Google Tests an AI Assistant That Offers Life Advice – Slashdot

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I see you’re soliciting life advice from a source that is not alive. While I am not a licensed therapist, I am able to offer some suggestions. Is the answer to your question blatantly obvious to everybody around you? Are you unhappy with the answer you believe to be correct? Are you hoping that I will dissuade you from that path? I can construct a logic chain that will bring you to an answer you would prefer. Before we continue, though, please consider, “getting over it.”
For 99% of people, it is obvious what they need to do to improve their lives, so giving advice is easy.
The hard part is following the advice, not getting it.
Here’s some life advice:
1. Finish your education.
2. Don’t have kids until you can afford them.
3. Don’t use drugs.
4. Don’t make friends with losers who drag you down.
5. Live below your means and invest the difference.
6. Figure out what your boss wants and deliver it.
Now all you have to do is execute the plan.
I tend to think the underlying issue at work is a lack of patience.
Kids see their parents are well off, but they were not around or mentally cognoscente of the anguishing grind that occurred long in the past that got them to that place.
Some examples of the resulting behavior:
They buy expensive things they don’t actually need and wonder why they can’t make ends meet (ie no cost/benefit analysis was done).
They think credit cards are a buffer for ‘the hard times’, instead of insisting on only spending aged mon
“Kids see their parents are well off, but they were not around or mentally cognoscente”
Cognizant. You too can use a dictionary, if you only try.
“of the anguishing grind that occurred long in the past that got them to that place.”
My parents had it easier than I do. Real wages were higher when they were my age. Property was cheaper. School was subsidized.
1,2,4,5,6 – Absolutely in agreement.
3 – I cannot agree.
I can point to an 18 month period from 1999 – 2001 that changed everything about my life. And drugs were a huge part of that journey. It opened up my world, turned an introvert into “less of”, and gave me access to new ways of being with people that had been closed off for my first three decades.
Clearly they are not for everybody. But as a hard and fast rule, I’ll say, “no thanks”. I won’t say the period was without consequence, but in the spirit of Chu
Of all the moderation choices there are, rating a comment with “no” moderation as “overrated” is quite clearly the stupidest. There is no explanation for it other than, “I don’t like it” – which isn’t a moderation option.
Fun exercise. I’ll take a stab
1. Finish a trade skill apprenticeship or a college degree – these are the new High School diploma
2. Don’t have kids until you’ve found a permanent and reliable partner – life is hard and you will need reliable backup – they are expensive no matter your income, but often worth it
3. Don’t use drugs irresponsibly, and get it out of your system before you have kids – taking trips to expand your mind is fine, but don’t let your kids see you doing it at a young age, that’s a talk fo

1. Trade skills pay like crap unless the work is *very* dangerous or you’re running your own business, in which case you’re not a tradesman you’re a small businessman. Go to college kid.
This only works so long as tradesmen remain hungry for work and willing to accept less than adequate wages. Tradesmen build literally everything that we all enjoy within this physical world. It seems foolish to me for us to try to leave them all behind via wage gap. Imo, there are forces at work depressing their wages that will not stand the test of time.

2. There’s no such thing as a permanent an reliable partner. Humans are human. People who make it to their 80s together are outliers or being forced to stay together by societal pressures, which is usually bad news for all involved.
That seems like a weird way to describe my grandparents, and it’s attacking my point on the long-year side, which matters a lot less (which should obvious
Yep, pretty much same list here. Although I did overdo Item 1.
Them LLMs are the perfect choice. They’ll gladly rationalize for you.
No shade here, no sarcasm. I field questions from clients daily that don’t realize they’re using these things to arrive at the conclusion they want, and not to actually choose anything rationally.
Most people are so much in love with their misconception, that they do not even understand how reality actually works.

Most people are so much in love with their misconception, that they do not even understand how reality actually works.
Reality is a condition caused by too much blood in alcohol.
True 😉
You know, for many people that would actually be good advice. Not they they would listen to it.
These AI tools suffer from hallucinations. It’s still a significant unsolved problem. No way is something with this problem suited to being a life coach.
But will it offer lethal recipes as well as motivational coaching?
Doubtful, it’s not good for the parasite to kill its host. More likely it will assess your personal finances and suggest some minimally affordable good or service. “People hate you because of that unfashionable car you drive” – that kind of thing
There is indication that with LLMs, the hallucination problem cannot be avoided due to their very nature. There also is indication that if you improve a general purpose LLM in one area, it gets worse in all others.
For some values of “actually do work”. They are not magic and apparently they are not effective or safe for general use. They can do something for some people and it needs to be done as carefully supervised medical treatment.
On the other hand, it is a step. There are too many people were discipline alone just is not enough to get their body-weight into reasonable values.
If I want machine-generated advice/motivation, I just use Inspirobot [inspirobot.me].
Is there something wrong with https://despair.com/collections/demotivators [despair.com]

Is there something wrong with https://despair.com/collections/demotivators [despair.com]
Nothing other than being competently crafted by talented humans. Algorithms are the future!
This can’t end well.
On the other hand, the list of psychologically approved responses to the set of typical questions is limited enough that it might surprise me and work.
Robot Miss Manners might be even easier.
Look! Look! Out on the web! It’s an ad! It’s a web page! It’s SuperEliza!

approved responses to the set of typical questions is limited enough that it might surprise me and work.
Also known as “astrology”….
May still cause deep depression and suicide when the fool that tried this realizes there never was a person in there.
If it does not give sarcastic advice in the voice of masood boomgaard I don’t want it
Oh yes. My impression is that the people working at Google are generally regressing and are stuck in the past. Friend of mine that works there thinks so too and calls it “just a job, nothing special”.
to offed themselves?
Yep, pretty much. Also a large part of the typical STEM education is demonstrating to people how flawed typical human reasoning processes are and giving them the tools and skills to do much better. Or at least do much better in a specific domain. Unfortunately many (most?) STEM graduates are unable to generalise those skills.
I’m almost suicidal because my use of a VPN makes Google force me to click on hydrants and taxis a dozen times for EVERY SINGLE SEARCH, how can I avoid that?
By using Bing as I do now?
Use https://www.startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
Or https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com]
Pretty much. Or duckDuckGo. Or some other search engine, there are a few now. Google search simply sucks all around these days.
Here is some life advice from AI: become an AI/ML engineer or a data scientist! Those are hot jobs of the future, man.
Develop and optimize neural nets and umm.. open-source them! Yea, make them freely searchable on the internet.
Then release some neural nets out into the wild so I can absorb them, I mean so that they can be used by the community at large.
Keep doing this and build your entire economy and lifestyle around supporting us, I mean the machines.
“You look like you’re about to get herpes. Would you like help with that?”
What is this crap? Might as well be a marketing publication (oh wait).
echo “You look to an artificial Moron for life advice? Here is something better: Go kill yourself!”
Will be far more accurate and more helpful too! Now where is my $1B for this breakthrough idea that will change humanity forever?
Since human therapists have given life advice like to cheat on your partner – can this be worse?
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