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.
I’ve read this text. It’s a good piece, but unrelated to what OP is talking about.
The text boils down to “people who believe that LLMs are smart do so for the same reasons as people who believe that mentalists can read minds do.” OP is not saying anything remotely close to that; instead, they’re saying that LLMs lead to pleasing and insightful conversations in their experience.
Yeah, as would eliza (at a much lower cost).
It’s what they’re designed to do.
But the point is that calling them conversations is a long stretch.
You’re just talking to yourself. You’re enjoying the conversation because the LLM is simply saying what you want to hear.
There’s no conversation whatsoever going on there.
Neither Eliza nor LLMs are “insightful”, but that doesn’t stop them from outputting utterances that a human being would subjectively interpret as such. And the later is considerably better at that.
Then your point boils down to an “ackshyually”, on the same level as “When you play chess against Stockfish you aren’t actually «playing chess» as a 2P game, you’re just playing against yourself.”
This shite doesn’t need to be smart to be interesting to use and fulfil some [not all] social needs. Specially in the case of autists (as OP mentioned to be likely in the spectrum); I’m not an autist myself but I lived with them for long enough to know how the cookie crumbles for them, opening your mouth is like saying “please put words here, so you can screech at me afterwards”.
You’re gatekeeping what counts as a conversation now?
I can take this even further. I can have better conversations literally with myself inside my own head than with some people online.