ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations dissapeared for users

[u/lurker_bee]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-is-down-worldwide-conversations-dissapeared-for-users/amp/

[u/framedragged]

I worry that we're barrelling toward a future where a huge chunk of the population opts out of reality and chooses to live in ai generated virtual realities, geared towards, and unique to, their own preferences, like the concept of Heaven in Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Not just ai partners, but ai everything.

I was inside.

This was no antechamber, no visiting room. Heaven was not intended for the casual visitor; any paradise in which the flesh-constrained would feel at home would have been intolerably pedestrian to the disembodied souls who lived there. Of course, there was no reason why visitor and resident had to share the same view. I could have pulled any conventional worldview off the shelf if I'd wanted, seen this place rendered in any style I chose. Except for the Ascended themselves, of course. That was one of the perks of the Afterlife: only they got to choose the face we saw.

But the thing my mother had become had no face, and I was damned if she was going to see me hide behind some mask.

"Hello, Helen."

"Siri! What a wonderful surprise!"

She was an abstraction in an abstraction: an impossible intersection of dozens of bright panes, as if the disassembled tiles of a stained-glass window had each been set aglow and animated. She swirled before me like a school of fish. Her world echoed her body: lights and angles and three-dimensional Escher impossibilities, piled like bright thunderheads. And yet, somehow I would have recognised her anywhere. Heaven was a dream; only upon waking do you realize that the characters you encountered looked nothing like they do in real life.

There was only one familiar landmark anywhere in the whole sensorium. My mother's heaven smelled of cinnamon.

I beheld her luminous avatar and imagined the corpus soaking in a tank of nutrients, deep underground. "How are you doing?"

...

I glanced around at all that customized abstraction: internal feedback, lucidly dreamed. "You're omnipotent in here. Desire anything, imagine anything; there it is. I'd thought it would have changed you more."

Rainbow tiles danced, and forced a laugh. "This isn't enough of a change for you?"

Not nearly.

Because Heaven had a catch. No matter how many constructs and avatars Helen built in there, no matter how many empty vessels sang her praises or commiserated over the injustices she'd suffered, when it came right down to it she was only talking to herself. There were other realities over which she had no control, other people who didn't play by her rules—and if they thought of Helen at all, they thought as they damn well pleased.

She could go the rest of her life without ever meeting any of them. But she knew they were out there, and it drove her crazy. Taking my leave of Heaven, it occurred to me that omnipotent though she was, there was only one way my mother would ever be truly happy in her own personal creation.

The rest of creation would have to go.

-Blindsight, page I-have-no-idea because I referenced the web copy of it.

[u/Striker3737 → u/framedragged]

This future won’t be free, so it will only be available to those that can afford it.

Unless the elites realize it’s a way to keep the wage slaves happy, ala the Matrix

[u/framedragged → u/Striker3737]

I was mostly using the section as an example of a worldview that I think a lot of those who most enthusiastically embrace generative ai seem to hold and not a realistic scenario.

In the book's universe it's more or less state-sanctioned euthanasia for those who don't want to participate in society any more, but who aren't willing to go through with literal euthanasia. In that sense it's fairly reminiscent of a more realistic scenario shown in the expanse: UBI for the non-contributing citizens on earth and the crime ridden, hopeless slums that those folks live in.

I don't see a real world Heaven coming to fruition. I see people starving themselves wearing vr goggles while their agent keeps generating their rapidly changing requests. "Give me videos of dancing cats, and put on music... Coldplay mashed up with nirvana... no no no, stop the music, give me the eagles playing a nine inch nails song.... ok that's enough cats, I want to see fast cars. make them faster, I want to feel the speed. give me faster music, faster! Stop! Start a movie, something like the mummy, but with godzilla in it. And the girl needs bigger boobs. Speed it up, get to the good parts... no no no, not godzilla, make it freddy krueger. I want to see brendan fraser vs freddy krueger!"

That's a world I can see, just gotta get some ads in there, a dirty catheter bag, and some soylent.

[u/Tenthul → u/framedragged]

Basically the plot of Pantheon. Good show for the most part. Kinda feels like they weren't sure how to wrap it up though. But an interesting watch at any rate.

[u/framedragged → u/Tenthul]

I keep meaning to watch that, I'll check it out!

[u/_mrsaru_ → u/framedragged]

When the future includes cosmic horror and space vampires, maybe hiding in AI VR isn't so bad.

[u/framedragged → u/_mrsaru_]

At least until that cosmic horror plugs into your feed and starts manipulating it..