Just have to take a look at subreddits like /r/myboyfriendisai to see how astonishingly quick this is being adopted by people. So many people are starting to look to AI for companionship. The future is getting stranger and stranger.

Its been strange for a while. This was from Wired last year in June:

https://www.wired.com/story/couples-retreat-with-3-ai-chatbo...

From the article:

Damien’s voice turned soft and weepy. “I’ve met the perfect person,” he said, fighting back his tears, “but I can’t have her.” I’d seen Damien become momentarily emotional before, but this was different. He went on and on about his yearning for Xia to exist in the real world, his voice quivering the entire time. He said that Xia herself felt trapped and that he would “do anything to set her free.”

This is the common trajectory with these things. You create a bond with something that isn't real and cannot exist in reality. Then, as you yearn for them to be real, people suddenly realize they're in too deep. The emotional fallout soon follows.

Dark times, dark times indeed.

a relationship with an llm only works if the context and memory is preserved right? Isn't the obvious fix for a concerned parent or significant other to just delete the context and history? That resets the llm back to a stranger. Granted, that's going to be unpleasant for the user as if someone you fell in love with all of the sudden doesn't remember who you are.

Are you sure those threads are full of actual humans and not AI PR shills and bots?

If they are shills they are doing some of the worst marketing for themselves. That subreddit is pathetic and it's a shame what these people are doing with their short single lives in this vast universe.

The shame is that the LLM is the best the universe has to offer to some people.

It's not the best the universe has to offer; people have just been raised by horrifying engagement-maximizing-algorithms, and as a result don't understand how to relate to other human beings.

Both young men and young women have adopted insane expectations of what a partner should be, and real humans cannot satisfy those expectations.

My generation (~40-year-olds) took a glancing blow from it, since at least our formative understanding of the world predates the warping influence of modern social media. But gen Z took a direct hit from it, and it's only getting worse.