We have no guarantee everyone who uses ChatGPT is a mentally mature adult who understands the limitations of the chatbot. Many criticisms have been raised about how the bot is too sycophantic, such as when it encourages someone displaying schizophrenic behavior to potentially commit violent acts[0] or further harm themselves[1].
So tech exists in a void, filled with angelic, perfect beings, that read manuals and are in no aspect ever self destructive?
calmbonsai · 1d ago
Not at all. This article is trying to blame a modern technology for an ages-old issue of mystical faith. Replace "ChatGPT" with a Ouija board, a Séance, or the classic cinematic Gypsy Fortune Teller and you'll get the same result.
hshdhdhj4444 · 1d ago
So you don’t think it’s useful to learn that there are people who will indeed use ChatGPT as they would an Ouija board, or seance, or a fortune teller?
Because that is certainly news to me and is extremely counterintuitive, considering that the whole idea behind those other things is that they are infused with mystical spirits whereas even the makers of ChatGPT don’t suggest that.
Alternatively instead of mysticism, it may be the belief in the technology being scientifically accurate that including in its ability to scientifically accurately
predict the future that may be driving this decision making.
If the latter that raises many questions around us technologists who are working on or with these technologies to do a better job of explaining to the users what the limitations of these technologies are.
hnuser123456 · 1d ago
You are putting way too much thought into this. Some people are just extremely emotionally vulnerable and insecure, and will look to ANYTHING to try to satiate that anxiety, and accept any answer. Look at how huge and fervent communities around astrology are. There have been countless studies showing that self-proclaimed "skilled astrologers" have no better chance than random of predicting someone's sign (based on birth month) given a detailed description of that person's life and personality. But that literally doesn't matter, because it's too much fun to these people to divide everyone into groups and stereotype them, regardless if there's no evidence at all behind the stereotypes. And then invent causality for fun, just to feel like they understand why people are they way they are without doing any of the actual work of understanding their life story. Literally, they do not care about the proof of causality, they already fully believe it and fully believe that anyone who doesn't "just doesn't get it." They just want to say "oh I'm an Aries, you can't blame me for being like this." and "Of course he did that, he's a Leo."
These people are going to exist with or without chatgpt. Maybe we should adjust the instruction training to tell people that you can't make worldly predictions from the arrangement of coffee grounds in a cup, other than the quality of the coffee machine and filters, no matter how creative and fantasy-like the users want the model to be.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
Wanna hear about the French woman scammed of 800k Euros by AI Brad Pitt wanting to marry her?
Some humans are insanely stupid and have no self awareness, they were gonna loose with or without AI. At some point it's natural selection at work.
We can't halt technology progress just because some people are stupid.
ashoeafoot · 1d ago
Yes, we can and yes we do that thing right now. We have nuclear proliferation allover the middle east right now, a very real powder keg of technology having gone way to far.
Some technologies are allowed to grow because they lower the chance of self violation , but yes, most technology goes back into the lamp.
FirmwareBurner · 1d ago
I assumed it was obvious I was referring to consumer accessible technology.
We don't need nuclear energy to kill ourselves. Over one million people die in car accidents per year worldwide, that's two per minute, and if we still haven't banned cars by now then sure as hell we're not gonna ban LLMs.
kylehotchkiss · 1d ago
> that she often got caught up in trends.
Serious relationship crusher: one person sitting on tiktok/reels all day and setting expectations for their own relationship based on that (often staged) content. Really not healthy to constantly have that level of pressure on your head.
karmakaze · 1d ago
> According to reports, the woman asked ChatGPT to interpret the coffee grounds left in her cup — in a lighthearted attempt to mimic traditional fortune-telling. The AI responded, supposedly describing a young woman with the initial “E,” claiming the husband had strong feelings for her and that the relationship would soon become a reality.
ChatGPT is not to blame, they could have gone to a coffee-grounds (human) reader and done the same. If someone can show that human coffee-grounds readers are better than ChatGPT, then there might be a case.
jilles · 1d ago
Not sure if this is a controversial opinion but if the wife decides to divorce the husband based on what ChatGPT says, perhaps the husband is better off.
pcthrowaway · 1d ago
If you read the article, it appears she asked ChatGPT to tell her fortune based on the pattern of coffee grounds in her coffee cup.
