
I Automated My Friends and Nobody Could Tell the Difference - rcymerys
https://latenightcoding.co/i-automated-my-friends/
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erikpukinskis
I actually think this is where the first "general intelligence" AIs will come
from: people will train AIs to be them. It will start out running little bits
of our lives, but eventually you'll be able to take whole days off with AI you
doing your job.

I read a short story about this... a neural implant that starts off in passive
mode, learning to be you, and then you switch it over to active mode at some
point and you are it.

Interestingly, this makes an end-run around the whole "what if AIs have power
but no morals?" question... the first AIs will have human morals because
they'll be clones of humans.

~~~
ashark
> I read a short story about this... a neural implant that starts off in
> passive mode, learning to be you, and then you switch it over to active mode
> at some point and you are it.

"Learning to be Me" by Greg Egan?

I read it in the short story collection (various authors) _Beyond Flesh_

~~~
jodrellblank
And the trick with Egan's jewel (Dual) was at the point where you go for
surgery and they remove your biological brain and replace it with an energy
sink, and leave only the jewel mind with an identical neural network running
in it.

Characters who self-identify as the biological brain consider it death, and
being replaced by a machine.

Characters who self-identify as the jewel being bootstrapped / trained by the
biological brain consider it no big deal, like removing training wheels from a
bicycle.

That distinction stuck with me hard, for years. The same reality, different
levels of suffering.

Seems to me like the only way to deal with something like dementia is to have
a worldview where you aren't surprised and confused and afraid to wake up and
not know who you are, where you are, or who people around you are. To have
plans now for how you'd cope with it.

Because if you don't have that worldview now, in advance, you won't be
coherent enough to change to it when you need it.

Or if you're going through a clone/destroy teleporter, or being mind-uploaded
into FaceBook 2070, or get alcohol induced long term memory formation
problems, or are going to offload parts of your thinking to brain implants or
desktops ... lose your identity now, so your pattern won't include suffering
later as it carries on.

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BallinCollin
>Using her authority gave it enough power to get the team gather up for a
call.

This is why I think the slackbots OP wrote were so effective. When you give a
bot a name like MeetingBot it's easy to ignore the notifications. However when
the bot carries authority of a manager or team member it's harder to ignore.

~~~
hdhzy
It's also a question whether the activities are really important if you need
tricks like that (pretending to be the authority) to get people to act...

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dwe3000
Reminds me of a quote/thought (I don't recall the original source): The worst
waste of time is to improve (automate) something that doesn't need to be done.

I've been there myself. I was asked to deliver to email a report that anyone
could get at any time by opening a browser, but they wanted an email instead
(their communication path - if our office used IM/Slack more, I can easily see
them wanting that instead of the email).

~~~
derekp7
That makes sense to me -- active vs. passive receiving of information. Which
is why mailing lists are still popular, instead of message boards.

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fao_
> I launched it on Monday morning and waited for the laughs. > But nobody
> noticed.

I should imagine that's one of the biggest insults anyone could receive. Woah.

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cbhl
I can't help but think that this is what Google Wave was supposed to be. But
Slack is what actually enabled people to build little bots like this for
everything.

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thelastestate
In Frank Herberts Dune, the fremen walk without rhythm to avoid the great sand
worms. I wonder if, not too far away from now people will begin intentionally
varying their intonations and body language randomly to avoid detection...

