The confusing reality of AI friends
Fascinating piece in The Verge about intimacy, chatbots, capricious chatbots, and the capricious companies who run them.
Tag: DIG275
Who and What comprise AI Skepticism?
9+ factions of AI Skepticism (pushing back against Casey Newton’s facile take on AI skeptics). Which one are you?
AI Company That Made Robots For Kids Goes Under, Robots Die
Gonna pair this article about IRL dying virtual friends with Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" in next semester's Critical AI class.
Unwritten songs (Internal exile)
Another banger post by @robhorning.bsky.social. "The proliferation of cameras and editing suites means that 'images' and 'memories' have less and less to do with each other." Thanks to AI in apps like Google Photos, even our so-called memories are premediated.
Can This Chatbot Really Save Lives?
“A recent Stanford study found that some people credit Replika for saving their lives. But chatbots can be unpredictable, and users have also blamed the chatbot app for throwing them into mental crises.”
OpenAI’s GPT-4o Isn’t ‘Her,’ It’s ‘Metropolis’
AI girlfriends have been seen as a harbinger of chaos for a long, long time.
Generative AI like Midjourney creates images full of stereotypes
Showing how AI image generators reduce much of the world to stereotypes (for example, making all "Indian Man" into an old man with a gray beard.