Which.. sounds like she was either just looking for any excuse to divorce, or she was already divorced, from reality.
There is no story here about ChatGPT, this could have been anything. It could have been the way a dog barked, or hidden messages in the radio, which we wouldn't associate with dogs or radio.
If we are going to attempt any deeper analysis from this, it should be an analysis of what services are in place for people with mental health issues and how people can be empowered to notice signs to help their loved ones.
titanomachy · 1d ago
The coffee grounds thing is an old folk divination practice in Greece. Not saying it makes sense, but I don’t think it’s any more a sign of mental illness than believing in Jesus or something.
pcthrowaway · 22h ago
If ChatGPT tells you that you should divorce your husband because Jesus said so, you should be equally skeptical
UncleMeat · 22h ago
A bunch of subcommunities with odd supernatural-adjacent belief systems have been completely bowled over by chatgpt. A huge amount of "chatgpt told me that i was the savior of the universe" or "chatgpt told me that such and such thing will come true." While it is true that this could have in principle been anything, the predilection of these chatbots to reflect back or generally approve of the opinions of the user is catnip to a bunch of people.
This sort of self-radicalization will only grow. I've already seen too many cases of "chatgpt told me that I am God" in weird corners of reddit.
rsaarelm · 17h ago
English has the idiom "reading the tea leaves". Elsewhere in Europe it's "reading the coffee grounds", eg. "kahvinporoista katsominen" in Finnish.
staticman2 · 1d ago
There was actually a similar thing on this website where someone here claimed in an article comment section that if you feed your wife's emails into ChatGPT it can simulate her well enough to tell you whether she is cheating.
The weird thing is I looked at the posting history of that commenter and it was bland tech comments with no obvious signs of mental health issues.
nvesp · 1d ago
I could believe that more than the prediction based on coffee
potato3732842 · 1d ago
Not everyone with a spicy opinion has an underlying mental health problem.
makeitdouble · 1d ago
Reading from the comments here I was expecting at lot more meat about the case, but it's just a report on anonymous reports and what the husband allegedly told to the press ?
Otherwise, does a divorce really need anything more than one party willing to get out of the relationship ?
Even assuming anyone is calling it quits on frivolous grounds, it also means that's how much emotional investment there was left in the first place and they were due for a break any day really.
nimih · 1d ago
> Otherwise, does a divorce really need anything more than one party willing to get out of the relationship?
I don't know anything about Greek statutes specifically, but no-fault divorce has actually been a relatively recent development in most legal jurisdictions.
makeitdouble · 1d ago
Greece has no-fault (consensual) divorces. It looks like the only strong requirements are having a lawyer oversee the process and both parties agreeing to the conditions.
Divorce is a legal procedure to dissolve a legal union; local rules vary, but while it can be accomplished without standing in court, in the US at least the terms of the dissolution must still be documented and--even if signed by both parties--approved by a judge. One of the most notable pieces of the divorce is the division of the union's assets, which especially in a "no fault" divorce must be "fair" to both parties since neither one is accusing the other of wrongdoing.
_In general_ (I am not a lawyer, I don't know your situation or laws of your area), anything acquired during the marriage is joint property. That can include every paycheck you receive in the span of the marriage, even if the salary is established before marriage, deposited in a personal account, and you were the only one working the entire time.
And that means everything you pay for with that money is also jointly owned, including any mortgage payments using those joint funds. Therefore your (to be ex-)spouse may have stake in any property you own that must be fairly divided. If you bought the house after getting married this may at least be a simple 50/50 split, but if one of you put your whole pre-marriage savings as the down payment you can bet this gets a lot messier.
Speaking of money, if you're making 100K and your spouse makes 50K the union has 150K to sustain a standard of living. After the divorce neither party will be able to keep that same standard of living of course, but one party is more greatly affected than the other. In a "no fault" divorce the outcome must be "fair" to both parties.
But WTF does that even mean? Is it "fair" to have to pay your ex-spouse for being less successful in their career? According to the courts the answer may be, "Yes," especially for any income gained (or lost) during the marriage because, "Pursuing a new job is something you decided _together_, right?"
All that is to say that even if both parties agree that holding onto a failing relationship isn't to anyone's benefit, divorce is something else that either (or both) might not find so agreeable.
