Why are people arguing sentience and not the fact that this is another attempt to completely remove a sector of the workforce the way Covid was the conduit to remove a complete sector of the outside world? This shit is valued at nearly 200 billion dollars
The frustrating thing is, if we bounded the problem correctly as “Techbro wants a catgirl sexbot” we could probably just build the freaking catgirl sexbot for the price of a Corolla and be done with. For the job it has to do, a 486 and some sound clips from anime DVDs could provide sufficient “personality”.
I wonder how much of the quest for The Singularity is that they can’t just ask for that, and instead have to chase something that would, if it delivered on the promises, reshape the entire world, and incidentally also produces the catgirl sexbot.
Of course part of it was that they can leverage the capitalist urge to displace labour as a source of endless funding and status to chase this vision.
If the market wasn’t in an arms race fueled by a bubble and multidimensional greed, I think there’s probably a modest market for a real “treat printer.” Small scale tools that do some things people enjoy about AI products, but likely far more efficient since they can be scoped to actual needs rather than open ended future “I can’t believe it’s not general AI” use cases. A script that generates a new wallpaper each time you log in, randomized bedtime stories or skeletal TTRPG quests, or an endless melody for background noise. I’m sure you can do all those things without a data centre the size of Nunavut.
I’ve seen people try to do these. It’s really bad at it, and I’m not sure how it’s worth it when I can buy an excellent adventure off of Drive-Thru for like 5 bucks.
Even if you are okay stealing from artists, you could just pirate the same books and have access to more great modules than you’d ever have time to run, so I just don’t see this as a viable use case at all.
It’s just not cut out for anything that actually requires creativity.
I agree with your take; all of that is possible. I’m not sure if the average techbro would be satisfied with anything short of godlike powers and infinite imitation affection from their all-powerful mommy bangmaid helpmeets, however, because of the “leaky bucket” issue they already have. I don’t think any single feeemale, no matter how subservient or tireless, could really satisfy the impossible standards and expectations that the toxic side of the anime fandom places upon feeemales to begin with, and then that’s multiplied by “singularity” fever dreams.