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9rx 7 days ago

Dehumanization is a poor framing, really. It was never humanized in the first place.

Sure, those of us who have a technical understanding understand that it is likely that there are humans involved as an implementation detail, but from the user perspective there is no other human to be seen. If the technical backend were replaced by a sufficiently capable LLM (or whatever technology) absolutely nothing about the user experience would change. From the user perspective, it is a solitary activity.

Human interaction hasn't gone away. Online discussion is a different tool for a different job.

jv22222 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

I never thought about it this way. That technically every internet interaction is solo. Mind bending.

rapnie 7 days ago | parent [-]

But much of internet interaction isn't solo, in all those places where online and offline have connections. There will be a ton of dehumanization once in the morning we type a quick and lazy "/greet Mary" on the console and the AI agent takes over fully, sends a personalised email to Mary in my voice, and adds a "Welcome back from vacation!" note, after consulting my agent-managed calendar. Fully decoupling us from each other.

balamatom 7 days ago | parent [-]

...and on the other side Mary's agent would summarize your greeting as part of her regular notification digest. There would be no gradient. You and your correspondent would continue to pay equivalent proportion of available attention to each other; thus you would remain equally human as before.

At least relative to each other (and to each of the rest of your contacts.)

It's one's idea of humanness that will be substituted piecemeal by a "doppelganger concept", as a result of the perceptual decoupling provided by ever-thicker interfaces. That concept would continue to fulfill the exact same function in one's life that formerly would've been fulfilled by one's previous opinions on "what it means to be human" (if any).

Happens all the time, things changing people's minds. Happens surreptitiously, too. Of course, it's more comfortable to consider at least our inner lives remain inviolate to the vagaries of technocapital - but where could all their content come from, other than entirely from the outside world, same one that software was proclaimed to be "eating"?

Subjectively, you'd hardly (if ever) experience that kind of "world model spoofing" as anything close to a distinctly recognizable perceptual phenomenon (since it's language-based anyway). Rather, you'd continue to experience everything as the usual "being a person comprehending a world" bit - and, as ever, flavored by whatever life-scripts you've been allocated.

On average, however, the substitution would result in effects as simple as the population allocating that much more of its resources to, say, the organization representing the machinic quasi-intelligence in question - the one that has interposed itself as normative communication medium by providing useful summaries.

Or, not as simple.

It's already ended up very much like that "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" meme. Except the 3rd party pictured as JC, should rather be labeled "VC".

sentinelsignal 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

by " Online discussion is a different tool for a different job." could you elaborate on that.

socalgal2 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You could say the same about NPCs in a holodeck, effectively declaring that talking to people face to face is really a solitary activity

9rx 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

> talking to people face to face is really a solitary activity

There is no doubt a lot of truth in that statement at some kind of fundamental level, but as far as language goes, that's literally the opposite of what we consider a solitary activity. Staring at a computer screen on the other hand...

7 days ago | parent | prev [-]
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