When my ex-wife asked for a divorce, I wasn't going to fight over what had already felt by that point a completely one-sided relationship. That helped a lot getting over the emotional shock of the situation, and we did manage a pretty amicable no fault divorce. But it was still was months of debating how much she should get from the two years paid into our 30 year mortgage, and ended with both of us being worse off financially for several more years.
Divorce is not just a break up that you state your waning interest and walk away from; it is a complicated legal process that will force some uncomfortable conversations about things you probably would have never imagined being an issue while you believed the relationship was going well.
Which is not to say you shouldn't do it if your relationship is bad, but if you think your relationship is bound to end on some frivolous grounds you either shouldn't get married in the first place or find relationship help immediately.
makeitdouble · 11h ago
I'll be showing my utter lack of romanticism, but I think any long lasting relationship (marriage or not) is on the same boat, the only difference will be how the couple discusses these issues, and whether they have a leg to stand on when shit hits the fan or they're just SOL.
Imagine being in a non-married relationship and taking a mortgage for a house you'll both live in and potentially both pay. You'll still need to have these uncomfortable discussions, probably upfront and not when it goes south. Same if you have a kid, if one quits their job to take care of that kid (or take care of the other if needed).
A marriage will package a defined set of rules to apply to these situations, where not being married will force a lot of case-by-case examination, with probably one end of the relation getting shafted. Some countries (Japan is one, there must be others) have a "not married but could as well be" status for these kind of situations.
What I'm saying is, being in a marriage or not is akin to having a contract or not. It doesn't change what you're supposed to be doing, it will only help to frame the discussion in the dire times. By the same token, breaking up a long lasting relationship shouldn't be about whether the paperwork is a PITA or not, not being in a marriage doesn't make it OK to just screw the other side for instance, hopefully you'll still have the uncomfortable discussions either way.
lizard · 6h ago
Sorry, that's the point I was making to which I may have got off track. Marriage can't be ended by one party "calling it quits on frivolous grounds" because its a legal contract between two people.
Both parties must come to an agreement about how to break the contract, including conditions they may or may not have realized they agreed to, otherwise the must demonstrate how one has already broken the contract.
If you want a relationship you can just walk away from, or believe your parter does, you should not get married.
TrnsltLife · 1d ago
Is this materially different from all the wives divorcing their husbands because their friends predict he will cheat on her?
There were societally beneficial reasons that divorce used to be hard to achieve, and the fickleness of the inconstant moon was one of them, to reference Juliet.
croes · 1d ago
That's the real risk of AI.
People blindly belueving a machine
graemep · 1d ago
I think the problem here is old fashioned human stupidity:
> According to reports, the woman asked ChatGPT to interpret the coffee grounds left in her cup — in a lighthearted attempt to mimic traditional fortune-telling
This could just has easily happened with a human fortune teller.
croes · 1d ago
But you need to stupid humans, the client and the fortune teller dumb enough to defame someone else.
kees99 · 1d ago
No way a human fortune teller would say something like that in their right mind.
Same as with fortune cookie quips, any "prediction" will be something that sounds deep and intriguing, but always vague enough to be non-falsifiable.
Otherwise, client will come back and confront fortune teller about it. And human one knows it well enough to avoid making an unnecessary headache for themselves.
rpdillon · 1d ago
The article mentions him falsifying a previous fortune-teller's bullshit:
> He also noted that this wasn’t the first time she had fallen into irrational beliefs. He claimed that in the past, his wife had visited an astrologer, and it took her a year to accept that nothing they said came true.
I don't think the problem here is with AI.
croes · 1d ago
You can sue the fortune teller.
amanaplanacanal · 1d ago
If you want to waste money and lose the case, I guess.
croes · 1d ago
Defamation is defamation
ty6853 · 1d ago
People have a way of believing anything when the alimony+child support reaches a number where you can just grab (at least a sizeable portion of ) the financial benefits of marriage without having to put in the work of being a partner.
foxyv · 1d ago
I can just imagine a Kafkaesque future society where people are punished based on a predictive model that is nothing more than an overly complicated random number generator.
archerx · 1d ago
Infidelity Report. You will be caught before you cheat!
netsharc · 1d ago
The Company has never existed, and never will.
imtringued · 1d ago
That's exactly what Gattaca is about. The fact that the machine scans your genes is honestly quite irrelevant and probably the biggest thing that everyone gets wrong about that movie: Everyone blindly trusts the scanner, but such a scanner cannot possibly exist.
