Random Thought #106: Nice Bots (AI Therapists)

There’s this weird trend that I don’t fully get on the internet. It’s a trend of making “nice bots” that make generic uplifting comments. Like most recently, “it’s wonderful seeing someone being comfortable just being themself!” It was on a video of a guy talking about Pokémon, which I guess kinda fits with the subject matter – someone being comfortable discussing their childhood passions. But still, an incredibly generic comic that doesn’t actually address the video. So I look for the other telltale signs, like the fact they tend to have pretty girls for their profile picture and normally have been created within the last few days, if not that very day. And of course, these were both true about this commenter. So, obviously, it’s a bot.

What I don’t get about this particular “scam” is that I don’t really see the purpose. Typically, the internet is a place where you upload all your demons you’re not allowed to express in real life. So it’s common to see people go on & rage-bait others, just because they wanna see the world burn, but they have to settle for seeing the virtual world go up in a flame war instead. And that’s the thing, faceless bots that inspire rage serve that purpose. They want you to be mad because they don’t care about you, so they’ll send faceless messengers to do their dirty work for them. But that logic doesn’t really work in reverse.

If you’re making bots in an attempt to spread kindness, you’ve failed before you’ve even begun. Hollow words can’t hold kindness. You might trick a few suckers into thinking someone actually cares about them. But the matter of the fact is that no one real does if the only one who tells you they care doesn’t even know your heart is even there. And once they realize those words haven’t come from another heart, just a bunch of 1s & 0s, then they’ll feel even more hollow than before for believing in words that never actually believed them.

Therapy That Actually Cares About “Me” Nö Matter Whö I Am Really

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