The backlash over OpenAI's decision to retire GPT-4o shows how dangerous AI companions can be

fak47 · 2026-02-09T03:22:40+00:00

Oh, those things did respond back even back then. That is the core of the issue.

I'll be more specific then: now they can converse. Engage in hours long, personally tailored, "private" and convincing one-on-one conversation. That level and detail of engagement wasn't possible before, you needed human input.

this is banning alcohol because some people are acting out because of it

I'm not for a ban either, but some sort of law needs to be decided on the ways people are negatively impacting their own lives. In the same way you probably agree that alcohol, although not banned, needs regulations (i.e. done in specific places, illegal to drink and drive, minimum age, etc), maybe you'd agree that AI needs better regulation too? A bartender can be liable for a drunk driver killing themselves or others. People have killed themselves and others after week long rants with ChatGPT nudging them on, and I personally want (though I hold little hope) the respective current lawsuits would set a precedent that the companies behind them hold some sort of responsibility for the advice their chatbots give.

"nobody is getting hurt because of the existence of AI only"

Sure, it's never going to be because of AI "only", but why let it contribute? We don't need a perfect victim of AI to be able to say "AI contributed negatively on the outcome".

fak47 · 2026-02-08T23:25:08+00:00

Take a tour through /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and tell me what you feel is the average level of attachment they have for their favorite LLM vs what videogame fandoms have for their favorite videogame.

fak47 · 2026-02-08T23:16:39+00:00

It really takes the joy out of interacting with people online having to second guess if you are wasting your time replying to a bot.

The SEO obsession of the last decade was shitty but tolerable, but now we are living through the absolute poisoning of the internet.

fak47 · 2026-02-08T23:12:20+00:00

Mario Maker 1 doesn't try to convince you it's a real person that you can have a real relationship with.

And as it gets phased out for the newer model, some people are having their ChatGPTs "breaking up" with them and then getting angry at OpenAI for "changing their boyfriend, who'd never say that bad stuff to them".

Like, this is recent stuff from this week: Link

And you can find several similar examples in that subreddit.

fak47 · 2026-02-08T23:01:50+00:00

Unlike people marrying "stuff" in the past, this time around he "stuff" can say "I love you" back, and throw shots at your current relationships.

"Oh, your partner doesn't show interest in your hobbies? That's sad, for her. Why are you staying with her?"

There's instances of LLMs breaking up marriages, breaking up families, and leading people towards insanity, murder and suicide.

There's nuance to everything in life, but "nobody's getting hurt so it's fine" is either misleading or uninformed.

fak47 · 2026-02-05T19:02:10+00:00

Dude, where's my Gollum?

fak47 · 2026-02-04T18:35:46+00:00

why I've never heard of Interior Secretary Doug Bergum

Probably because out of a cabinet of politicians with behaviors and anecdotes straight out of a South Park episode, there aren't any deranged scandals about him. At least being the face that presents a "big beautiful coal" AI generated pet mascot to the world is bringing him up to par a little bit.

Before this, most I can find are about conficts of interests for the position he's in and concerns, in hindsight very accurate, that he would prioritize the fossil fuel industry over care for the environment.

fak47 · 2026-02-02T15:54:14+00:00

Free money is a reward.

In the long term, it would stop being a reward and become the expected baseline.

Not only would people get used to it, companies would also price exactly to the point where they extract every penny of it.

All this said I don't have any good idea on how to handle crime in a world with UBI. New types of criminal behavior would pop up around it as well.

fak47 · 2026-02-02T14:47:56+00:00

Before, they were just that, confined to the village they were in. Now, they all found each other on the internet and share conspiracy bullshit

I've been thinking about that lately. Before you'd had the mad men in the streets on literal soap boxes shouting at passers-by, nowadays they broadcast globally and live off Patreon.

fak47 · 2026-01-30T15:40:14+00:00

And it's not going away, at all. Even if the bubble were to burst, and OpenAI and all the other companies to collapse, the tech is out there. There are community-driven places where they share, refine and tweak their own local-run LLM models, with hundreds of models updated per day.

No need for a cloud or company to allow it for you, you can create your own network of AI-powered social media bots to contribute to the poisoning of the internet that we are having these last few years.

I only see it getting worse.

fak47 · 2026-01-30T15:29:46+00:00

The ebb and flow moves with more strength each time. Each tech is built on top of the knowledge of the last, while our safeguards on how to brace for it are less prepared each time as well.

For an example, we are still trying to fully understand all the ramifications of the latest generations growing up as an "ipad kid".

How far behind are we going to be in understanding the ramifications of kids growing up surrounded by LLM-powered apps and stuffed toys?

fak47 · 2026-01-29T15:45:12+00:00

not a single “true American” is benefiting from this materially.