The key claims about the film that gwern's argument builds on are false, though. E.g.: "in a setting where there are no genuine consequences to any of this, no genetic engineering, no embryo selection"
It is a rather central part of the story that genetic engineering and embryo selection are routine, and the principal protagonist is noteworthy because his parents did not use such techniques, and he was instead a "faith baby".
gwern is clearly criticizing something, but it's not what is actually portrayed in the film Gattaca.
gwern · 1d ago
My point is that there are no 'genuine consequences'. We are told that supposedly there is selection and that the predictive power is nearly perfect and everyone relies on solely genetics to do everything; and yet, we do not see a world which reflects such effects at all. This worldbuilding does not make sense from a scientific perspective. Instead, what we see is a world in which you have extremely cheap sequencing in a panopticon and a caste society based on seemingly-random arbitrary discrimination with no actual consequences to any supposed inferiority or superiority*, akin to the classification of supposedly-objective 'classes' in North Korea where everyone is finely graded on hereditary loyalty to the elites but could be knocked down a rung at any time for suspected disloyalty.
(My headcanon is that the esoteric story of _Gattaca_ is that none of the supposed embryo selection or valid/invalid screens exist at all, any embryo selection is just ordinary IVF quality control for aneuploidy etc, there is only cheap universal sequencing developed by a totalitarian police state like the CCP (see: Zero COVID testing), and the classification exists to manufacture distinctions and divide families and punish/reward elite supporters; the Freemans were some lower 'wavering' class, grouped with religious minorities, as indicated by their dissenting 'natural' birth, and so they earned a valid vs invalid split within their family. It makes more sense than the actual story, anyway.)
* I've remarked elsewhere that _Gattaca_ is an example of how movies with a message tend to fail by loading the dice too heavily for one side, removing any 'moral dilemma', and it is no exception: we never see any evidence that Vincent is doing anything wrong or that he shouldn't go on the space mission. In fact, given his methodical penetration, high competency, motivation, and extraordinary success at getting into the mission, he shows that he should be selected for his moxie and chutzpah. So what _Gattaca_ should have done was to make the ending Vincent suddenly clutching his heart from the shock, and fade to black.
giraffe_lady · 1d ago
This is already pretty much a thing with pretrial risk assessment algorithms. Sure pretrial detention isn't "punishment" in a narrow legal-technical sense. But for the person in jail the difference doesn't matter.
foxyv · 1d ago
Have you seen the documentaries on that. It was BONKERS. They would show up every day to these people's homes and give them tickets for literally anything. That bush is too tall, or whatever. Then they would threaten family members and stalk/harass them.
The real tragedy is that such systems can exist under the cover of political will provided by the "well if they didn't want to get fined they should have complied with <arcane rule that nobody ever expected full compliance with and was only ever intended for selective enforcement>.
ashoeafoot · 1d ago
Claude said i should downvote, you see it has a inner model, a state of vengeful spite.
SirMaster · 1d ago
I mean this is a good thing right? If the person you are with would leave you due to what they read online, then that's a massive red flag and you should probably break it off with them anyways. Why would you even want to stay with someone like that?
No comments yet
matrix87 · 1d ago
I wonder at what point people decide marriage isn't worth it and the increase in risk (because of no fault and annoying cultural climate) is priced in
I'm already there personally, it just looks like a rip off
thro1 · 23h ago
Good for him ? First, I thought the AI was materializing her projections - but actually, she chose to relate with ChatGPT (!) in conspiring against him - which obviously must have to take advantage of that opportunity and some leaves chains in a cup happen to be aligned or weighted so, so well. For them, fallen under control of such factors.. - can they escape from it after all somehow, if they want ? - or, better maybe.. shall they be happy for the wish they/she granted, deserving it, granted by ?? ;)
So now, "" it's some of third Popper world frozen unequivalently at a past time.. [slope shaped..] - since then, * IT * self-repeat and decide usurping about us already in such a way.. .
btw elsewhere now it happen [flagged, overtake]. The next ? (.) (modus operandi?) .?
