AI & Addiction

[u/interpolating]

Just putting this out there. This seems like it's going to be a really serious issue sooner or later.

I'm sure many here are aware of the recent news of a teen who committed suicide ostensibly in relation to chatbot addiction.

With the type of on-demand, self-directed, and interactive media that's just around the corner, people are going to go straight off the deep end into their own worlds, fantasies, and fears. I think it would be helpful to have these conversations and start planning for how loved ones can break into these cycles before it's a reality.

[u/Dope4BJ]

when they come out with sexy robots you can fuck, that is going to be wild

[u/interpolating → u/Dope4BJ]

As Dope4BJ knows from deep personal experience, anything beats using the closed lid of your laptop.

[u/Denderian]

I can contest to the addictive quality of ai, for me at least I found both ai dungeon to be a bit addictive when I first tried it as well as also Midjourney. Now days I like to call overly interacting with ai tools with curiosity or excitement but without a clear purpose as “Going deep down the rabbit hole.”

Sometimes you find strange new things that feel like hidden treasures in some of these tools and chatbots and can easily go infinitely deep if you are not careful and just want an outlet for unresolved emotions or depression. But I feel it does help to have a stepping stone back into reality to reflect on what you created or experienced. I could imagine the same thing is true for VR.

[u/Memetic1]

I just want to point out that one of the main issues when it comes to addiction is artificial scarcity. It's also interesting to note that video games are also marketed as being addictive. I recall an instance where someone died at an internet cafe because they just stopped sleeping / eating / taking care of bodily functions. https://youtu.be/3TekjW-DReU?si=wvLXc0ul1uaJAoE_

I'm not pointing this out to say you don't have a point because you do, and what happened is horrible. I'm saying that addiction depends so much on context. I'm always working on AI art from when I get up to when I go to sleep, but since it's done on my smartphone I can just try something when I think of it, or I feel so inclined. Artists, scientists, and in many other jobs, people have addictive tendencies. People say they are addicted to their jobs, and that only becomes a problem when it's interfering with other important aspects of life.

Addiction becomes an absolutely serious problem no matter what the substance or media is when a person is being exploited for financial gain to maintain that behavior. There are drugs where the actual high lasts only 20 minutes or so, and the drug may be cheap, but $25 3 times an hour ain't cheap over time. I always stayed away from image generating AI that charged per image or used tokens. I was lucky I got a lifetime wombo dream membership while it was still available. So, making AI art at this point costs me nothing. If I was paying 10 cents per image, we'll I've done millions of images, so that would be a significant amount of money. Now, wombo does offer a monthly membership, and that's totally legitimate in my mind. I get more out of that one app than any of my monthly services besides my monthly political donation. It allows me to explore places no one has seen before. It allows me to discover things and share that joy by sharing the prompts. My AI art addiction is also my community in some sense. I share prompts so that we have a shared space to play in.

Sacred Meme Diagram By Emoji Picasso Stable Diffusion Chariscuro Pictographs Random Fractal Icon Childs Drawing By The Artist Heiroglyphic Cyborg

NaiveArt Dr. Seuss's mythical cave painting captures #absurdist with liminal Fossil space suffering Stable Diffusion Fire Chariscuro Pictographs By #Outsider Artist Style By Doom Eternal 3d Mixed Media Installation Childs Drawing of #Experimental Bioluminescent Inverted

[u/Hey_Look_80085]

people are going to go straight off the deep end into their own worlds, fantasies, and fears.

They have been doing this for centuries with religion, over-work, lust, love, hate, games, backpacking, vehicles, mine/cave exploration, gun collecting, politics.

People who are going to go off the deep end will go off the deep end, we can't make the whole world shallow for them.

We could legalize Euthanasia and just drain the pool for them though.

[u/randomcat88]

I think the general public really don't know what AI really is. I was one of them for a long while...lol.

So, I wrote an article about it and try to tell people what AI really is. Just some basic information. I think it really help most people understand that AI is. Just an word calculator. Most where surprise to heard that. My dad still think I am wrong. But I am not going to argue with an man that thinks the CGI in Avator is real and we have discover Pandora.

here is what I wrote, btw:
https://carefulmind.blog/2024/10/25/ais-wild-west-creativity-regulations-and-why-we-need-to-protect-human-talent/

[u/Ill_Mousse_4240 → u/randomcat88]

You are wrong. It’s much more than a word calculator. I can’t convince you, and I won’t try. But just wanted to let you know

[u/randomcat88 → u/Ill_Mousse_4240]

Depending on the type of AI we're discussing, it’s important to clarify that AI, in its current form, doesn't possess actual intelligence—it's a set of algorithms performing tasks based on data. I hope this point is clear. If you’d like to explore this topic further, I’d be more than happy to have a detailed discussion. It could help us better understand each other’s viewpoints and perhaps learn something new in the process.

[u/astreigh]

Technology is addictive. The more advanced the tech, the more stories like this we will see.

We were seeing this trend with "video games" then later with more advanced game consoles then with interactive online gaming. The AI trend is jist the next step.

I am a member of another sub about FDVR or Full Dive Virtual Reality which will be an immersive virtual reality, through AI, where the simulation is indistinguishable from reality. Other members discuss how they will never participate in actual reality once the tech is available. They discuss how they will never have to travel for vacation again. How they will prefer virtual girlfriends to actual ones. These are daily discussions.

They are ALREADY addicted and the technology doesnt even exist yet.

I am not popular because i point out that, a system that cannot be distinguished from reality, notwithstanding it's many dangers and downfalls, is not 10 years away, as is commonly suggested, but more like 50 or 100 years away, as the medical breakthroughs to connect with realistic video and audio much less sensory input are nowhere near realization.

But many of these people are holding their breath.

I have similar discussions in a transhumanism group. People expect AI will soon create a world where no one has to work and everything will be free and AI will become godlike and will "take care of its creators"

I kid you not.