new york times currently out here telling us we should be saying thank you to robots even though it wastes huge amounts of money and energy
they argue that language processing robots are like dolls, and obviously it is good to treat dolls like humans even though they are in fact inanimate objects
i would counter that the whole FUNCTION of dolls is to be human standins. in this sense they are endowed with a certain human spirit so treating them like humans is appropriate
however, the function of language processing robots is not to be human standins but (only) to complete tasks using human language as an interface. endowing them with a human spirit does not make them more effective at this aim and in fact only makes it more difficult to critically analyse their outputs. so i disagree that there is a comparison to be had between robots and dolls
one white liberal line of argument is that if people get used to treating robots that interface using human language as tools, then they might extend that and also start treating humans themselves as tools. but bitch they already do. bitch they already do
@Lady i always say think you to plush toys, although i don't so much think of my relation to them as "using" them
@Lady oops i now see that this relates to your reply about dolls as stand-ins.
@Lady i voted yes, but you should not when they are hooked up to LLMs
@aescling you at least don’t have to type it into the box
@Lady @aescling i say thank you to chatbots (when i am forced to use them which i avoid) bc its usually unclear to what extent they are a human in a datacenter with a script vs an llm with a script vs a textual phone tree and i want to say thank you to any humans involved but i am NOT thanking the bot by doing so
should you say thank you to inanimate tools after you use them to complete tasks