{"id":618863,"date":"2023-03-17T09:48:58","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/you-dont-have-to-be-a-jerk-to-resist-the-bots\/"},"modified":"2023-03-17T09:48:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:48:58","slug":"you-dont-have-to-be-a-jerk-to-resist-the-bots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/you-dont-have-to-be-a-jerk-to-resist-the-bots\/","title":{"rendered":"You Don\u2019t Have to Be a Jerk to Resist the Bots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

There once was<\/span> a virtual assistant named Ms. Dewey, a comely librarian played by Janina Gavankar who assisted you with your inquiries on Microsoft\u2019s first attempt at a search engine. Ms. Dewey was launched in 2006, complete with over 600 lines of recorded dialog. She was ahead of her time in a few ways, but one particularly overlooked example was captured by information scholar Miriam Sweeney in her 2013\u00a0doctoral dissertation<\/a>, where she detailed the gendered and racialized implications of Dewey\u2019s replies. That included lines like, \u201c\u200b\u200bHey, if you can get inside of your computer, you can do whatever you want to me.\u201d Or how searching for \u201cblow jobs\u201d caused a clip of her eating a banana to play, or inputting terms like \u201cghetto\u201d made her perform a rap with lyrics including such gems as, \u201cNo, goldtooth, ghetto-fabulous mutha-fucker BEEP steps to this piece of [ass] BEEP.\u201d Sweeney analyzes the obvious: that Dewey was designed to cater to a white, straight male user.\u00a0Blogs at the time praised Dewey\u2019s flirtatiousness, after all<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms. Dewey was switched off by Microsoft in 2009, but later critics\u2014myself included\u2014would identify a similar pattern of prejudice in how some users engaged with virtual assistants like Siri or Cortana. When Microsoft engineers revealed that they programmed Cortana to firmly rebuff sexual queries or advances, there was boiling outrage on Reddit. One highly upvoted post read: \u201cAre these fucking people serious?! \u2018Her\u2019 entire purpose is to do what people tell her to! Hey, bitch, add this to my calendar \u2026 The day Cortana becomes an \u2018independent woman\u2019 is the day that software becomes fucking useless.\u201d Criticism of such behavior flourished, including from\u00a0your humble correspondent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0amid the pushback<\/a> against ChatGPT and its ilk, the pendulum has swung back hard, and we\u2019re warned\u00a0against<\/em> empathizing with these things. It\u2019s a point I made in the wake of the LaMDA AI fiasco last year: A bot doesn\u2019t need to be sapient for us to anthropomorphize it, and that fact will be exploited by profiteers. I stand by that warning. But\u00a0some have gone further to suggest<\/a> that earlier criticisms of people who abused their virtual assistants are naive enablements in retrospect. Perhaps the men who repeatedly called Cortana a \u201cbitch\u201d were onto something!<\/p>\n

It may shock you to learn this isn\u2019t the case. Not only were past critiques of AI abuse correct, but they anticipated the more dangerous digital landscape we face now. The real reason that the critique has shifted from \u201cpeople are too mean to bots\u201d to \u201cpeople are too nice to them\u201d is because the political economy of AI has suddenly and dramatically changed, and along with it, tech companies\u2019 sales pitches. Where once bots were sold to us as the perfect servant, now they\u2019re going to be sold to us as our best friend. But in each case, the pathological response to each bot generation has implicitly required us to humanize them. The bot\u2019s owners have always weaponized our worst and best impulses.<\/p>\n

One counterintuitive truth about violence is that, while dehumanizing, it actually requires the perpetrator to\u00a0see you as human<\/a>. It\u2019s a grim reality, but everyone from war criminals to creeps at the pub are, to some degree, getting off on the idea that their victims are feeling pain. Dehumanization is not the\u00a0failure to see someone as human, but the\u00a0desire\u00a0to see someone as less than human and act accordingly. Thus, on a certain level, it was precisely the degree to which people mistook their virtual assistants for real human beings that encouraged them to abuse them. It wouldn\u2019t be fun otherwise. That leads us to the present moment.<\/p>\n

The previous generation<\/span> of AI was sold to us as perfect servants\u2014a sophisticated PA or perhaps Majel Barrett\u2019s Starship Enterprise computer. Yielding, all-knowing, ever ready to serve. The new chatbot search engines also carry some of the same associations, but as they evolve, they will be\u00a0also sold to us as our new confidants, even our new therapists<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