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Please don't post shallow dismissals...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[0]: https://twitter.com/colin_fraser/status/1916994188035690904
[1]: https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1916889492172013989
Because that is certainly news to me and is extremely counterintuitive, considering that the whole idea behind those other things is that they are infused with mystical spirits whereas even the makers of ChatGPT don’t suggest that.
Alternatively instead of mysticism, it may be the belief in the technology being scientifically accurate that including in its ability to scientifically accurately predict the future that may be driving this decision making.
If the latter that raises many questions around us technologists who are working on or with these technologies to do a better job of explaining to the users what the limitations of these technologies are.
These people are going to exist with or without chatgpt. Maybe we should adjust the instruction training to tell people that you can't make worldly predictions from the arrangement of coffee grounds in a cup, other than the quality of the coffee machine and filters, no matter how creative and fantasy-like the users want the model to be.
Some humans are insanely stupid and have no self awareness, they were gonna loose with or without AI. At some point it's natural selection at work.
We can't halt technology progress just because some people are stupid.
Some technologies are allowed to grow because they lower the chance of self violation , but yes, most technology goes back into the lamp.
We don't need nuclear energy to kill ourselves. Over one million people die in car accidents per year worldwide, that's two per minute, and if we still haven't banned cars by now then sure as hell we're not gonna ban LLMs.
Serious relationship crusher: one person sitting on tiktok/reels all day and setting expectations for their own relationship based on that (often staged) content. Really not healthy to constantly have that level of pressure on your head.
ChatGPT is not to blame, they could have gone to a coffee-grounds (human) reader and done the same. If someone can show that human coffee-grounds readers are better than ChatGPT, then there might be a case.
Which.. sounds like she was either just looking for any excuse to divorce, or she was already divorced, from reality.
There is no story here about ChatGPT, this could have been anything. It could have been the way a dog barked, or hidden messages in the radio, which we wouldn't associate with dogs or radio.
If we are going to attempt any deeper analysis from this, it should be an analysis of what services are in place for people with mental health issues and how people can be empowered to notice signs to help their loved ones.
This sort of self-radicalization will only grow. I've already seen too many cases of "chatgpt told me that I am God" in weird corners of reddit.
The weird thing is I looked at the posting history of that commenter and it was bland tech comments with no obvious signs of mental health issues.
Otherwise, does a divorce really need anything more than one party willing to get out of the relationship ?
Even assuming anyone is calling it quits on frivolous grounds, it also means that's how much emotional investment there was left in the first place and they were due for a break any day really.
I don't know anything about Greek statutes specifically, but no-fault divorce has actually been a relatively recent development in most legal jurisdictions.
https://www.nomikosodigos.info/en/articles/902-mutual-consen...
_In general_ (I am not a lawyer, I don't know your situation or laws of your area), anything acquired during the marriage is joint property. That can include every paycheck you receive in the span of the marriage, even if the salary is established before marriage, deposited in a personal account, and you were the only one working the entire time.
And that means everything you pay for with that money is also jointly owned, including any mortgage payments using those joint funds. Therefore your (to be ex-)spouse may have stake in any property you own that must be fairly divided. If you bought the house after getting married this may at least be a simple 50/50 split, but if one of you put your whole pre-marriage savings as the down payment you can bet this gets a lot messier.
Speaking of money, if you're making 100K and your spouse makes 50K the union has 150K to sustain a standard of living. After the divorce neither party will be able to keep that same standard of living of course, but one party is more greatly affected than the other. In a "no fault" divorce the outcome must be "fair" to both parties.
But WTF does that even mean? Is it "fair" to have to pay your ex-spouse for being less successful in their career? According to the courts the answer may be, "Yes," especially for any income gained (or lost) during the marriage because, "Pursuing a new job is something you decided _together_, right?"
All that is to say that even if both parties agree that holding onto a failing relationship isn't to anyone's benefit, divorce is something else that either (or both) might not find so agreeable.
When my ex-wife asked for a divorce, I wasn't going to fight over what had already felt by that point a completely one-sided relationship. That helped a lot getting over the emotional shock of the situation, and we did manage a pretty amicable no fault divorce. But it was still was months of debating how much she should get from the two years paid into our 30 year mortgage, and ended with both of us being worse off financially for several more years.
