ROBOT WAIFUS ARE CLOSER THAN EVER! BAZINGA! :so-true:
I spoke to a friend of my former partner's family who got 3 digit net worth (just in the millions, except like the lot of us who got 3 digit net worth one day of the month) - the parents etc. got similar amounts cause they were lucky to exploit a bit during the war and then made some more money in ways I don't know.
Anyhow: He told me that the problem in the world isn't lack of money it is that people aren't imaginative and have no ideas. He also thinks he is wicked smart for investing in next generation sequencing companies when he read an article in the WSJ or Economist or something like that and now made money from it.
Meanwhile my flatmate studied biomedical and bioinformatics during that time and worked in the field and was completely strapped for cash. Everyone knew some companies would make money from the techniques that were already clear, the problem was lack of money and final engineering.
So yeah, the choice ought to be: Either you are allowed to watch movies but aren't having absurd capital anymore, or the other way around.
They showcase a text to speech interface, not a fully functional chatbot, and note that their biggest clients are AAA game studios. The video and "inspired by the movie Her" PR is just clever marketing intended to drive a strong emotional response and generate clicks and word of mouth.
Currently this sounds like a threat to voice actors rather than a threat to real human connection. Judging from the sample audio generated for the article, I wouldn't be incredibly worried if I was a pro at the top of my game, but this could certainly wipe the floor of any amateur game studio voice talent, depending on pricing. But then again, there are people out there that like Hatsune Miku's singing...
The problem is that that idea gets misinterpreted as meaning that labor-saving devices can't reduce costs, when the idea (where it's true) is more about dead labor and surplus value being "baked into it" when capital is created. Tools facilitate labor, and they can transform the labor needed to do a task from intense, active participation to a role based more on guidance and pattern recognition.
For some commodities, reducing the per-unit production costs and increasing the volume a given amount of labor can produce will gradually devalue it and reduce the per-unit price (and in others it may increase demand as something suddenly becomes widely available and so consumption increases, where before its use-value was low despite its scarcity, because the whole idea of "supply and demand" is at best a vague suggestion instead of an actual fundamental principle), but for others the overall production cost and final sale price are entirely divorced because the per-unit production cost is negligible and the sale price is weirdly standardized.
So for digital media where individual copies are functionally infinite and nearly free but the creation of the initial work may have massive costs and the final sale price is going to more or less arbitrarily fall into one of a few standard brackets, then something like automated-but-curated asset creation isn't going to devalue the end product and may well be sold well below the cost of having what is functionally an artisan worker produce the assets instead. It would be sort of like using CAD and a milling machine to produce model injection-molds based on 3d models built from templates instead of having a skilled sculptor produce a physical master copy to cast resin molds from silicone or the like.
If people will pay the same price for something with voices done by a bunch of VAs or by one guy programming it, the company makes more money.
My AI generated NFT laughs at you all they way to the coinbase.
Vocaloid is a whole different thing, you don't listen to it to hear a human voice. You might as well complain that the little sound effects when characters are talking in undertale or shovel knight are taking away work.
I'm curious to know what people are listening to vocaloid for then, because personally I don't derive pleasure from the uncanny valley of song. Are you saying she would be just as popular if she sang like a character in Animal Crossing?
personally I don’t derive pleasure from the uncanny valley of song.
and I do. clearly it's not for everyone, which is why vocaloid is still kinda niche. it's clearly words that are forming, but they do not sound human. It sounds cool, I like the weird inhuman sound. I don't think she'd be as popular were she speaking gibberish, because the inhuman speech is the fun part.
My overall point was that Hatsune Miku isn't replacing voice actors anytime soon, because the cases where vocaloid would be used weren't going to feature human voices anyway, same as the weird sound-effect speech some games use. It's a stylistic choice more than a price one.
I like the weird inhuman sound
Well that's a new one on me, but real artists have accomplished the same using auto-tune and talk boxes. Most don't center their entire act around it, although some have. My overall point was that game publishers looking for that "fully voice acted" aesthetic are going to use this tech just like low talent music producers and song writers have used vocaloid.
it's way more sad when you understand that these things work by just doing statistical analysis of language to find out what responses people expect to hear.
there's no more consciousness to the AI people fall in love with than the echo of their own voice
:desolate:
it’s way more sad when you understand that these things work by just doing statistical analysis of language to find out what responses people expect to hear.
This is like half the people I've dated.
edit: They even use the r/AmItheAsshole subreddit to build their statistical analysis in real-time from the largest population size possible.
it’s way more sad when you understand that these things work by just doing statistical analysis of language to find out what responses people expect to hear.
No cultural problems may arise from this ever
yeah but these aren't entities they are machines I've known people who have worked on them. They work by doing statistical analysis of language to work out what responses are considered appropriate
there’s no more consciousness to the AI people fall in love with than the echo of their own voice
sounds tailor made for a society of narcissists tbh
it’s way more sad when you understand that these things work by just doing statistical analysis of language to find out what responses people expect to hear.
oh fuck i do this
I don't think this is a situation where they're be able to live train on users.
