There may be many cases where AI has been a benefit to vulnerable people. LLMs aren’t going away any time soon so it’s good if they tell you not to kill yourself. But that should be the end of it. The more we lean on AI to fix societal problems, the deeper the problems will get. Relying on an LLM to be a substitute for human interaction is a really bad idea. It’s easy, it’s compelling, and it will help you to put yourself in a much deeper hole than you were in before.
If you are banning things people see as needs, that’s not governance. That’s cruelty.
How about fentanyl, or meth? Many people see them as a need, once they get started. Much like an AI companion, they offer a quick fix to make you feel better and get away from the difficulties you’re facing in the real world. And like an AI companion, they don’t actually address those difficulties and will only make things worse.
I literally explained how meth is literally a chemical which performs the exact same mechanism as the medication that is prescribed to treat ADHD.
In layman’s terms, if a person has ADHD and they try meth, part of the experience of meth is to have the ADHD treated.
And I don’t mean that in a healthy way. Not at all. I do NOT advise people who have ADHD to use meth.
What I am expressing is that describing it as an addiction is dishonest framing, because it’s literally causing the exact same effect that a person would get if they went to get a drug prescribed for their ADHD. There is an additional effect, sure. But it’s not that meth created a biological need. The person was born with the biological need, and then they happened to stumble onto a drug that existed that had the effect of treating the unmet biological need. That’s not addiction. That’s having an unmet need your whole life and then having the need met, and not wanting to go back to having the need unmet.
There may be many cases where AI has been a benefit to vulnerable people. LLMs aren’t going away any time soon so it’s good if they tell you not to kill yourself. But that should be the end of it. The more we lean on AI to fix societal problems, the deeper the problems will get. Relying on an LLM to be a substitute for human interaction is a really bad idea. It’s easy, it’s compelling, and it will help you to put yourself in a much deeper hole than you were in before.
How about fentanyl, or meth? Many people see them as a need, once they get started. Much like an AI companion, they offer a quick fix to make you feel better and get away from the difficulties you’re facing in the real world. And like an AI companion, they don’t actually address those difficulties and will only make things worse.
I literally explained how meth is literally a chemical which performs the exact same mechanism as the medication that is prescribed to treat ADHD.
In layman’s terms, if a person has ADHD and they try meth, part of the experience of meth is to have the ADHD treated.
And I don’t mean that in a healthy way. Not at all. I do NOT advise people who have ADHD to use meth.
What I am expressing is that describing it as an addiction is dishonest framing, because it’s literally causing the exact same effect that a person would get if they went to get a drug prescribed for their ADHD. There is an additional effect, sure. But it’s not that meth created a biological need. The person was born with the biological need, and then they happened to stumble onto a drug that existed that had the effect of treating the unmet biological need. That’s not addiction. That’s having an unmet need your whole life and then having the need met, and not wanting to go back to having the need unmet.