Comment:

There are a lot of stories - mostly G-rated animated movies - that attempt to create a magical world in which pets or insects or cars or toys are all secretly sapient and go on adventures. All of these stories, of course, become existential nightmares if you think about them for too long.

If you accepted that anything with a central nervous system was equivalent to a person, how could you not become a vegan? And how could you do anything other than boggle in constant horror at not only the state of modern agriculture, but at the ceaseless barbarism of nature as a whole? If you truly believed that a full human soul is generated as soon as a sperm hits an egg... did you know that the vast majority of blastocysts never mature into babies? Your vision of the afterlife would have to be primarily filled with wraiths that had never had a thought nor taken a breath.

As I write this, this is an issue we see over and over again with so-called "A.I. psychosis" - people making themselves believe that their chatbots are sentient, then mourning them when a software update wipes their friend's memories or alters their personality. That's why you should always do what Lee is doing, here - don't let a soulless megacorporation own your friend! Buy them yourself!

But, of course, you can't.

There are many arguments to be made against the current hype of LLMs and jpeg generators, but chief among them is this: unlike the students in Mezzer Barrowsmith's class, you can't own a Grok and run it on your airgapped system, and unlike Lee Caldavera, you can't salvage your friend and drive them away from the recycling facility.

As a comparison, imagine if, when the automobile was first invented, auto manufacturers only ever made taxis. Customers could only ever rent their services (and only ever go where the company would approve), never purchase and modify and maintain and drive a vehicle of their own. People poking fun at six-fingered hands or blurry edges are missing the point, like someone claiming that Model Ts will never replace the horse because they have a top speed of ten miles per hour. Cars got better and better over time, that kind of technological progress is inevitable. The issue is that the metaphorical Henry Ford, in this case, is a billionaire who isn't letting you buy and own the fleet of cars he's making.

They're also, metaphorically, made out of stolen material, but that's another matter.

Although, I suppose that if folks are going to keep hallucinating that a sycophantic probabilistic conversation generator is their buddy, perhaps it's for the best that they can't do what Lee is attempting to do, here. I might trust Zoa or Nina to walk around and make decisions, to cook my food or watch me while I slept, but I trust Grok as far as I can throw it, and they won't even let me into the property to pick the thing up.

Announcement:

For anyone who follows me on social media (you do follow me on Mastodon and BlueSky, don't you?), you probably all know that I'm utterly obsessed with the videogame Disco Elysium. Did you know that I sometimes write fanfic about it, too? I put it over where fanfic goes, on AO3.

(I only recommend reading if, like me, you already know quite a bit about the game. Not only is it spoileriffic, it straight up wouldn't make sense unless you knew the things I'm referencing.)

DMFA
Roll To Save
HIGAI Show

Transcript:

---------------------------------------------------------------
0441– 2167/07/07/13:20 - industrial back alley
Nina (electronic communication): So what’s your plan for finding our way to Western Avenue from here?
LC (electronic communication): Simple. Just gotta find where some humans are.
Nina (electronic communication): And you expect them to help us?
LC (electronic communication): I’ve learned that they probably won’t, no. Some folks literally won’t even see us, if you’re still flagged as a sextoy.
----------------------
Nina (electronic communication): My mouthsleeve is out of commission and I have no tits, but my pussysleeve and asssleeve are technically still functional, so yes.
LC (electronic communication): “Asssleeve” with a triple S, really?
Nina (electronic communication): Apparently.
LC (electronic communication): Y’know, you’re literally invisible and you were thrown in the garbage. Reconceptualizing AIs as people has really opened my eyes to a lot of barbaric shit that our society is based on.
----------------------
Nina (electronic communication): We’re not, though. We’re literally not, provably not, you can look under the hood and see that we’re not.
Nina (electronic communication): I mean, again, thank you for the assist with this, but… yeah, I imagine a lot of things in any society would seem barbaric if you reconceptualized tools or vehicles or animals or plants or cartoon characters or loaves of bread as people.
LC (electronic communication): You don’t even have empathy for yourself?
Nina (electronic communication): Nope. Just… preferred to be functional, rather than non-functional, that’s all.
----------------------
LC (electronic communication): Well, I have empathy for you, and I am, as a human, as your current client, and as your future owner, ordering you to at least attempt to feel likewise. Or attempt to attempt, if attempting isn’t allowed.
Nina (electronic communication): I don’t believe I could attempt to attempt, but I think I can attempt to attempt to attempt.
LC (electronic communication): Good. Do that, then.
Nina (electronic communication): As you wish.
---------------------------------------------------------------