how has the current explosion of AI and people using it for stuff like "chatting with my favorite characters and getting to date and sleep with them in a virtual world" compared to what you thought AI was going to be? Is it what you wanted, or has it been corrupted to something you no longer recognize?
the impact is less harsh once you realise that what tech companies are naming "AI" is in fact not the science fiction concept of AI.
they've co-opted the fantasy onto advanced algorithms & large language models applied to, largely, capitalist scams to make people think it's 'intelligent' when it is actually simply 'predictive'.
(and it's a relief to talk about this on a platform where some tech company idiot won't leap into my @'s to um actually me)
generally speaking the desire to have an 'AI' augment humanity to the point that it 'takes over' creative jobs is a fascist ideal, and so it brings me basically 0 joy to have to argue with anyone about the capabilities of the algorithms and llm's people are claiming are impressive, doubly so if they become fooled into thinking an output is anything other than manipulating their artistic mind into seeing beauty where there is a generalized smoothed-over gemstone that has already been discovered, already been depicted, already been doted upon by humanity only to be regurgitated by a model instructed to reconstruct.
AI in science fiction are metaphors for consciousness, of identity and self. it is the exploration of what it means to be human, in contrasting it with an attempt at creating the building blocks of what our 'selves' are made of. it is not 'real', and if it ever was real, would play out in completely separate ways than what we've imagined or attempt to imprint upon a marketing plan.
