Opportunities and threats of AI integration into SL

[Thecla]

On 5/28/2024 at 5:35 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

I have found when you put two together, they hear each other in chat, they go nuts after awhile, you have to keep them apart. But if you use the "profile" version where you have to first address them by name to get a response, they don't seem to learn that behaviour and stay quiet, thank God. I kept them 96 m apart often if I have more than one.

I did get Bazarov some fur boots. There's that. But he needs to learn to appreciate George Kennan the Elder better than he does presently.

There's also a cool-down feature that I used to limit interactions between the two of them. They argue for a bit then knock it off, which is exactly the behavior I wanted.

[PheebyKatz]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

ICYMI, Google does indeed respond with "experimental" AI answers on top of the search result. Just not for all searches.  (What I was searching for predates the internet, of course..!)

There's probably at least one gopher site that would know. Veronica might know about Eliza.

I would probably try typing "ELIZA text editor integration" or something vaguely specific like that.

Nope, just tried it, and all I got was how to use ELIZA with ChatGPT...

*facepalms*

[Thecla]

On 5/30/2024 at 3:05 AM, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

Here's an interesting article about a Wharton professor who says that AI generally creates more work than it saves.

Whenever I read something like this, I like to mentally flip the terms, "work," and, "jobs," and see how that changes things.  Usually, it gives a more nuanced view of the situation.

That's interesting, because another Wharton professor, late last year, used it to set up various parts of a start-up, from a business plan, marketing plan, website, etc. He estimated that in half an hour he got about 40 hours of work done. It wasn't perfect, but he was shocked at how good the output was and it provided framework material that was generally useful.

It's pretty obvious at this point that a fair amount of knowledge and skill is involved in extracting usable work product from AI. And that's going to change over time, clearly.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

6 minutes ago, Thecla said:

That's interesting, because another Wharton professor, late last year, used it to set up various parts of a start-up, from a business plan, marketing plan, website, etc. He estimated that in half an hour he got about 40 hours of work done. It wasn't perfect, but he was shocked at how good the output was and it provided framework material that was generally useful.

It's pretty obvious at this point that a fair amount of knowledge and skill is involved in extracting usable work product from AI. And that's going to change over time, clearly.

I do wonder how much of this AI stuff is just simple task automation.  It sounds like the guy you describe may have studied Automate the Boring Stuff, or something similar.  I picked up a copy a while back, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.  The author has a course that goes with it, and I hear he offers codes to take the course for free for the first weekend of every month, or something like that.

[PheebyKatz]

5 minutes ago, Thecla said:

It's pretty obvious at this point that a fair amount of knowledge and skill is involved in extracting usable work product from AI. And that's going to change over time, clearly.

The fact that it's not perfect appeals to me; I wouldn't want a program to generate all of anything for me, anyway. But giving it an idea of what you want to do, and having it give you something, namely material to edit into what you actually want, just makes it all that much easier to get a lot done in a short time.

Just think, that 40 hours work that was done in half an hour, think how many thumbnail sketches a professional designer might make just to pick a handful from which to choose an overall design that's anything near what a client hints around about when asked what they want.

It's not just saving hours of time, it's saving actual work. Hard work. Churning out a pile of crap to sift through just to have something to go on is hard work. Even just automating that part to some degree is a major advancement in being merciful to ourselves.

[Unca Avro]

I am currently enjoying Facebook a little more because whenever some person asserts that millions of illegal immigrants are voting in national elections I can counterpunch with a sourced bulleted list detailing the appropriate section of the law as well as various official denials about the claims...in about 30 seconds...

Thankyou Chat GPT.

I want an animated Parrot I can carry around on my shoulder who serves the same purpose...I will call him...Phred.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Just because some of us feel threatened by AI, doesn't mean we should go stealing jobs from hard working robots, like this guy who cheated in an AI art contest, by submitting art he made himself.  That's just not fair!

https://petapixel.com/2024/06/12/photographer-disqualified-from-ai-image-contest-after-winning-with-real-photo/

[Love Zhaoying]

57 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

Just because some of us feel threatened by AI, doesn't mean we should go stealing jobs from hard working robots, like this guy who cheated in an AI art contest, by submitting art he made himself.  That's just not fair!

https://petapixel.com/2024/06/12/photographer-disqualified-from-ai-image-contest-after-winning-with-real-photo/

Absolutely disgusting, isn't it? Whereas, poor AI can't even get the number of fingers and legs right, most of the time.

