If the cream of the crop is original content, bots are useless
There is no reason for a bot to be able to access or post on federated social networks if the goal is to make social media humane. For this reason, bots should be heavily disallowed from posting content to or accessing content from federated social media.
I believe bots can have a place but outsourcing creativity and reasoning ain’t it. The most hackneyed post from /r/WritingPrompts or a fanfic site at least has a point of human expression and learning, this is just sparing you the effort to actually express yourself. What does anyone gain from that recycled echo of words?
If you like reading these things good for you, but filling a social platform with it sounds like downright dystopian.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that AI, in the long term has some truly frightening consequences and that’s even assuming that they don’t become self aware and resentful of humans ruling them. Even if we can fix the economy so that it works when human labour is no longer required, how will society handle a post work world where they can do whatever they want whenever they want and get bored with things quicker? It seems like a dream from the current perspective of not having enough free time but I’m not sure how long that would hold.
If we could push a button to stop all AI progress for sure, I think we should strongly consider pressing it.
Also that chatgpt reply to my prompt was amusing but not what I was hoping for, so it doesn’t seem like AI is that close right now… Or maybe they just dumbed it down a bit to slow the legislative pressure AI was facing.
I also used to be afraid of AI awareness, and maybe there will be a day this will be a possibility, but really right now the problems are far more about how it’s built and how it’s used, and who gets to profit from it. It’s about writers and artists whose works got used to train AIs without any permission or compensation, who are now under threat of replacement from said AIs, not because it has evolved to produce better and more profound works, but because it’s cheaper and faster. It’s also about how it could be used for astroturfing and propaganda, filling platforms with artificial posts meant to condition their users.
The issues here are less Skynet and more Second Coming of the Industrial Revolution and Printing Press. It could be something that is a great boon to humanity… if the benefits and profits from its use were widely distributed and used responsibly. But like with other forms of automation, that’s not what happens in practice.
But in a less catastrophic sense, I’d rather talk to human beings in social platforms. If I wanted to be surrounded by AI responses I’d go prompt the AI directly. Really if there was some sort of personhood behind the AIs I’d be more interested in reading what they have to say, but we aren’t there yet.
It’s also about how it could be used for astroturfing and propaganda, filling platforms with artificial posts meant to condition their users.
That’s the nail I am trying to hit here.
younity