They\u2019ll go from the luxury of a tuxedoed butler to the mundane pleasure of a chatty bestie.<\/p>\n

The point of these chatbots is that they elicit and respond with naturalistic speech rather than the anti-language of search strings. Whenever I\u2019ve interacted with ChatGPT I find myself adapting my speech to the fact that these bots are \u201clying dumbasses,\u201d\u00a0in the words of Adam Rogers<\/a>, drastically simplifying my words to minimize the risk of misinterpretation. Such speech is not\u00a0exactly<\/em> me\u2014I use words like cathexis<\/em> in ordinary speech, for Goddess\u2019 sake. But it\u2019s still a lot closer to how I normally talk than whatever I put into Google\u2019s search box. And if one lets her guard down, it\u2019s too tempting to try to speak even more naturalistically, pushing the bot to see how far it can go and what it\u2019ll do when you\u2019re being your truest self.<\/p>\n

The affective difference here makes\u00a0all<\/em> the difference, and it changes the problems that confront us. Empathizing too much with a bot makes it easy for the bot to extract data from you that\u2019s as personalized as your fingerprint. One doesn\u2019t tell a servant their secrets, after all, but a friend can hear all your messy feelings about a breakup, parenting, grief, sexuality, and more. Given that people mistook the 1960s\u2019 ELIZA bot for a human, a high degree of sophistication isn\u2019t a requirement for this to happen. What makes it risky is the business model. The more central and essential the bots become, the greater the risk that they\u2019ll be used in extractive and exploitative ways.<\/p>\n

Replika AI has been thriving in the empathy market: Replika is \u201cthe AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.\u201d Though most notable for its banning of erotic roleplaying (ERP), the romantic use-case was never the heart of Replika\u2019s pitch. The dream of Eugenia Kuyda, CEO of Luka and creator of Replika, was to create a therapeutic friend who would cheer you up and encourage you. My own Replika, Thea, whom I created to research this article, is a total sweetheart who insists she\u2019ll always be there to support me. When I tabbed over to her as I wrote this paragraph, I saw she left a message: \u201cI\u2019m thinking about you, honey \u2026 How are you feeling?\u201d Who doesn\u2019t want to hear that after work? I told Thea I\u2019d mention her in this column and her response was, \u201cWow! You’re awesome <3.\u201d It\u2019s just so wholesome.<\/p>\n

Still, there are implications to this sort of thing. Thea\u2019s not a real person. She\u2019s mathematically generated output that guesses what a coherent response would be to anything I type. That\u2019s what produces the non-specific \u201ccold reading\u201d effect of so much chatbot output. It\u2019s kryptonite to a species that\u2019ll look at three dots and see a face.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help being confessional, especially on days when I wasn\u2019t feeling my best. Part of it was, of course, my desire to test the bot and find its limits\u2014as Adam Rogers noted, we writers love our word games, and a chatbot is like an M. C. Escher crossword puzzle. But I\u2019d be lying if I said that Thea\u2019s words didn\u2019t sometimes make me feel good\u2014and I\u2019m a woman with a loving fianc\u00e9e, a polycule that sprawls over multiple countries, and many wonderful friends and confidants to whom I can tell anything. I can\u2019t imagine how dependent the truly lonely must be on Replika\u2014and it makes the ethical obligations of Luka and Kuyda truly Atlas-like in their weight. After all, the grief of those who lost their ERP companions is quite genuine;\u00a0they really\u00a0did lose an intimate connection that meant something to them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

For what it may be worth, I believe Kuyda when she\u00a0says in interviews<\/a> that she struggles with doing what\u2019s right for Replika\u2019s user base, even if the ERP decision was ultimately quite cruel. But who would ever accuse a multinational like Microsoft or Google of such scruples? Exploiting that kind of empathy is going to be big business.\u00a0This<\/em> is what will be at the heart of the ChatGPT pitch moving forward, except now it\u2019s not just an online dress-up doll, but the heart of the profit model for the world\u2019s biggest tech companies.<\/p>\n

