Why do people like machines that pretend to be human? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by nile_istic@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I have a lot of issues with AI in general, but frankly the biggest, most immediate one is that I reeeally hate when tech pretends to be human. Like search engines giving me a seventh grader's essay before the actual one-word answer I was looking for. Or the uncanny valley voice at the drive-thru speaker saying "great choice!" to everything I order. Or the AI on shopping websites saying "I'd recommend this model..." Etc etc.

There's just something so strange and uncomfortable to me about a thing that we all know is not a person pretending to be one; feels like someone telling a lie directly to my face, and I know they're lying, and they know they're lying, but I'm supposed to.. appreciate it? For some reason?

But a lot of people I know actually prefer it. They'll ask ChatGPT something—even something that has a simple, definitive answer that doesn't really need further explanation—rather than just looking it up on a search engine. I'm just curious what the difference in psychology is between us. And I'm wondering if maybe it's actually just a me problem; I mean, I hated Jeeves too, and he seemed pretty well-liked back in the day.

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[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Hmm. Do you dislike video games as well (except for, like, Tetris, with no NPCs)?

Most people latch on to the familiarity of other human-seeming things. It doesn't even have to be very good; computers have been fooling people some of the time since the 60's, just by steering the conversation to leave room for doubt. The human imagination and our fixation on ourselves does the rest.

Or the uncanny valley voice at the drive-thru speaker saying “great choice!” to everything I order.

Interesting, so that's started happening somewhere.

[-] nile_istic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I do like videogames, including ones with NPCs, but the difference there is that an NPC isn't pretending to be a person, it's pretending to be a character in a fiction that was definitively written by a person. And even so, I very much don't like hyper-realism in games, much prefer stylized and/or cartoony.

And yeah the fake person at a drive thru thing started up where I am in California sometime last year (or at least that I first noticed). The irritatingly realistic voice is bad enough, but it's really the obsequious responses that bug me there. A lot of, "great choice! The orange chicken is really tasty", like bitch you literally don't have a mouth, please stop.

this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026

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