<story><title>Tamagotchi Connection</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi_Connection</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nonrandomstring</author><text>Tamagotchi are an ingenious psychological and social gambit, paving
the way for smartphones. An electronic dependent, halfway between a
doll and a game that hooks into the formative maternal and caring
instincts of a child, almost 20 years before the modern smartphone
(1996 -&amp;gt; 2016). Don&amp;#x27;t feed it? It dies.  Fail to socialise it? It gets
lonely for friends. B.J Fogg eat your heart out!&lt;p&gt;Now we grew up into mums and dads with adult Tamagotchi, always hungry
for a battery charge, requiring constant attention, even distracting
us from our real children.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the lesser seen dangers of AI in personal tech. Not
that it will become a dominating , directing force, but that it will
become something so deeply needy. Something in which we indulge all
our affections instead of with real people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ethbr1</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;... that [AI] will become something so deeply needy. Something in which we indulge all our affections instead of with real people.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Business is way ahead of you in intentionally building this -- &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;93bqbp&amp;#x2F;can-you-be-in-relationship-with-replika&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vice.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;93bqbp&amp;#x2F;can-you-be-in-relatio...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Turns out, mimicking emotional connection is something LLMs are also good at.&lt;p&gt;Also see here for the moral quandaries users are working through (e.g. do I tell my bot about my real life partner): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;replika&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;105g425&amp;#x2F;replika_as_a_mistress&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;replika&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;105g425&amp;#x2F;replika_as...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The really dystopian part is that Replika regularly pushes updates, which change the sensitive topics boundaries, which has the net effect of rewriting the personality, overnight, of a bot people spent substantial amounts of time getting to know.&lt;p&gt;We live in crazy times.&lt;p&gt;(DISCLAIMER for addiction-sensitive readers: maybe don&amp;#x27;t download an intimate AI chatbot? Your time would probably be better invested with human friends)</text></comment>
<story><title>Tamagotchi Connection</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamagotchi_Connection</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nonrandomstring</author><text>Tamagotchi are an ingenious psychological and social gambit, paving
the way for smartphones. An electronic dependent, halfway between a
doll and a game that hooks into the formative maternal and caring
instincts of a child, almost 20 years before the modern smartphone
(1996 -&amp;gt; 2016). Don&amp;#x27;t feed it? It dies.  Fail to socialise it? It gets
lonely for friends. B.J Fogg eat your heart out!&lt;p&gt;Now we grew up into mums and dads with adult Tamagotchi, always hungry
for a battery charge, requiring constant attention, even distracting
us from our real children.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the lesser seen dangers of AI in personal tech. Not
that it will become a dominating , directing force, but that it will
become something so deeply needy. Something in which we indulge all
our affections instead of with real people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lynx23</author><text>The only &amp;quot;danger&amp;quot; with Tamagochi and friends is that some humans are so stupid that they can&amp;#x27;t get their priorities right.  However, that &amp;quot;danger&amp;quot; easily transfers to something else.  Taking away the &amp;quot;sharp edges&amp;quot; is no solution to stupidity, at least not for adults.</text></comment>