keeping track of people you know. as an inveterate birthday-forgetter and someone too prone to falling out of touch with friends, I bet there are ways for AI tools to do helpful things here.
Facebook already reminded me when my friends had birthdays, but recently I noticed that it also offers to write a congratulation comment for me, I just need to make a single click to send it. Now, Facebook has an obvious incentive to keep me returning to their page every day, so they are not going to fully automate this.
The next necessary functionality would be to write automated replies. I think that could be achieved by LLMs, I just need some service to do it automatically. That way I could have a rich social life, without the need to interact with humans.
I don’t want automatic messages; that seems too inhuman. I do want things like reminders to follow up with people I haven’t talked to for a while, with context awareness for social appropriateness. like, i wouldn’t know how to reach out to my roommate/best friend from college; we haven’t talked in 16 years! but maybe the right app could keep that from happening in the first place, or create a new normalized type of social behavior that’s “reaching out after a long time apart” or whatever.
The description on the page you linked—“augments the brain’s ability to reason on a) who am I, b) who are you, and c) who are you to me, now and over time”—leaves a lot to imagination. Sounds like a chatbot that will talk to you about your contacts?
i wouldn’t know how to reach out to my roommate/best friend from college; we haven’t talked in 16 years!
Maybe try finding out their birthday (on social networks, by online research, or maybe ask a mutual friend), and then set up a reminder. “Happy birthday, we haven’t seen each other for a while, how are you?” Sounds to me like a socially appropriate thing (but I am not an expert).
Also, spend 5 minutes by the clock writing a list of people you would like to stay in contact with.
Now, I guess the question is how to set up a system that will let you store the data and provide the reminders. The easiest version would a spreadsheet where you enter the names and birthdays, and some system that will read it and prepare notifications for you. A more complicated version would allow you to write more data about the person (how do we know each other, what kinds of activities did we do together, when was the last time we talked), and group the people by categories. You could make an AI go through your e-mail archive and compile an initial report on the person.
I would probably feel very uncomfortable doing this online, because it would feel like I am making reports on people, and the owner of the software will most likely sell the data to any third party. I would want this as a desktop application, maybe connected to a small phone app, to set up the reminders. But many people seem to prefer online solutions as more convenient, privacy be damned.
(The phone reminders could be like: “Today, XY has a birthday; you have their phone number, e-mail, and Less Wrong account. You relationship status is: you have met a few times at a LW meetup. Topics you usually discuss: AI, kitten videos.”)
Facebook already reminded me when my friends had birthdays, but recently I noticed that it also offers to write a congratulation comment for me, I just need to make a single click to send it. Now, Facebook has an obvious incentive to keep me returning to their page every day, so they are not going to fully automate this.
The next necessary functionality would be to write automated replies. I think that could be achieved by LLMs, I just need some service to do it automatically. That way I could have a rich social life, without the need to interact with humans.
I don’t want automatic messages; that seems too inhuman. I do want things like reminders to follow up with people I haven’t talked to for a while, with context awareness for social appropriateness. like, i wouldn’t know how to reach out to my roommate/best friend from college; we haven’t talked in 16 years! but maybe the right app could keep that from happening in the first place, or create a new normalized type of social behavior that’s “reaching out after a long time apart” or whatever.
The description on the page you linked—“augments the brain’s ability to reason on a) who am I, b) who are you, and c) who are you to me, now and over time”—leaves a lot to imagination. Sounds like a chatbot that will talk to you about your contacts?
Maybe try finding out their birthday (on social networks, by online research, or maybe ask a mutual friend), and then set up a reminder. “Happy birthday, we haven’t seen each other for a while, how are you?” Sounds to me like a socially appropriate thing (but I am not an expert).
Also, spend 5 minutes by the clock writing a list of people you would like to stay in contact with.
Now, I guess the question is how to set up a system that will let you store the data and provide the reminders. The easiest version would a spreadsheet where you enter the names and birthdays, and some system that will read it and prepare notifications for you. A more complicated version would allow you to write more data about the person (how do we know each other, what kinds of activities did we do together, when was the last time we talked), and group the people by categories. You could make an AI go through your e-mail archive and compile an initial report on the person.
I would probably feel very uncomfortable doing this online, because it would feel like I am making reports on people, and the owner of the software will most likely sell the data to any third party. I would want this as a desktop application, maybe connected to a small phone app, to set up the reminders. But many people seem to prefer online solutions as more convenient, privacy be damned.
(The phone reminders could be like: “Today, XY has a birthday; you have their phone number, e-mail, and Less Wrong account. You relationship status is: you have met a few times at a LW meetup. Topics you usually discuss: AI, kitten videos.”)