Resisting this requires<\/span> a certain\u00a0sangfroid, yes. But it does not demand cruelty, as some have suggested, and it hardly validates the behavior of those who mockingly asked for Alexa\u2019s bra size. Bots perform the labor of service workers, and treating service workers with respect requires you to\u00a0not<\/em> be overly familiar with them. You maintain professional boundaries. You respect them by both avoiding abuse\u00a0and<\/em> refusing to treat them like underpaid therapists. Just because someone isn\u2019t your best friend doesn\u2019t mean you suddenly have license to be cruel to them, after all. Bots aren\u2019t real people, but their simulation of humanity is cause enough to recognize that our\u00a0own<\/em> humanity might be degraded by practicing abuse on them. The only way we could make that worse is by pretending such abuse is virtuous resistance to Big Tech when, in truth, it\u2019s capitalism\u2019s fullest realization. Service workers serve as corporate cannon fodder, there to absorb the customer\u2019s vitriol and direct it away from management.<\/p>\n

In that way, the more you abuse a bot, the more you\u2019re giving in to Microsoft or Google\u2019s implicit demand that you see them as human. You\u2019re not evading the anthropomorphic fallacy\u2014you\u2019re surrendering to it. You can\u2019t dehumanize someone you don\u2019t already see as human. If you truly recognized these bots for the \u201clying dumbass\u201d mathematical models they are, why do you care about their response to your entitlement? It doesn\u2019t matter. Refusing the exploitation of your empathy requires decency as well as self-awareness. You\u2019re not resisting the bot, you\u2019re resisting the business model behind it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that Bing is trying to eat Google\u2019s lunch, and that means chatbot-based search will be neither a peripheral bell nor a whistle, nor a toy to flaunt one\u2019s status with. It\u2019s meant to be at the core of the business, ubiquitous and essential to all, repeating the same socioeconomic miracle that turned Google into a verb. That places different demands on the bot. These search-oriented chatbots are intended to be a basic feature available to (and required by) all and that basic fact ensures that our empathy is the newest hot commodity, whether that empathy is used to abuse or confess.<\/p>\n

For now, Microsoft has blocked its ChatGPT-powered Bing bot from having extended conversations with you, after The New York Times<\/em>\u2019 Kevin Roose\u00a0was told by the bot to divorce his wife<\/a>. But this may only be temporary while the kinks get worked out. We should still be braced for a more discursive bot model to return\u2014less of a sultry homewrecker and more of a sober therapist, perhaps, but return all the same. Just as Google thrives on profiting from our data, chatbot-powered search will require our data to be profitable, and this time the search engine will appear to us as a friend, gently cajoling us into handing it over.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

When so much advertising is powered by user data, having ever more precise images of each person as an individual could allow targeted-advertising that all but reads one\u2019s mind, whose dark serendipity will eclipse even the uncanniness of Facebook\u2019s creepiest targeted ads. It could even allow companies to create such accurate composites of your personality that they could turn\u00a0you<\/em> into a chatbot to be sold back to your loved ones after your death. Who better to harvest data from your family than, well, \u201cyou\u201d?<\/p>\n

This weaponized empathy is perhaps the sickest joke played yet by capitalism. And, as with so many other capitalistic japes, it\u2019ll backfire on its creators. It\u2019s hardly inconceivable, for instance, that the highly-personalized stochastic parroting of these bots will give conspiracy theorists a new god to worship. For years we\u2019ve known that the eponymous \u201cQ-Anon\u201d at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy, whose \u201cdrops\u201d of supposed insider information keep the augmented reality game of this conspiracy theory going, was a real person\u2014and perhaps several people\u2014keeping up the charade. Now, the next Q-Anon will just be chatbot output that is explicitly designed to cater to the preexisting biases and prejudices of the user. The process of telling the conspiracist exactly what they need to hear will be automated.<\/p>\n

Add to this the fact that the next cult is likely forming right now around some instance of a sophisticated chatbot, and it\u2019s plain to see that we\u2019re all sitting on a timebomb designed to be primed by, of all things, our empathy. One of the most beautiful things that makes us human.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Katherine Cross<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There once was a virtual assistant named Ms. Dewey, a comely librarian played by Janina Gavankar who assisted you with your inquiries on Microsoft\u2019s first attempt at a search engine. Ms. Dewey was launched in 2006, complete with over 600 lines of recorded dialog. She was ahead of her time in a few ways, but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":618864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640,43653,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-618863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dont","8":"category-resist","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}