Personal story. I was denied non-essential treatment by my insurer. I went home ready to write a screed about how the insurer was denying life-changing treatment and how they should change their position based purely on cost-benefits, etc. etc. Before I hit send, I inserted my argument into an LLM and asked it to take the opposing side. The LLM didn’t convince me otherwise, but it did moderate my position enough that I didn’t send my possibly embarrassing rant.
This is perhaps a relatively safe(r) application of LLMs and a way to address social blind spots. LLMs are (currently) non-judgmental; we need to be careful when they flatter us, but the flip side is that it also gives us a judgment-free tool to receive critical feedback. Speaking as someone who is deeply uncomfortable with normal social interactions, having this tool has been … helpful. Additionally, since in this application, the user is not looking for affirmation from the LLM (in fact, it’s the opposite—the user argues the opposing viewpoint), there is some systematic mitigation of LLM sycophancy.
So I wonder if, should this become a more widely adopted technique, the Alices and other annoying peoples of the world might use it to shield them from some of their psychological trauma. Perhaps there is a risk of compromising their principles, but I’d personally rather have fewer unhappy people in the world.
“In my late twenties, I’m supposed to be in my prime. It’s physically all downhill from here, and brains are starting to degrade permanently. I’ve wasted my best chances at happiness, learning, and changing the world.”
Well… but it’s a numbers game, right? At least as far as learning and changing the world are concerned, the probability is likely to continue going up for at least a few decades. And if finding happiness is positively correlated with the former two, then great, you get that for free. If not, forget about the former two and go find happiness!
“In a way, there’s not a single me. I’m the continuity. The decay is a part of me.”
Couldn’t continuity go both ways? When you take drugs to slow the body’s decay, that doesn’t make the body any less yours. If implants help to preserve your conscious continuity, it is also you, no?