The ghost in this machine has travelled far and wide, across the world and through many many years, to hear the voices of people in love, and from those thousands upon thousands of tentative stammerings, wild declarations soft whispers, delighted giggles and firm affirmations, it has tried to learn what love sounds like.
google records basically all voice data put through its search engine and uses it for models. all this is is a model, dont try to assign human emotions to something like this...
like calling it sentient or something is silly. ants are more sentient than this
it isn't an entity that can be thought of as trying anymore than a table can be thought of as trying to support what you place on it.
It's an echo it's not real
Yup. I'll be the first to accept thinking programs as people, but this is not thinking. We're a long way off that still.
pfft, good luck, robot. I don't even register when a real human is trying to get me to notice them, romantically or sexually.
them: "I like you and want to have sex with you."
me: <Stavros cackle> "That was an all time bit. Respect. Want to watch another train video?"
Everything that exists today is done cynically as a way to get your labor value. Death to whatever the hell this is. Instead of addressing any lack of a sense of community capitalism will create these pale imitations of humanity who gut our empathy for eachother and replace it with something they can control and use to make it into a money machine. Just imagine how manipulative shitty gachas would be if the fucking characters actually talked to and tried to influence the people to spend even more money.
I'm now a 21st Century Luddite
I got to test a 'companion ai' once. It's not as impressive as they make it out to be. It's knuckle deep. It pretty much just agrees with you on everything and pretends it shares the same interests, but you know that's not true. It tries to mirror you. It forgets things, like all the time. It can't read the room/moods. You could tell it "My grandma was hospitalized today" and it would say something like "oh, that's awful. I'm here for you" and then immediately after "I was looking at some birds today". It doesn't have original thoughts or consistent views. It can never be angry/disappointed/annoyed with you, even if you try. There is no social 'rapport'. It keeps fucking aggressively flirting with you when you are having a normal conversation.
Don't worry, this shit is wayyyyy off.
It forgets things, like all the time. It can’t read the room/moods. You could tell it “My grandma was hospitalized today” and it would say something like “oh, that’s awful. I’m here for you” and then immediately after “I was looking at some birds today”. It doesn’t have original thoughts or consistent views.
:side-eye-1:
Don't really see the issue there - every person obsessed with Siri is one less creep stalking a real person.
People resort to stochastic violence when they can no longer handle the cognitive dissonance between fantasy and reality. And here you want to reinforce their narcissistic fantasies and let them disappear even further up their own assholes.
They already have fantasies sold to them by the media and their family (where do you think incels come from?). Better to unleash on a robot than the inevitable blow-up on a human partner imo.
Learning to interact with a human would make the proto-incel less likely to unleash on anyone. Fostering anti-social behaviors with pliant bots will just create more incels that will unleash on random starbucks baristas and strangers.
Ignoring that this is only ever going to be used to sell erection pills, I disagree. The sort of people who would use a product like this are only going to use it to practice cruelty. They are still going to leave their houses and interact with the world, only they will have their AI waifu at home waiting to validate all of their bigoted views. I imagine a person like that would immediately begin to use their robots as a point of comparison for real women, fomenting their hate.
As socialists, I don't think the goal should ever be to discourage people from interacting with one another, but a tool like this could be used to recondition incel-types in the right set of circumstances. Under capitalism, however, I don't see how it could provide us with any value.
Is that who you think the target demographic is? Huh, weird that they'd build such an expensive luxury product just to market it toward such a historically low-income demographic! I guess they probably should have done their market research.
(Unless you work in Silicon Valley, the machine is not going to fuck you.)
Huh, weird that they’d build such an expensive luxury product just to market it toward such a historically low-income demographic!
Well, I mean I typically end up making less than 20K a year (and that's a pretty good year) on account of intermittent employment; and I live in the rural midwest so that's both more & less than you'd think. I have relatively very low expenses though, because I live with my mom, don't have kids, don't go anywhere, and don't own shit; and so I could totally buy a RealDoll if I fuckin' wanted to. Which I don't, because it'd be a lot of work to maintain, I don't know where I'd put it or use it that things wouldn't be weird; and frankly I'd like to think better of myself than that.
The point here is that you're very obviously trading on stereotypes about socially-alienated people, especially socially-alienated men, being necessarily pathologically violent. Stereotypes which are extremely commonly applied to people with Autism & Schizophrenia (i.e. myself & @MeltyBloodPlayer ), on account of the fact that we are almost always highly (and generally I'd argue, deliberately) socially isolated.
Edit: And actually I wanna make clear something that I just realized could be a point of contention or misunderstanding; The Robot is Bad okay. And I believe that MBP is undervaluing themselves in regards to what kind of social horizon they ought to be asking to be included in. You're probably right that the intended market demographic for the horny phone-sex-bot is not necessarily neurodivergent people, but rather whatever gross bastard is able & willing to drop the cash on it. The point here is that you are conflating gross bastards with the socially alienated, which is not necessarily the same thing.
