I think this is pretty on point

The social fabric has been re-configured by the least socially adept people in society

I should know. I'm not terribly socially adept, I grew up on IRC channels and forums because I struggled to connect with people in person

But now everyone is on the internet, using social networks designed by people who aren't very social like me, or worse, people who only understand social interaction through a lens of "what can this person do for me"

We're in a really strange time.

I used to go online to get away from everyone and try to find other people like me

Now I have to go offline to in-person events hosting things that appeal to people like me, because everyone is online and there's no avoiding the crowd anymore

This is interesting, but the implication of what it's saying overstates the upside of random conversations (you could get what you're looking for), and utterly ignores the huge downside that when you're lonely a rejection makes things a thousand times worse. In today's society you (seem to be) much more likely to be told to ^$*£ off rather than get an actual moment of connection with someone.

AI doesn't do that. It's always going to be nice to you, and that feels good even if it's entirely artificial.

Why is this? Oh yeah because Hell is other people. Why is Hell other people? Because of their look! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness#Part_3,_...

But I like slipping through life as a silent burgler :(

I almost always have things in doing, places I’m going, thoughts I’m thinking, and they almost never involve other people. I barely need people to be present at all, most of the time.

That’s not to say I don’t like people - I don’t have any particular animosity, they can’t help being here any more than I can - and there are plenty of people I know and love and yearn to see again from time to time.

But most of the time? I could go days without human contact. Oh the idea alone makes me giddy!

This is an interesting quote, but it frames the problem as ultimately individual in origin. It is as if loneliness is your own fault for not being willing to talk to the people around you. It doesn't ask why it is difficult to talk to people or even if you are in a situation where you can talk to people regularly.

I tend to think loneliness is more of a structural problem rather than an individual one --- that is, it is a consequence of how society as a whole structures our lives and interactions with people (for better or for worse). A generic person drives from their single family house by themselves to work, works largely by themselves (in many industries), and then drives back to their single family house. There is no "third place" for interaction with others and driving itself is isolating as a practice. With that kind of life as the structural default, there really isn't much chance of interaction in the first place. It's not an individual problem.

Honestly, the idea and concept had me in the beginning but the AI generated images were the nail in the coffin for me, what is the point of articles like this

How can you tell it’s written by an LLM?

All I want is an LLM front-end which will run a (tested/working) prompt[1] on each file in a directory, and collect the output into a single file/response at the end which could then be run on the files in that folder to get them renamed.

1 - for the pdf file, create a move command for a batch file which will rename the file using $<check amount>_<date from check in YYYY-MM-DD format>_<invoice id>_<PWS ID>_<name of company from Population line>.pdf as the filename.

Basically the computer from startrek right?

> Very good knowledge of history, science, technology, everything

All of English Wikipedia is about 100 GB. A local LLM that can run searches against a local Kiwix server would work. Local LLMs can’t really do this correctly yet, but it’s not inconceivable in 1-2 years.

Because a lot of real humans on social media are awful.

(Some platforms are better than others, obviously.)

Because real humans have their own wants and preferences and may not like talking to you or may not like talking about what you like to talk about. And even if they do, they might not be available when is convenient for you and the constraints of the platform might prevent you from forming a long term relationship, which is really what loneliness is about, not having friends that know you. An LLM will always find your discussion engaging, will remember almost everything you share with it, and won't ever make you feel unwanted. I don't think it's good or healthy that people engage with these tools in this way, but there's a lot of ways in which they are obviously superior to people.

I think because the forms of interaction that social media provides aren't very fulfilling for most people

As social media shifted from direct communication to “broadcasting”, we lost any sense of reciprocity in these online connections and they’ve become meaningless (or worse, parasocial).

I can’t think of a way to introduce any meaningful reciprocity into a human-LLM relationship

>As the article points out, human connection is only valuable because it is hard and there's another human on the other end of the relationship.

I'm not convinced that's the only reason connection is valuable. We evolved as social primates and human beings which feared ostracism were likely selected for during that process. I think, for many people, even the illusion of human connection likely comes with improvements to one's sense of well being, which can have positive knock on effects elsewhere in life. Forging real human connections would obviously be preferable, but in their absence, a crutch is better than being hobbled.

Why not use a forum dedicated to discussing said hobby?

I belong to more of those than I can easily count for CNC woodworking/machining....