Soon people discovered that Meta’s ghoulish posters had been among us for months, even years. There’s Liv, a “Proud black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,” according to its Instagram profile. Add to that Brian, “everybody’s grandpa;” Jade, “your girl for all things hip-hop;” and Carter, a “relationship coach.” I’m sure there are more yet to be discovered.

All four of these posters have pages on both Facebook and Instagram with mirrored content and all four have post histories that go back to September 26, 2023. The accounts have the blue verified check marks and a label indicating that they’re an AI “managed by Meta.” Users can block them on Facebook, but not on Instagram. Users can also message them across all of Meta’s platforms, including WhatsApp.

  • kadup@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I think Zuckerberg fundamentally misunderstands humans. I don’t even mean the memes of calling him a robot or lizzard or whatever, I truly believe being a billionaire in a tech bubble from a young age severely harmed his notion of his own species to the point of being pathological.

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      People don’t seem to realize that powerful people are all the same as us; they eat, they poop, they get dressed, they sleep.

      What they have is widespread recognition and resources, and enough people that listen to them and care about what they do.

      Zuckerburg or Putin or Trump or anyone else in power cannot physically implement everything they want done. It takes lackeys and yes men to carry out their wishes. Sure would be nice if everyone would just be decent and quit listening to them.

    • conicalscientist@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      There’s a whole thing in sports psychology about what happens when you give kids millions of dollars. Not only that but they are the top in the world at what they do. They were raised to believe they are a special breed of human. It’s not just the top pros who get multi-million dollar contracts. It can happen to the kids who don’t even make it pro too. It mindfucks a person.

      I’ve been saying for a long time this kind of thing happens in tech too. I grew up with a lot of guys who’ve made various levels of success in tech from average guy to multi-millionaires. It happens. They really do live in another reality. I don’t think it’s much different between the pro-sports bubble and the tech bubble. They live and breath tech. It’s their whole life. Replace tech with sport. Not much different.

      One notable difference is that sports actually recognizes this phenomenon. It’s a known studied field of psychology. They make an effort to engage athletes in the community and stuff. Things that keep individuals grounded in reality.

      I don’t think such things exists for tech. If anything they believe whatever latest antics they’re up to is what helps the community and helps themselves keep in touch with reality. Because what the world needs is one more world changing app, another bright idea for a startup that is totally making the world a better place and absolutely not strip mining human sanity for profit.

    • ArchRecord@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      It’s what drives most billionaire mentalities: elite projection.

      They think that what they want must be what everyone wants. They believe that what’s best for them is best for everyone as long as they believe it to be morally okay for their own interests.

      For a billionaire that regularly isolates himself from not just society, but also his own company’s employees, having fake profiles where computers do the communication instead of a human, go along and agree with whatever you say, remain eternally unoffensive, and exist solely to increase engagement doesn’t seem like a bad idea, since it seems almost like what he’d want for himself.

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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      I don’t like Zuck, but he did not misunderstand humans. He’s just 2 steps ahead of you. Kids go on https://c.ai/ right now and playfully chat with AI posing as various pop culture characters or professions. While this generation grows up, Zuck will have a portfolio of made up characters ready and waiting for them on FB, where the humans can live their life without ever befriending another real human and sharing everything with Meta, to be monetized.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Any source on any significant amount of children wasting time talking to AIs, or just anecdotes and a bad case of “youth these days”?

        The whole concept smells like fringe NEET 4chan-adjacent behavior. LLMs aren’t capable of maintaining an even remotely convincing simulacrum of human connection, and anyone who would project companionship onto these soulless computer programs obviously has preexisting and severe mental issues (relying on AIs to fill a void in human connection is certainly unhealthy but a symptom, not the root cause).

        The potential market for these AIs will never be any bigger than the market for anime waifu body pillows, because it’s same audience, different decade. Literally everyone else thinks AI girlfriends and body pillow waifus are weird as all hell, and that’s not going to change because neurotypical people want and need human connection and can tell the difference between a rock with googly eyes and a friend.

        Also arguably a rock with googly eyes has more charm and personality than Zuck’s horror show.

        • cyd@lemmy.world
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          LLMs aren’t capable of maintaining an even remotely convincing simulacrum of human connection,

          Eh, maybe, maybe not. 99% of the human-written stuff in IM chats, or posted to social media, is superficial fluff that a fine-tuned LLM should have no problem imitating. It’s still relatively easy to recognize AI models outputs in their default settings, because of their characteristic earnest/helpful tone and writing style, but that’s quite easily adjustable.

          One example worth considering: people are already using fine tuned LLMs to copilot tabletop RPGs, with decent success. In that setting, you don’t need fine literature, just a “good enough” quality of prose. And that is already far exceeding the average quality that you see in social media.

      • kadup@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I’d entertain your theory, but Facebook is pretty much only kept alive by boomers and Mark’s AI multiverse web 3.0 became a commercial failure, so I don’t think your idea that he understands young people and is just ahead of me holds.

      • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        Tobacco company selling cigarettes to kids. More at 11.