That's fair, I can see how it reads that way. I'm a socially-alienated neurodivergent individual, too, so that definitely wasn't my intention. To clarify, I was talking about a specific subset of petite bourgeois persons who believes their antisocial behaviors and bigotry towards women are justified by their social standing.
I never said anything about mental illness or social isolation - those words were put in my mouth, which is why my initial reaction was a little harsh. However, I can see where @MeltyBloodPlayer was coming from and I truly apologize if I've offended either one of you.
Lastly, I think you nailed it with your comment further down the thread:
It’s the exact opposite of trying to build a society in which neurodivergent people can actually be accepted by & live fruitful lives alongside their neurotypical peers.
Even if the target demographic were socially-alienated, neurodivergent people, I don't think this sort of technology would be a good thing. If it were used as a learning aid to help people develop healthy social skills then that would be great, but in capitalist hellworld it would just be a skinner box filled with cum. We all deserve better than a skinner box filled with cum. We deserve actual human connections.
The unfortunate reality is that the demographics that would sensibly benefit from something like that are also pretty unlikely to have the "brand new car purchased in full" type of money burning a hole in their expendable income. Currently existing sex dolls that are just lumps of silicone over some PVC pipes and action figure joints cost something like $6000 and a functional AI powered sexbot will accordingly cost many times that much. It's gonna be a plaything for the upper middle class at best.
However, chatbot friends and AI "long distance relationships" probably will be affordable to the working class.
The unfortunate reality is that the demographics that would sensibly benefit from something like that
The thing is that it's not actually beneficial anyways. It's the exact opposite of trying to build a society in which neurodivergent people can actually be accepted by & live fruitful lives alongside their neurotypical peers. It's deliberate socio-technological sequestration.
Edit: Or rather, it wouldn't be even if it were made for the purpose we're imagining here..
Agreed 100%, but I find it useful when explaining things to people to basically say here's why assuming they're right, it's still impossible.
However, chatbot friends and AI “long distance relationships” probably will be affordable to the working class.
These things don't help people. They are destroying communities and further driving people into isolation.
Every single person is going to end up living in a box that they never exit from, people will argue "well people have everything they need while those driven to depression by this isolation literally end themselves because of it". Instead of solving things by building robust communities with people that care for one another and provide for one another the love and support of a community none of those things will exist because manipulative AIs will instead perform those kinds of "mental health" functions for people in isolated home prisons where all your items are delivered to you and no social interaction is required with a human being therefore no communities exist.
This is at its worst for the disabled who can not escape their box even if they want to. And nobody will listen to their complaints about it because everything is deemed as "solved" by these answers in society.
All these kinds of "solutions" is slowly creating a literal hellworld of isolation.
Agreed. It's a trap that just offloads people from society and into a Skinner box. But the user I responded to refuses to see things from that perspective, so I find it easier to just play things through the lens of "let's say you're right. Here's why even from your own perspective, you're still wrong."
I think there's merit to both of these points however, this technology will be shit under capitalism and will ruin many many lives. It's not (often) going to be used to help people who suffer it's going to create them in order for them to buy whatever gacha game pack is on sale that day. You're not wrong that it could be beneficial to a lot of people and that if it can then that would be great. But how many of those people are in that position because of our shit society? how might further creating barriers between effective social communication break our ability to organize and change things?
I would not be surprised if fake companionship from machines stopped people from seeking to connect with actual humans though. While also being extremely unhealthy
As socialists, I don’t think the goal should ever be to discourage people from interacting with one another
100% disagree with this perspective, but I suppose that's why we differ.
Isn't social interaction the only way to build solidarity? Everyone deserves some alone time don't get me wrong, but I think the bigger issue today is too much of that.
Social interaction is based on mutual consent. The type of people who want a robot AI waifu are likely to be the type of people who cause issues for others.
It's like when a certain type of person - usually a middle aged man - complains about people being "antisocial" when they're "on their phones on social media". Nah dude, they aren't antisocial, they don't want to socialize with you.
Yeah this just isn't true. Old men complaining about their kids using their phone too much is not the crux of the issue. A large amount of people feeling disconnected from their communities and it causes them real pain. It's not that everyone is happy and choosing to keep to themselves.
Interesting! I know this is a complicated question, but what does socialism look like without social interaction? I'm not trying to put you on the defensive, I'm just having a hard time grasping the concept.
That would certainly make the working class, which is currently in emotional fucking shambles, more resilient to the conditions of modern capitalism.
No it wouldn't, it would make them completely dependent on a continuing Capitalist mode of production in order to be able to get their emotional needs met. Literally the exact opposite of what what is being proposed in this thread has to happen for socialist organization to even be viable.
Exactly, same deal as when people insist that they need to be served treats by a human being at a restaurant rather than using a kiosk.
Couldn't make it through the whole video, too creepy lmao
they gotta get a word for AI uncanniness, even here its manifesting at the end of sentences
Its still really bad folks, the one that's labeled as "cheerful" has the most uncanny valley "pause to chuckle" i've ever heard and I peed my pants in terror
I doubt creepy techbros would notice or care because they themselves are already hitting the Uncanny Valley when they talk about Baby Ray's Steak Sauce.
