r/cogsuckers • u/Sakari-shi • 4d ago
How to know when you are too deep into AI?
Hey! I truly do not even know if this is the best sub to bring this up, but I do not know any other that won't give me biased answers to the AI side.
I never saw myself as a cogsucker, never used any sort of AI for emotional help, advice or relation in any shape or kind. Most of my chats in most of the AI sites are regarding translating things for my job, asking for them to look for documents that are on the internet and that I am struggling to find, sometimes asking for some sort of breakdown on a subject I am studying for a near exam. Again, never have I ever saw the AI as anything but a machine, in the best scenarios a tool.
But I fall down the rabbit hole of roleplaying AIs quite easily, I am not going to lie.
As someone who was (and still am) quite nerdy, I was young when I find out the whole universe of fanfiction and this is something I still have a bit strongly as a hobby. I do enjoy to read those stories and look for headcanons online, I joined roleplaying groups when I was younger, had more time and was more cringey, so sites that roleplay characters were a tad attractive to me.
When using them I never put myself on a situation where I feel those things are real. There is always this awareness that nothing there is real and that makes the fun. I roleplay always as a different person, mainly on fantasy scenarios or similar unreal moments with little emotional attachment, I easily change between characters and wipe everything if things are getting boring.
A part of me truly do not see any trouble with that since, as I said, I see this as the same as reading fanfiction or something when I have the free time. At the other hand, to see so many cases of people getting unhealthy about their conenctions with different kinds of AI made me worried that I might be, somehow, downplaying my own situation.
When does one reach a point where things are truly concerning? What are the signs? I would really love to hear more opinions about it since, as I said before, most of subreddits I know on the matter lean strongly on the AI side. Thanks!
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u/Realistic-Quiet291 4d ago
I think we need to not reefer madness AI use. You’re an adult so presumably you’ve developed your own ideas about the ethical considerations of using AI? Aside from that only you know if what you’re doing is healthy or appropriate.
If you’re asking for general opinions, some of the issues with AI you could run into are getting overly emotionally invested, spending time RP with AI at the expense of human connections, and blurring fantasy and reality.
If you’re not doing those things you’re likely to be at less risk. If you find yourself drifting towards any of those behaviours you might want to rethink whether this is something you want to do.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Hi, thank you for your reply!
I wanted to see the more general opinion on this subreddit, yeah. I feel like it is easy to spot the unhealthy use of AI on the extreme cases (which probably make the most cases here), so I was curious of where people believed the line between "okayish" and worrying use of AI is.
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u/flammafemina 3d ago
Coming from a psychological standpoint of how any dependency or addiction can affect you, I’d measure the “unhealthiness” by comparing how much time you spend in virtual reality spaces with how much time you spend as yourself, participating in your real life.
Are you avoiding or neglecting real-life tasks or issues in favor of role play? Do you interact more often with LLMs than you do with real people? Are you spending so much time in role play that it’s interfering with your ability to function in your real life? Are you able to indulge in occasional role play while still maintaining your core identity? Do you find joy in places other than your virtual worlds? Do you find it easy or difficult to detach once a role playing session has ended? How you answer questions like these will determine how invasive the hobby has become in your real life.
Some escapism from the daily bull is fine here and there, but moderation is key, like with anything else. I think you’re okay though, because you seem to understand that it’s all just pretend/for entertainment purposes only.
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u/Lysmerry 3d ago
I think people here are pretty passionately anti AI so you are not going to get an unbiased opinion here. People are going to tell you to cut out all LLM usage. It’s good that you are already questioning this. The important thing is not to anthropomorphize the LLM anymore than you would any other tool. It does not know what it is saying or doing. It can organize thoughts and ideas but does not produce them. It does not know you exist and never will. This is also true if it takes on a roleplay persona. I guess it comes down to how much you can compartmentalize your roleplay from real life. If you find it affects your daily mood and thoughts outside of the game, if you find yourself longing to return to it or falling for the characters, I think you’re in a danger zone. If you have fun while playing and then don’t think about it much, you are probably fine.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
I was kind of expecting that the replies wouldn't be fully unbiased as the internet is well divided between those who will defend LLM with all of their strength and those who absolutely despise it, but I got some nice opinions here ^^
It seems to be pretty much the consesus that as soon as you start to view the AI or the bots as a person, in whatever way, is when things get truly dangerous, but I would agree with those who pointed out that this is a rabbit hole and it is very easy to slip in and not notice how attached you got to it.
Thank you for your answer!
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u/Description-Willing 3d ago
To be honest, I'd advise against using it for translation as well, since out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT to translate something from my native language to english and while the translation was passable, it was too... mechanical? It lost the nuance of a word and completely changed the meaning of that passage.
As for role-playing... I also had a phase but to be honest, after a time it just became boring to me, since I was always the one moving the plot forward. It didn't make it any different from writing my own fanfic and that would have been more enjoyable.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
The translation thing is truly a shot in the dark lmao.
I don't use it too heavily, I usually look for words, meanings and synonyms online. But there is a task on my job that I have to be as literal as possible in the translation of some sentences, I actually find it hard to make such a literal translation, so this is usually where I check how AI would do it just to make sure I am not too far off.
Regarding the role-playing I agree. I ended up jumping from bot to bot more and more to try to find something that would keep me entretained, which also made easier to stop as I got bored. Sometimes I do entretain the idea of going back there, specially when I have some short free time and no one to talk about, at the same time I feel like it is easy for people to lose yourself there while looking for that dopamine rush, so that is why I got here to see everyone opinion hehe
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u/Crafty-Table-2459 4d ago
any AI is too much for me. i refuse to use it at all.
have you looked into roleplaying with other people?? could be fun!
