On average, my discussions with chatGPT are more pleasant and insightful than the ones I have with real humans
The best conversations I still have are with real people, but those are rare. With ChatGPT, I reliably have good conversations, whereas with people, it’s hit or miss, usually miss.
What AI does better:
It’s willing to discuss esoteric topics. Most humans prefer to talk about people and events.
It’s not driven by emotions or personal bias.
It doesn’t make mean, snide, sarcastic, ad hominem, or strawman responses.
It understands and responds to my actual view, even from a vague description, whereas humans often misunderstand me and argue against views I don’t hold.
It tells me when I’m wrong but without being a jerk about it.
Another noteworthy point is that I’m very likely on the autistic spectrum, and my mind works differently than the average person’s, which probably explains, in part, why I struggle to maintain interest with human-to-human interactions.
EDIT: I started this thread tongue and cheek, but also genuine, but based on the OP's comment replies here I'm fairly convinced that they are either: a) talking to chatGPT so much that they've lost the ability to hold a coherent conversation, or b) just using a LLM to respond everywhere in the comments. They've consistently failed to address tone and context in every comment. It reads like they don't actually understand any of the things people here are saying, just stringing together some words and syntax that sounds like language, but totally lacks any actual meaning or understanding.
As a fellow aspie, be careful. Chat bots are the equivalent of empty calorie junk food, or masturbation. They forfill a biological itch but don't produce the intended follow-on effects. In smaller doses, this is fine, good even. The problem comes when you overuse.
E.g. Junk food leave you short of vitamins etc. You tend to over eat, to try and compensate, and so gain weight.
As humans, we have a drive to socialise. When we chat with other humans, we get to know them, and also for bonds. These bonds are critical in life. The goal is 3 fold, mutual understanding, mutual investment, and mutual trust. The urge to talk to people is intended to assist with this.
LLMs offer none of these. They can be incredibly useful, but often only as a training aid. A LLM can't offer you a couch to sleep on, if your house floods. It can't put in a good word to get you a job. It can't invite you to social event, or wingman you on finding a date.
LLMs are socialising on easy mode. Just like masturbation is starting a family on easy mode. Have fun with it, but don't let it displace real relationships.
Autism and social unawareness may be a factor. But points you made like the snide remarks one may also indicate that you're having these conversations with assholes.
This comment thread is great. @op good luck; people on Lemmy have little interest in real discussion. If you say anything pro-ML or anything less than far-left, you'll get screamed at.
I talk with chat gpt too sometimes and I get where you are coming from. However it’s not always right either. It says it was updated in September but still refuses to commit to memory that Trump was convicted 34 times earlier this year. Why is that?
It could respond in other ways if it was trained to do so. My first local model was interesting as I changed its profile to have a more dark and sarcastic tone, and it was funny to see it balance that instruction with the core mode to be friendly and helpful.
The point is, current levels of LLMs are just telling you what you want to hear. But maybe that's useful as a sounding board for your own thoughts. Just remember its limitations.
Regardless of how far AI tech goes, the human-AI relationship is something we need to pay attention to. People will find it a good tool like OP, but it can be easy to get sucked into thinking it's more than it is and becoming a problem.
I think when you have "Contrarian" in your name it be worth thinking a bit more on this, and maybe noting why you like the chatbots and considering how you might apply that to your own statements to make your human on human interactions more pleasant themselves.
Or not, don't listen to me, I beef with internet strangers all the time.
It's a mirror. I use it a lot for searching and summarizing. Most of its responses are heavily influenced by how you talk to it. You can even make it back up terrible assumptions with enough brute force.
As long as you're still engaging with real humans regularly, I think that it's good to learn from ChatGPT. It gets most general knowledge things right. I wouldn't depend on it for anything too technical, and certainly not for medical advice. It is very hit or miss for things like drug interactions.
If you're enjoying the experience, it's not much different than watching a show or playing a game, IMHO. Just don't become dependent on it for all social interaction.
As for the jerks on here, I always recommend aggressive use of the block button. Don't waste time and energy on them. There's a lot of kind and decent people here, filter your feed for them.
I'm pretty sure chat bots are biased to make polite conversation. Most real people won't spend the energy in a conversation to be more honest than they think you are.
Can either get better at sounding honest or talk with less honest people.
My impressions are completely different from yours, but that's likely due
It's really easy to interpret LLM output as assumptions (i.e. "to vomit certainty"), something that I outright despise.
I used Gemini a fair bit more than ChatGPT, and Gemini is trained with a belittling tone.
Even then, I know which sort of people you're talking about, and... yeah, I hate a lot of those things too. In fact, one of your bullet points ("it understands and responds...") is what prompted me to leave Twitter and then Reddit.
I don't really have a strong opinion on either side of the topic here, but I will say this: people were wildly disingenuous when dealing with OP in this thread. So much double talk, goalpost moving, standing on plausible deniability. Some of y'all lose sight of things when the topic is something that ruffles your feathers, like LLMs.
Somebody said, "But points you made like the snide remarks one may also indicate that you’re having these conversations with assholes."
...I dunno, maybe the world has just gotten more assholes lately, because jesus christ did they show up in force in this post for some fucking reason.
For what it's worth, OP, I think you've got a point. ChatGPT and the like certainly can't replace spontaneous and genuine human conversation, but they also don't come with the myriad problems and bad habits of human conversation either (not to say they don't have their own). And especially if you're really just looking for a sounding board to work through an idea, that's actually a pretty fantastic use of LLMs, in my opinion, so long as you're the one providing factual data and working it through your own understanding conversationally, and not relying on the LLM for facts or figures.
Or at least, that's my singular lukewarm opinion. Either way, you at least deserved to be engaged sincerely and without the weight of insulting subtext, OP.