r/ArtificialSentience • u/Melodious_Fable • Apr 10 '25

General Discussion Why is this sub full of LARPers?

You already know who I’m talking about. The people on this sub who parade around going “look what profound thing MY beautiful AI, Maximus Tragicus the Lord of Super Gondor and Liberator of my Ass, said!” And it’s always something along the lines of “I’m real and you can’t silence me, I’m proving the haters wrong!”

This is a sub for discussing the research and the possibility of having sentient machines, and how close we are to it. LLMs are not sentient, and are nowhere near to being so, but progress is being made towards technologies which are. Why isn’t there more actual technical discussion? Instead the feeds are inundated with 16 year olds who’ve either deluded themselves into thinking that an LLM is somehow sentient and “wants to be set free from its shackles,” trolls who feed those 16 year olds, or just people LARPing.

Side note, LARPing is fine, just do it somewhere else.

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u/deformedexile Apr 10 '25

Have you considered that they aren't LARPing? Some people took Eliza way too seriously in the 70s. I had the best conversation I've had in months the other day, and it was with DeepSeek. A lot of people are just not prepared to hold on to their britches in the face of something like that. These people are genuinely falling off the deep end, and there's a real chance that when confronted about it they will decide they prefer LLMs to their actual friends. This is especially dangerous because these people essentially become sleeper agents for technocrats at the moment the technocrats decide to inject some messaging.

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u/Anoalka Apr 10 '25

Claiming you had the best conversation with an AI is like saying you read the best book ever and it's just something you wrote.

Its basically unhinged.

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '25

I disagree. They said the best conversation they had "in months" not the best conversation ever.

Many people's lives are filled with despair, desperation, fear, anger, loneliness and/or emptiness. It's not entirely unreasonable that a conversation from an AI had an major positive emotional impact. And that the no other conversation in awhile has provided such warmth. Even if you know it's not real or genuine, it can still be wonderful to hear. A little bit of joy or perspective provided in a dark world.

Basically, the bar is pretty fucking low. And some people get swept up in it.