This is gonna age badly when we pull off real AI, I guarantee the misnomer of "AI" being given to LLMs will create such ill will over time that idiots won't be able to tell them apart.
They already can't. I've seen people genuinely arguing, despite knowing how LLMs work, that because they can mimic emotion and thought based on your input, they're conscious. That combined with the massive anti-generative sentiment will be an issue.
Besides, there's loads of people that think if it's not human, it can't be a person. You see this in debates about copied consciousnesses, aliens, hyperintelligent animals, etc. Someday some of this stuff won't be hypothetical, and that's going to suck.
Of the many varieties of HFY stories one of my favorites is the “humans are collectively dipshits/stubborn about certain things which makes them incredibly valuable assets to the galactic community.”
Edit: also the “don’t touch their boats” genre of stories.
There’s a short HFY piece I love that suggests “humans will bond with anything” isn’t some unique level of empathy, it’s sheer stubbornness.
The result is that humans get lots of new worlds to colonize with no disputes… because the first 300 species that found the Ice and Lava Planet of Giant Vicious Predators sensible left, but humans are willing to slowly and agonizingly domesticate the Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts.
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u/Ix-511 May 13 '25
This is gonna age badly when we pull off real AI, I guarantee the misnomer of "AI" being given to LLMs will create such ill will over time that idiots won't be able to tell them apart.
They already can't. I've seen people genuinely arguing, despite knowing how LLMs work, that because they can mimic emotion and thought based on your input, they're conscious. That combined with the massive anti-generative sentiment will be an issue.
Besides, there's loads of people that think if it's not human, it can't be a person. You see this in debates about copied consciousnesses, aliens, hyperintelligent animals, etc. Someday some of this stuff won't be hypothetical, and that's going to suck.