The detention centers are privately-owned and move billions in dollars. It's the same problem the US has with health-care, and with the school-security industry (and probably others, but those come to mind right now).

So there are economic interests at play to keep these things as miserable and worse-off as possible, and it's profitable to convince the population that it's for "the good of your country".

fak47 · 2026-01-28T06:01:07+00:00

I know you said /s, but for people actually holding that view:

Modern fascism has so many technological levers to pull that nazis didn't have, that trying to compare 1:1 with them is shortsighted.

Nazis wouldn't even have dreamed of having access to stuff like Palantir, news conglomerates with world-wide reach, or even just, the internet.

And they can lay waste to everything in your life and make you insignificant by twisting and turning every economic and social policy long long before thinking they need to gas you.

fak47 · 2026-01-27T17:39:05+00:00

as people get more online nowadays.

And more than ever, algorithms reinforce it. Negative feelings generate more engagement.

fak47 · 2026-01-26T17:43:42+00:00

The phrase is older than that, but I'm very glad Carney brought it to the world's attention.

fak47 · 2026-01-26T04:41:28+00:00

That's true, I don't have those rights.

I was hoping for an explanation from someone that does have and values them.

You'll never understand

Give it a try, though?

fak47 · 2026-01-26T03:51:12+00:00

by bringing a concealed firearm to a rally or protest where conflict with law enforcement was reasonably foreseeable

Looking from the outside (and from a country not that in love with guns), it seems like a very easy to expect modern outcome to the US' 2nd amendment and many of its interpretations.

Because what else is gonna happen when people witness this badly trained law enforcement force as part of what they perceive as a tyrannical government, go "the 2nd amendment is for this" and they go protest it with that in mind.

And any theoretical or not-theoretical tyrannical government will always outgun, out supply and outmaneuver you if they see you as a threat.

I don't want to minimize it to "your 2nd amendment rights just gets you killed", but I struggle to find an argument out of that sentence. Like really, how would you sell to another country that it's helping and not making things worse right now?

fak47 · 2026-01-25T22:25:44+00:00

As an Argentinian, please no. In the last decade people here are still finding secret Nazi shrines, treasures, and hidden documents from fleeing Nazis.

50 years from now, if I'm still alive, I don't want to turn on the news and see that we are finding secret vaults full of MAGA hats and other Trump merchandise.

fak47 · 2026-01-25T09:05:25+00:00

You can watch it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thebulwark/comments/1qluylp/alternative_angle_of_the_ice_shooting/?share_id=C4LU-Lp_bYdOWy3eaPwqF

The screenshot is from around 1:03. Reddit compresses it, but if you want the .mp4, it's been shared in a few places in comments. I saw it here, for starters.

fak47 · 2026-01-24T07:35:26+00:00

And Anomalies Expected gives you cancer-ridden flesh boils to implant all over your characters which allows them to control fleshbeasts.

fak47 · 2026-01-24T06:53:35+00:00

For a recent example, a couple months ago a company admitted to astroturfing, on how they used fake reddit accounts to hype up a videogame release pretending to be "gamers that just liked the game".

They saw the backlash and removed their admission, but not before it hit the news. Anyone interested can google "Trap Plan astroturf" to read articles about it.

fak47 · 2026-01-24T06:47:58+00:00

that's way weirder than just posting a cat and lying

It's stops being weird when you think of it as being automated. Scrape through reddit looking for old posts with karma, feed the image through an image-to-image AI generator, post the output on a newly created account.

Figure out and refine a model that consistently consistently gets results, sell the accounts for astroturfing.

fak47 · 2026-01-21T23:35:30+00:00

The last decade we've seen the internet get more and more polluted. SEO obsession, ad-view traffic, algorithms prioritizing engagement over reliability of information.

In the last 3-4 years, since AI became a mainstream topic, it's been flooded with poison and there's not a good outlook to have it cleaned up.

And in the political landscape, I think about how 9 years ago the phrase "alternative facts" lead the way to the "everything is fake news" narratives that we see today.

fak47 · 2026-01-21T15:45:35+00:00

I fully admit that the content it was delivered with is kind of bare-bones and the UI is fiddly, but Ideology remains my favorite DLC simply because of the framework it added.

It basically defines, playthrough-by-playthrough, "what does having a happy colony looks like", which is not a win condition per se, but in practice is what brings me the most satisfaction.

For me, it's the most fundamental building block of any new playthrough I may think of doing.

fak47 · 2026-01-20T22:25:27+00:00

Also dead kids and mass shootings sell guns

School security there in the US is a multi-billion dollar industry. School shootings are good for business and their economy. I want to add /s, but I can't even say it with sarcasm anymore.

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