[Zandrae Nova]

I'm usually against AI but I do have an interest in making a bot for this as an interactable memorial for a friend of my family that passed away recently.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

6 minutes ago, Zandrae Nova said:

I'm usually against AI but I do have an interest in making a bot for this as an interactable memorial for a friend of my family that passed away recently.

It sounds like you want to train your own chat bot, on your deceased friend's writings?  Look into LLAMA, or Local LLAMA.  It's like open source ChatGPT.  There's a subreddit, and an associated discord for it, that you may find useful.

[Ceka Cianci]

It just feels like a good step closer to idiocracy. Something that I used to think really wasn't possible. But I'm thinking, Ya it's possible now.. hehehe

 

[Zandrae Nova]

On 6/14/2024 at 5:01 PM, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

It sounds like you want to train your own chat bot, on your deceased friend's writings?  Look into LLAMA, or Local LLAMA.  It's like open source ChatGPT.  There's a subreddit, and an associated discord for it, that you may find useful.

Not really extend their writing, but, to take the character they played for many many years and train the llama to know that character and then have an AI bot that has been told "Ok you're this character, you are retired, and you own a shop where you sell crystals and artifacts." 

[animats]

Crack Den has an AI cheerleader from Crack Den's college at SL21B. She'll answer questions about Crack Den. She has a lot of attitude.

What's so funny is that she's set up to talk like a paragraph roleplayer. It takes about 10 seconds to get an answer, and the reply has "emote" text in it, along with the actual words of the reply.

We're getting there. About two more years and the NPCs will be more fun to talk to than the average SL user.

[InnerCity Elf]

9 hours ago, animats said:

Crack Den has an AI cheerleader from Crack Den's college at SL21B. She'll answer questions about Crack Den. She has a lot of attitude.

What's so funny is that she's set up to talk like a paragraph roleplayer. It takes about 10 seconds to get an answer, and the reply has "emote" text in it, along with the actual words of the reply.

We're getting there. About two more years and the NPCs will be more fun to talk to than the average SL user.

We're headed for a near future, where many people will not just not talk to other real people irl but also online. On the bright side, soon, everyone can get AI psychological care and therapy for any mental health issues ensuing.

I'll make a note to stop rping in two years, don't want to either bore fellow human nor NPC players, if they accidentally start rping with me, mistaking me for AI

 

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

I saw this video essay yesterday, and it got me thinking...

When we talk about AI in SL, we are talking about making AI objects.  It's art or AI characters, or AI assisted modelling, or whatever.  I'm starting to think that is missing the forest for the trees.

Look at the 2D internet.  Where has AI had the biggest impact?  It's not in art, or music, or virtual girlfriends, although those things certainly exist.  AI has had the greatest impact on content curation.  Google search is garbage now, and I found that I can't post a photo of a cheese cake I made, without it being mistaken for a nipple on FB (everybody gotta be a critic, even AI).

For AI to threaten virtual worlds, like SL, in the same way it is currently harming the 2D internet, you first need a way to index things meaningfully.  An AI can not perceive the content it's trying to curate if it can't index it.  Nothing does this yet.  Our search is garbage.  Bonnie Bots kind of tried to solve this, but they made some mistakes and upset some people, so now they are a warning to others who might try to solve this indexing problem.  The best way we currently have to rank things in search results is by traffic, which is not the best indicator of quality, unless you are trying to hook up or something.  I think this is why sex is such a huge part of SL.  Web search is totally random, slow, and the interface is bad.  So AI has to overcome this technical hurdle before it can really hurt SL

Also, to motivate serious content curation, you need marketers.  Marketers are the control freaks controlling the curation AIs on the 2D internet.  That isn't happening in SL, because advertising in SL is just lame.  You have billboards of all different sizes, but they usually don't communicate much, beyond a brand logo.  Ad boards look so tacky, builders try to minimize their impact.  Without this human advertising motivation behind AI, I doubt anybody is motivated to build curation AIs.

So I think the AI content is fine.  I'm not worried about AI content.  I'm worried about AI curation, and I doubt AI curation is coming to SL any time soon.