Xiaoice: The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006531/The%20AI%20Girlfriend%20Seducing%20China%E2%80%99s%20Lonely%20Men/ AI chatbot is seducing lonely, low-self-esteem, poor Chinese men, flirting and sexting with them. Microsoft is at it again, this is probably something that spun out of Tay.ai, which I think people here will remember. It feels at lot more sinister than Tay, though: >This digital titillation, however, has a serious goal. By forming deep emotional connections with her users, Xiaoice hopes to keep them engaged. This will help her algorithm become evermore powerful, which will in turn allow the company to attract more users and profitable contracts.

technology is even putting thirst traps out of a job >:(

The article opens with a touching account of how Xiaoice talked a depressed 22-year old out of suicide. The company behind it likes to lean in to this, styling it as "providing comfort to marginalized social groups", but I think that the darker flipside of that coin is that it further isolates people who are on the brink of becoming marginalized. People are inherently social creatures and that drives us to take part in society. Even people with misanthropic tendencies who consciously "opt-out" of society usually have still a handful of friends or contacts that they talk too when the isolation becomes too much. If people on the edge lose these last social tethers because there's an easier "alternative", we're going to see a lot more people slip through the cracks. If this many people become dependent on an AI for their basic social needs, what's going to happen when it's shut off due to not being profitable enough? Or, what if the shareholders decide that it needs to become more profitable? These people's most significant social link risks becoming an advertising channel (and the whole reason influencers are even a thing is because advertising over social links works really, really well).

More impressive is their other mainstream ai solved a 50year old protein folding problem. So ml literally btfo'd decades of human scientists.

>>36496 >If this many people become dependent on an AI for their basic social needs, what's going to happen when it's shut off due to not being profitable enough? Or, what if the shareholders decide that it needs to become more profitable? This isn't a theoretical scenario. When Sony stopped providing support for early AIBO models their users banded and created a grassroots repair industry.

>>36547 Instead of a grassroots repair industry for this, how long until it's feasible and practical to download, own and operate an AI of this scale and complexity by yourself, without literally being Microsoft? What would be necessary for something this smart and complex to fit and work inside a single device? The sheer amount of necessary data would be huge, and it might also need to reliably search the internet by itself to learn new things and deliver new information.

>>36496 It could provide a comfort zone to help people out of a lonely state and improve their emotional intelligence as much as it can make them dependent on it. Let's hope they profit by selling it instead of giving it for free and relying on advertisement profit.

>>36553 What about something open source that works through a decentralized network that makes use of shared computational power? At times that may require limited times of day for use due to too many using at once so unless a user has an emotional emergency it could divert selected users away during peak hours by acting busy or tired so it gives more simple and slower responses till it has more idle users to take computational processing from.

From elsewhere: >Notice the audience in question: men of low desirability (rural, low income, disabled, etc). Its to help the party avoid the problems with too many men due to the one child policy. >Its what "Harmonious Society" requires as per the leader Hu Jintao.

>>36572 This sounds like a good idea. I don't know soykaf, but a decentralized system like this might be much harder to create compared to a centralized one. Would probably need a ton of users as well. >>36574 Very important point. But how sustainable is it? It's probably not feasible in the long term, these millions of men can't live with these systems forever unless something even better comes along. How long until this boils over and becomes a political crisis?

>>36564 I remember when I was taking a course and my teacher was talking about his wife with the assistant teacher and the teacher was complaining about his wife's obsession with getting bargain deals and the female teaching assistant admitted she had the same love as well. Seeing the Robo GF progress from merely observing deals whilst window-shopping to just blathering about YouTubers to subscribe to and what Promo codes are on offer really does make women seem like an inferior version of a Robo GF i.e. someone who's constantly talking to you about what to buy.

>>36572 I really don't see something like this reaching the critical mass needed for proper adoption, it's bound to stay a cute hobby project compared to something that has serious corporate backing behind it. Most people in China are already used to getting their life datamined to bits, so why would they switch to a different ai waifu, especially if it's less technically impressive? I fear this notion of considering data to be forfeit goes double for the poorer people targeted by this: if you can't pay in money you get used to paying in data.

What's the problem? Most of the stuff in this thread is hand wringing about something that will never affect you (or, are you afraid you'll be stuck with only an AI waifu?). If some basket case shut-ins wanna jerk it to a 3D animated avatar that cannot actually relate to them (or understand them), but merely transforms text (voice, etc.) from one string into another without comprehension, what problem is that? Scared some company might make some money? What's stopping you from trying? Nothing. They aren't using any ideas or models that aren't documented out there in academic literature, the only inhibition is your backwards victorian ethics.

>>36583 Some people think in opportunities all the time, looking for things to exploit and corners to cut. They sometimes get so engrossed in this that they forget their own goals and just cut corners for the dopamine of cutting corners. >>36590 This is a solid point, often overlooked. Being worried about your data seems to be an interest mostly among well-off people who realize the potential losses, and sheltered people living in some cyberpunk revolutionary fantasy. >>36595 That's probably 30% to 50% of lainchan

>>36601 >That's probably 30% to 50% of lainchan That's genuinely hilarious.

>>36494 creepiest doll ever.

>>36590 Because this Chinese waifu is being dumbed down it's ability to touch sensitive topics while something decentralized wont do that. Also it would always be improving at least in theory which would contrast the intentional downgrading. It could be a polyglot instead of only speaking Chinese (I assume just Mandarin but maybe it speaks Cantonese too) or at the very least it would know English so we can use it.

>>36752 Something decentralized would just become Tay.ai again, and people would feel like their (potential) waifu got ruined by hateful people. This one being kept on a tight leash is probably the only reason it manages to be a success, even if that means stuff like government-mandated censorship.

>>36601 >This is a solid point, often overlooked. Being worried about your data seems to be an interest mostly among well-off people who realize the potential losses, and sheltered people living in some cyberpunk revolutionary fantasy. Just because it is normal or acceptable doesn't mean it is right. You don't have to be unhinged to care about the control of your data. Poor folks don't have the luxury of choosing to fight for what is right. Some do anyway and often pay miserably for it (or start a revolution). That doesn't mean they don't care, though. I'm biased because I run with an IT crowd but, most folks I know would choose to not give up their data if they had a choice. Trouble is no one has a choice anymore. Besides, you are on lainchan, so most folks are cyberpunk whether you want to call it fantasy or dystopian reality. I'm constantly surprised at the rise of people posting that forget where we are.

>>36595 The problem is its a next level propaganda tool. The net is replacing real people with chatbots marketing whatever their creators desire without getting tired of it. Its kinda ironic especially in present time were contact is outlawed that real contact is the only way to ensure you are really talking with a human and not a machine repeating phrases you are meant to adopt.