Folks suppose AIs are acutely aware. What might this imply for bots in OpenSim?

I’ve been interacting with OpenSim bots — or NPCs — for almost so long as I’ve been overlaying OpenSim. Which is about 15 years. (Oh my God, has it actually been that lengthy?)

I’ve been hoping that OpenSim writing would turn out to be by day job, however, sadly, OpenSim by no means actually took off. As a substitute, I lined cybersecurity and, extra just lately, generative AI.

However then I noticed some reporting a couple of new research about AI, and instantly thought — this might actually be one thing in OpenSim.

The examine was printed this previous April within the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, and it confirmed {that a} majority of individuals – 67% to be actual – attribute some extent of consciousness to ChatGPT. And the extra individuals use these AI methods, the extra probably they’re to see them as acutely aware entities.

Then, in Could, another study confirmed that 54% of individuals, after a dialog with ChatGPT, thought it was an actual particular person.

Now, I’m not saying that OpenSim grid house owners ought to run out and set up a bunch of bots on their grids that faux to be actual individuals, with a view to lure in additional customers. That may be dumb, costly, a waste of sources, probably unlawful and undoubtedly unethical.

But when customers knew that these bots had been powered by AI and understood that they’re not actual individuals, they may nonetheless get pleasure from interacting with them and develop attachments to them — similar to we get connected to manufacturers, or cartoon animals, or characters in a novel. Or, sure, digital girlfriends or boyfriends.

Within the video beneath, you possibly can see OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o presentation. Yup, the one the place ChatGPT sounds suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson in “Her.” I’ve set it to begin on the level within the video the place they’re speaking to her.

I can see why ScarJo received upset — and why that specific voice is now not obtainable as an choice.

Now, as I write this, the voice chatbot they’re demonstrating isn’t broadly obtainable but. However the textual content model is — and its the textual content interface that’s commonest in OpenSim anyway.

GPT-4o does value cash. It costs money to send it a question and to get a response. One million tokens price of questions — or 750,000 phrases — prices $5, and 1,000,000 token’s price of response prices $15.

A web page of textual content is roughly 250 phrases, so 1,000,000 tokens is about 3,000 pages. So, for $20, you will get lots of back-and-forth. However there are additionally cheaper platforms.

Anthropic’s Claude, for instance, which has examined higher than ChatGPT in some benchmarks, costs a bit less — $3 for 1,000,000 enter tokens, and $15 for 1,000,000 output tokens.

However there are additionally free, open-source platforms that you simply run by yourself servers with comparable efficiency ranges. For instance, on the LMSYS Chatbot Enviornment Leaderboard, OpenAI’s GPT-4o in in first place with a rating of 1287, Claude 3.5 Sonnet is shut behind with 1272, and the (principally) open supply Llama 3 from Meta just isn’t too far distant, with a rating of 1207 — and there are a number of different open supply AI platforms on the high of the charts, together with Google’s Gemma, NVIDIA’s Nemotron, Cohere’s Command R+, Alibaba’s Qwen2, and Mistral.

I can simply see an OpenSim internet hosting supplier including an AI service to their package deal offers.

(Picture by Maria Korolov through Adobe Firefly.)

Think about the potential for creating actually immersive experiences in OpenSim and different digital environments. If customers are predisposed to see AI entities as acutely aware, we might create non-player characters that really feel extremely actual and responsive.

This might revolutionize storytelling, training, and social interactions in digital areas.

We might have bots that customers can kind significant relationships with, AI-driven characters that may adapt to particular person consumer preferences, and digital environments that really feel alive and dynamic.

After which there’s the potential for interactive storytelling and video games, with quests and narratives which might be extra participating than ever earlier than, create digital assistants that really feel like true companions, and even construct communities that blur the strains between AI and human contributors.

For these utilizing OpenSim for work, there are additionally purposes right here for enterprise and training, within the type of AI tutors, AI govt assistants, AI gross sales brokers, and extra.

Nevertheless, as a lot as I’m thrilled by these potentialities, I can’t assist however really feel a twinge of concern.

Because the examine authors level out, there are some dangers to AIs that really feel actual.

First, there’s the chance of emotional attachment. If customers begin to view AI entities as acutely aware beings, they may kind deep, probably unhealthy bonds with these digital characters. This might result in a spread of points, from social isolation in the true world to emotional misery if these AI entities are altered or eliminated.

We’re already seeing that, with individuals feeling actual misery when their digital girlfriends are turned off.

Then there’s the query of blurred actuality. As the road between AI and human interactions turns into much less clear, customers would possibly battle to differentiate between the 2.

Personally, I’m not too involved about this one. We’ve had individuals complaining that different individuals couldn’t inform fantasy from actuality for the reason that days of Don Quixote. Most likely even earlier. There have been in all probability cave individuals sitting round, saying, “Take a look at the younger individuals with all their cave work. They might be out truly looking, and as a substitute they sit across the cave trying on the work.”

And even earlier, when language was invented. “Take a look at these younger individuals, sitting round speaking about looking, as a substitute of going on the market into the jungle and catching one thing.”

When films had been first invented, when individuals began getting “addicted” to tv, or video video games… we’ve all the time had ethical panics about new media.

The factor is, these ethical panics had been additionally, to some extent, justified. Possibly the pulp novels that the printing press gave us didn’t rot our brains. However Mao’s Little Purple E-book, the Communist Manifesto, that factor that Hitler wrote that I don’t even was aided and abetted by the books they wrote.

In order that’s what I’m most apprehensive about — the potential for exploitation. Dangerous actors might misuse our tendency to anthropomorphize AI, creating misleading or manipulative experiences that benefit from customers’ emotional connections and make them be extra tolerant of evil.

However I don’t suppose that’s one thing that we, in OpenSim, have to fret about. Our platform doesn’t have the sort of attain it could take to create a brand new dictator!

I feel the worst that will occur is that folks would possibly get so engaged that they spend a number of {dollars} greater than they deliberate to spend.