The idea isn’t new or evil per se, since anyone that had to spend 2+ days in a hospital knows how dreadful it can feel. The problem here is relying on current AI tech, which may end up suggesting suicide during the chats, and the companies’ pinky promises that your privacy and data won’t be leaked or sold to the lowest bidder
I take it the people who designed this never had an evil genius 7 yo daughter who constantly terrorized their parents?
Let’s throw a clanker at a problem that obviously needs a human solution. What could go wrong?
Also: would it maybe be cheaper to just hire a human for this? Seems like the development of such a machine would be much more expensive that just hiring a guy.
I mean it’s definitely more expensive to pay someone for their time assuming you’d presumably have an army of these to replace with people. But it’d also be am actual solution instead of whatever fresh hell this is
I don’t think it’s more expensive to hire people for this work than to develop and produce a bunch of robots that are obviously not up to the task.
How could they ever be? Loneliness can only be adressed through sincere human contact. Any other (robotic) solution is financially wasteful at best and disastrously counterproductive at worst.
Developing the robots is mostly up front costs (between paying someone to “code” the thing and then buying the units) vs paying however many employees forever which is why I say it’s more expensive.
If they could make an actual genai I think it could help with loneliness but we won’t be there anytime soon, if ever, the way they keep following a strategy of scaling and optimizing a speech center.
I suspect a seven year old little girl wouldn’t ask for too much salary either. /s
I’m guessing cute bandaids and an ice cream cone would be sufficient.
That would just make me feel fear and loneliness
To help lessen your fear and loneliness, robochild will stand silently by your bedside all night while you sleep, keeping her eyes open without blinking the whole time to make sure you’re safe.
Every time you finally start to fall asleep and snore a little too loudly: “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Oh good, now they’re taking the jobs of certified comfort/support dogs? The solution nobody asked for, JFC.
" Can I come with you?"
– little boy in Screamers (1995)Oh shit. That’s memories. Creeped me the hell out back in the day…
Good times.:)
That’s and AI pedophile magnet 🤣
Or a treatment
