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As Hal Duncan commented on BSky, "Toy company execs announce: at last we have created the sinister talking doll factory from the cautionary horror movie 'Do not create the sinister talking doll factory!'"
What else could possibly go wrong?
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-toys-danger
@cstross Irwin Mainway's "Bag O Glass" toy and "Invisible Pedestrian" costume seem quaint in comparison.
@cstross This is only an issue because parents abrogate their responsibilities and buy their kids all the latest junk. There's such a thing as saying "no" and actually being the parent, rather than trying to be their friend. Parents are responsible for their safety, more parents need to start taking that responsibility seriously. Unfortunately, with the perpetually distracted generation now being parents, the horse has bolted. The vast majority of people who pop out a bunch of kids out of stupidity and selfishness should never have kids at all.
Have you met 5 year-olds? This is the "I'll do it myself and if you won't let me, I'll sneak around and do it when/where you can't see me" age.
I live with one. There are mysterious Christmas tree decorations on the wooden chandelier that is only partly over the dining table. It's not that low. She is not that tall.
Since its fait accompli, we just said how nice it looks.
👵
@cstross Is there anything AI *can't* f*ck up?
@cstross Even Rod Serling couldn't have come up with this stuff.
@cstross
It's the Fisher-Price "My First Torment Nexus".
@cstross This will not end well.
@cstross actually, come to think of it, the "kink" part is why this stuff is so stupid. nobody asked about kinks, but the AI misunderstood the question and then got triggered by it's own bad answer to delve deeper into the topic of fetishes. because AIs don't have actual memory, they just read the rest of the conversation and pick out trigger words from that.
@cstross according to the article: 9 deaths have already been connected to chatgpt and more to it's competitors...
And we decide to put it into children's toys? What the fuck is wrong with us? They banned toys for less deaths!
@codinghorror @kyonshi @cstross
Both motor vehicles and swimming pools are regulated to reduce deaths
@codinghorror @kyonshi The difference is the toy industry lobbying budget is much smaller than the car and construction industries ...
@cstross @codinghorror @kyonshi ... but only by a little. 😉
@codinghorror @cstross @kyonshi I think it's simultaneously true that "unmonitored chatgpt sessions are not the biggest threat to American youth" and "it's a known threat and we aren't doing very much about that fact."
The biggest issue with this generation specifically, if I understand correctly, is the fact that the "special sauce" is the attention engine. That's a sliding window. It starts primed with whatever conditioning state the company uses for a new session, but as the session goes on the back-history becomes more and more significant to the response and it begins to dominate. It's like a black mirror that starts by reflecting what the developer wants but begins to reflect, more and more, the human in the session.
That makes it a terrible tool for people with suicidal ideation to try and self-medicate via "virtual therapist," for example. Just the worst. Talk to it long enough and it will start to agree that your dark poetry reflects reality and hey, maybe you're right about having nothing to live for! And then the only back-stop against it helping you plan a very bad day for everyone you know is whether someone was clever enough to program a "suicidal ideation suppression" step in the output filter (that can identify all the permutations that concept can take).
This is 100% tool mismatch.
I'm not against kids using chatgpt (Lord knows my own experience was "banning a thing is a great way to make it fascinating"), but it's one more thing that parents have to be aware of when parenting these days.
@cstross @jernej__s shit AI is already coming for my job, now they’re coming for my parenting style too?!
AI, making Scarfolk a reality.
@cstross
"I always do what Teddy says" by Harry Harrison.
Though that's an optimistic dystopia.
@cstross @sophieschmieg simply don't set the switch to 'evil'
@cstross soon it will be telling American kids where to find their parents handguns
@cstross they could tell kids how to build Jarts?
The Nazis want to take us back to the 1940s. This only gets to the 1960s but it's still Congress(*)!
(*) I believe it was Will Rogers who observed that Congress is the opposite of Progress.
@oddhack WTF are Jarts?
We call them "garden darts" or "lawn darts" here in the U.K..
Almost 60 years ago there was a U.S.A. children's toy brand named "Javelin Darts", #Hasbro's original name. Other companies got in on the act, too.
You can probably guess what's coming from the name. They had sharp metal spikes for noses instead of the soft wide noses that they have to have today.
Several thousand children were injured and some died.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-09-27-mn-10632-story.html
@cstross Lawn darts. 1 HP/over ranged weapons capable of removing eyes, puncturing holes in torsos, etc. when used as directed. The idea was, put down a plastic hoop and throw the darts high into the air with the intent of sticking in the ground inside the hoop. The reality was that when children throw things in the air, they come down randomly.
It was the 1960s. They were banned in an early triumph of the US consumer products safety commission so I expect them back on the market any time now.
@cstross It really does seem like the business plan was developed by feeding scripts for horror movies and Twilight Zone episodes into a large language model.
somewhere, Rod Serling is chainsmoking and ranting about how he already showed us the torment nexus 60 years ago BUT NO YOU DIDN'T LISTEN
@mattblaze @cstross, this really does look like it's going to be an excellent learning opportunity… 😈
@mattblaze BRB, got to hit the nearest toy store for a talking doll named Chucky
@cstross Next idea: Airbnb, but for connecting groups of partying teenagers with large houses that were abandoned years earlier because the owners mysteriously disappeared.
@mattblaze @cstross Is the startup backed by Peter Thiel? and does he actually own all the houses? and do the partying teenagers also "mysteriously disappear"?
— Josh, have you noticed that the only ones giving star ratings in this site are the “house acolytes”. The comments are also kind of weird.
— Karen! There you go bumming us out! Have you thought why you seem to be always alone at the end of the party?
@mattblaze Large houses, in the woods, with no cellular service and the phone line was disconnected years ago, and there's a door leading down to a darkened cellar where the walls sometimes bleed ...
@cstross @mattblaze all the listings start with "the old Heller place? I ain't see no-one round that way for years. Say, you're not from round here are you..."
@cstross "You're free to use the house, but you absolutely must stay out of the basement."
“Don’t be a killjoy! Of course we are arriving at night. There’s a discount for that and it is already so cheeeeeap!”
“The owner told us that he’s filling the fridge with this strange beer he makes, and we are welcome to drink it all!”
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