> Consider if you’d rather have a massage from a robut or person. Or, if you are infirm and would prefer a caretaker who is human or machine.

Sure, I’m also implicitly assuming robotics will improve. At some point — don’t know when — we can’t tell the difference any more, and at that point, the humans indistinguishable from machines are likely to be made redundant by the machines.

I’m saying there’s something innately different emotionally about interacting with a human.

So if you know it’s a machine, it will inherently change the subjective interaction. If you’re saying that it wont matter because we will get to a point where humans and machines are indistinguishable, that’s implying robots will be emotional and no longer just processing data in the way we currently think of AGI. Essentially it means they will be conscious with subjective experience of their own or just philosophical zombies. Both are essentially fictitious thought experiments at this point.

That's what it seems like they're saying. At some point it's likely they will be indistinguishable from us on many levels, including emotions. There's a demand for it and a solution/peoduct will eventually be created to address that demand, once the means of doing so are technically and financially feasible/scalable.

Currently, yes, there's an innate difference, but it's only fictitious that there won't be a difference until it's not. It's plausible speculation. Writing it off as fictitious as of now feels like an "ostrich in the sand" means of molding around a static perception of reality.

Things will change, we're not special, labor as we know it will be replaced, machines will at some point acquire the same abilities as us, and we'll have to strive to figure out as a whole if we need to change the means required to carry on and/or individually adapt/overcome such sea changes in labor/income.

It will probably cause many issues within our societies, but many will also see opportunities. It's going to be a lot of grey, likely more so than now.

I agree that there’s hubris in thinking we’re somehow special. But pretending we will get there “someday” isn’t much different than saying one day we’ll time travel. Even if plausible, it’s so far from where we’re currently at it belongs more to philosophical thought experiments than serious technology inquiry

I'd agree that they would either be conscious or p-zombies, but I think humans are sufficiently easy to fool that the latter may well happen. I offer panpsychism and celebrity fandoms/parasocial relationships as examples of people's emotional sense of connection being misleading.

I don't think anyone has a sufficiently concrete definition of consciousness to even tell either how far we are from that now, nor how to get there from here.

https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turin...

I do think humans are easy to fool but so far only in extremely constrained scenarios. E.g., limited to chat bots. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. To fool people in the manner that’s being discussed, robuts would need to fool people with buddy language and on a subconscious level. So much more of how we communicate is beyond reading words on a screen. Consider the uncanny valley that is still prevalent with deep fakes. Getting better for sure, but that’s still constrained to premise video. To be able to do that in person in real time is a much larger problem.

The other examples appear to me as magnifications of mental illness instead of generalizable scenarios, possibly including the Google employee when you consider his background.

Hm. To me, reaching uncanny valley means they're probably quite close in form and behaviour. But it may well be the case that the remaining 1% (or whatever the percentage is) of the details may be harder than the first 99%.

I can see your point. But to me, the uncanny valley isn’t evidence that we’re super close, it’s evidence that we don’t know how to fully define the problem because there are elements we know are not wore right but can’t say why. Because we can’t fully define it means we aren’t close to solving it.

I certainly agree that we don't know what we're missing. My best guess timeline for this is very vague for this exact reason.

Do you see/feel this "something innately different emotionally" when you do your banking? Most human bank tellers have been replaced by ATMs and websites.

Neither of those examples are a good illustration of your point as many and probably most will prefer the machine in both scenarios. I don't get a massage for an emotional experience with the masseuse; I'd prefer the likely much cheaper and higher quality and consistent machine massage. Ditto with a permanent caretaker as it'll allow you to feel far more independant; most of us don't want to feel like a burden on other people. However, you do have a valid point, just not good examples imho.

AGI will make the vast majority unemployable, it'll be a disaster and those jobs won't simply be replaced by new ones: people who think this haven't thought through it very deeply at all.

Maybe. My original example that came to mind was a caretaker for someone terminally ill, I.e., hospice. Having volunteered in that area, people want human contact, even if it’s not performing any pragmatic function. I tend to think automation would just make somebody feel more isolated. People yearn for connection, not automation.

I believe the research shows there is a strong psychological component to massage that goes beyond the mechanical manipulation. I guess it would depend on whether somebody uses it for stress relieve or merely recovery.

Oh, terminal, yea that's one where I agree, they want company more than anything; but even that will eventually fall prey to AGI. People will be best friends and family with AGI's; grow up with them, presuming we don't go down the Terminator route; people are very quick to anthropomorphize anything remotely reminiscent of human behavior.

I think I'd rather have a $20 hug from a real person than a $5 hug from a heated robot. Even if the robot had better AI conversational skills than the person.

Hugs would have been a great example, human contact is the point; not true with massage, not unless you're being creepy. They're there for your muscles, not to turn you on and fill some emotional need.

Many people use massage for stress reduction which is an emotional need. Emotional does not necessarily mean romantic or sexual emotion.

This is my issue with discussions on tech. People tend to oversimply the problem as if a human is just another rational data input. Massage is more than just mechanically manipulation of the body. Autonomous driving is more than just perception.

Oversimplification leads to wildly optimistic ideas and timelines. I’m not saying they’re impossible, just that the problems are much more complicated than we give them credit.