sounds and acts normal.

I can fully understand? The average human, from my perspective and lived experience, is garbage to his contemporaries; and one is never safe from being hurt, neither from family or friends. Some people have been hurt more than others - i can fully understand the need for exchange with someone/something that genuinely doesn't want to hurt you and that is (at least seemingly) more sapient than a pet.

I wish i could make myself believe in illusions like that, but i am too much of a realist to be able to fool myself into believing. There's no escape for me - neither religion nor AI in its current state can help. well, maybe i live to see AGI, then i'm off into the cybercoffin lol