Divorce is not just a break up that you state your waning interest and walk away from; it is a complicated legal process that will force some uncomfortable conversations about things you probably would have never imagined being an issue while you believed the relationship was going well.
Which is not to say you shouldn't do it if your relationship is bad, but if you think your relationship is bound to end on some frivolous grounds you either shouldn't get married in the first place or find relationship help immediately.
Imagine being in a non-married relationship and taking a mortgage for a house you'll both live in and potentially both pay. You'll still need to have these uncomfortable discussions, probably upfront and not when it goes south. Same if you have a kid, if one quits their job to take care of that kid (or take care of the other if needed).
A marriage will package a defined set of rules to apply to these situations, where not being married will force a lot of case-by-case examination, with probably one end of the relation getting shafted. Some countries (Japan is one, there must be others) have a "not married but could as well be" status for these kind of situations.
What I'm saying is, being in a marriage or not is akin to having a contract or not. It doesn't change what you're supposed to be doing, it will only help to frame the discussion in the dire times. By the same token, breaking up a long lasting relationship shouldn't be about whether the paperwork is a PITA or not, not being in a marriage doesn't make it OK to just screw the other side for instance, hopefully you'll still have the uncomfortable discussions either way.
Both parties must come to an agreement about how to break the contract, including conditions they may or may not have realized they agreed to, otherwise the must demonstrate how one has already broken the contract.
If you want a relationship you can just walk away from, or believe your parter does, you should not get married.
There were societally beneficial reasons that divorce used to be hard to achieve, and the fickleness of the inconstant moon was one of them, to reference Juliet.
People blindly belueving a machine
> According to reports, the woman asked ChatGPT to interpret the coffee grounds left in her cup — in a lighthearted attempt to mimic traditional fortune-telling
This could just has easily happened with a human fortune teller.
Same as with fortune cookie quips, any "prediction" will be something that sounds deep and intriguing, but always vague enough to be non-falsifiable.
Otherwise, client will come back and confront fortune teller about it. And human one knows it well enough to avoid making an unnecessary headache for themselves.
> He also noted that this wasn’t the first time she had fallen into irrational beliefs. He claimed that in the past, his wife had visited an astrologer, and it took her a year to accept that nothing they said came true.
I don't think the problem here is with AI.
gwern summarizes it appropriately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14867898
The key claims about the film that gwern's argument builds on are false, though. E.g.: "in a setting where there are no genuine consequences to any of this, no genetic engineering, no embryo selection"
It is a rather central part of the story that genetic engineering and embryo selection are routine, and the principal protagonist is noteworthy because his parents did not use such techniques, and he was instead a "faith baby".
gwern is clearly criticizing something, but it's not what is actually portrayed in the film Gattaca.
(My headcanon is that the esoteric story of _Gattaca_ is that none of the supposed embryo selection or valid/invalid screens exist at all, any embryo selection is just ordinary IVF quality control for aneuploidy etc, there is only cheap universal sequencing developed by a totalitarian police state like the CCP (see: Zero COVID testing), and the classification exists to manufacture distinctions and divide families and punish/reward elite supporters; the Freemans were some lower 'wavering' class, grouped with religious minorities, as indicated by their dissenting 'natural' birth, and so they earned a valid vs invalid split within their family. It makes more sense than the actual story, anyway.)
* I've remarked elsewhere that _Gattaca_ is an example of how movies with a message tend to fail by loading the dice too heavily for one side, removing any 'moral dilemma', and it is no exception: we never see any evidence that Vincent is doing anything wrong or that he shouldn't go on the space mission. In fact, given his methodical penetration, high competency, motivation, and extraordinary success at getting into the mission, he shows that he should be selected for his moxie and chutzpah. So what _Gattaca_ should have done was to make the ending Vincent suddenly clutching his heart from the shock, and fade to black.
John Lang did a little video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfD_2fVqEMk
No comments yet
I'm already there personally, it just looks like a rip off
So now, "" it's some of third Popper world frozen unequivalently at a past time.. [slope shaped..] - since then, * IT * self-repeat and decide usurping about us already in such a way.. .
btw elsewhere now it happen [flagged, overtake]. The next ? (.) (modus operandi?) .?