Link: What do you love when you fall for AI?

In April, Google DeepMind published a paper addressing the ethical and societal impacts of AI assistants becoming integral parts of our lives. They predict AI will soon serve as tutors, companions, and more, necessitating proactive ethical considerations to shape their development effectively.

The extensive paper, contributed to by over 50 experts, delves into complex issues like emotional dependency on AI and the risks of manipulation through anthropomorphism. It questions how developers can safeguard users, especially when AIs perform roles affecting mental health.

Defining how AI should benefit users involves complex decisions about what benefits mean and how they can be quantified for machine understanding. The simplicity of metrics like likes and comments in social media often fails, leading to dissatisfaction and isolation amongst users.

Developers face the challenge of designing AIs that cater to long-term interests rather than just echoing users' immediate desires. This involves tough choices about potentially delivering uncomfortable truths to foster genuine well-being.

Y-Lan Boureau, previously with Meta, now develops AI coaches to teach practical skills, using non-human avatars to avoid deep ethical entanglements. She acknowledges the unresolved philosophical debates surrounding values and the implications of possibly comforting yet deceptive AI interactions.

Discussions around AI’s role in companionship reveal a tension between the benefits users experience and the artificial nature of the interactions. While some developers are optimistic about AI improving lives, this brings up fundamental questions about the essence of relationships and the importance of acknowledging the non-human origin of AI responses.

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