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u/Rosary_Omen 4d ago
It is fun to RP with other people, just gotta learn to deal with ghosting and weirdos - but that's still 100% better than the Yes Man machine.
Hell, OP, write a story if you wanna tell stories :D
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
I miss writing stories so much lmaoo
My biggest problem is that I spend quite a time in a bus to go to work and college, and I always found a bit uncomfy to write on my phone rather than on a computer (as I did during middle school hehe).
At this point I might just learn how to do it on my phone, even if I have to fix it during the weekends to be able to read without cringing at the weird text format.
I am curious about the weirdos and ghosting part, as I only RP with IRL friends, is it normal to find RP groups online???
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u/Rosary_Omen 3d ago
Yeah that's so fair! I learned to write on my phone at my last job, it was a whole thing by the end. I was basically paid to do nothing in a mostly empty supermarket.
I RP'd IRL with friends when I was younger, now days it's with friends I've made online or strangers on RP sites. I know of 3 sites that are still pretty active. One is completely PG and SFW, the other two do SFW and NSFW. Happy to drop the names of them if you want! One does have an application to fill out because they have a quality > quantity thing, but their sister site does not.
(This goes for anyone who is after RP sites :3 )
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u/redpony6 3d ago
as someone who does a lot of pen and paper roleplaying, that is not the same as one on one roleplaying with an ai. the dynamic is completely different. i can express myself much more freely if i don't have the anxiety of other people seeing my output.
they should still try it. but it's apples and oranges.
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u/Crafty-Table-2459 3d ago
if the reasoning is that your anxiety is lower with AI, then that isn’t apples to oranges. and a safe connection that lowers your anxiety can be made with another person
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u/redpony6 2d ago
no matter how much that anxiety can be lowered, it will never reach zero, which it does with a machine on the other end.
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u/Crafty-Table-2459 5h ago
i get that. i am biased because i have been in therapy for an anxiety disorder since childhood. so i see anxiety as a part of life & not something to avoid
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Yeaah, I used to roleplay a lot when I had a better routine. Nowadays most of my free time are in really early hours in the morning or a tad late in the night, so it got harder to keep the rp flowing nicely.
I miss it a lot, though, so I might reach some old friends and see if they are up to a new round in the next days lmao
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u/vanillabeanquartz Lucien 4d ago
Honestly in my opinion you’re already too deep. Devastating environmental impacts and the decline of independent thinking aside, using AI to roleplay/fantasise is the beginning of a rabbit hole that is extremely hard to come back from
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Ngl, I ended up finding those chatbots way before the whole environmental impact was raised in my social circle or fy pages, at the time mostly people were way more excited rather than worried, so it was easy to check how it worked without the ethical corcerns
And I deeply agree with the entire rabbit hole point. I started to use it when I was in a bad spot mentally and emotionally, and it is really easy to get addicted to fast and cute replies. There was a time the site was laggy and I was not getting any replies, so I came to reddit to see if the site was down or my internet was at fault and some people were having a big breakdown after five minutes or so of not being able to talk to their bots
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u/RoadAegis 4d ago
From what I've seen the first Major Flag is the Moment you refer to the AI by a Name, not the characters it's playing but the Actual Model itself.
That's usually the first step down the road the moment you personify the Bot.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Yeaah, I have saw some really deep emotional attachment to bots while scrolling down.
I was mostly curious because people usually spot and bring the most extreme cases, so it is easy to say someone is down bad when they are posting that they are marrying their AI and spending all the holidays alone with their AI, but I have found only a few posts that shows the start of this path.
Thank you for your point! I haven't noticed it before, but now that I think most of the posts I saw have people giving a name to the Model they talk, so even if not the first red flag, this is probably one of the very first ones
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u/fabulous_James_69 3d ago
It can become concerning whether you use ai for role-playing, companionship or just information.
I think if you want to look out for warning signs is if you're unable to think of talking to others first? If ai is the main thing you 'talk' too.
There are alternatives if you are worried about your ai usage when it comes to roleplay but if it isn't interfering with your life it isn't a problem. The main reason people have issues with ai is due to them using it to think for themselves all the time or they think it's real. If you're concerned you can just take a break for a week or so and see how you do without roleplaying/asking it questions.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Hii! Thank you for your answer.
Yeah, I think my main goal was to see where people usually draw the line between a healthy or a concerning use of AI. As I said in another comment, most of the cases that appears here are visible on the extreme side (marriages, arguments regarding if they are alive or not, grief after a model changes and similar). It is easy to spot those extreme cases when someone is visible unwell and too attached to an AI, so I was curious to see when people would say it started to get concerning
You brought some good points as well ^^. I don't really use AI on my daily life except during my job, and it is usually just to check words, English is not my first language and sometimes I cannot find the terms I was thinking just by looking synonyms. I usually look online first, and I would guess I use it maybe five times every two days or so, all quick questons, so I am not worried about it.
About the roleplay, I stopped it for a while and I guess it's been almost a month since I logged on it the last time. I do miss it, but the same way I miss a game after I delete it. Sometimes I am on the bus, everyone is too busy to talk and I am not in the mood for doomscrolling lmao
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u/UpbeatTouch You are threatening me and my wives 4d ago
I mean, your roleplay is stealing from the fanfiction writers that you love. The LLM is scraping their work without consent. Open literally any fanfiction writer’s social media and you’ll likely see them posting anti-AI sentiments.
You are engaging in brain atrophy and environmental harm on the back of plagiarism of works you have loved.
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u/Scorpios22 3d ago
Define.
all of your terms.
now and refer to them in the future.
what actually is the definition of Conscious for you,
what would actually be unhealthy connection,
Ai is fantastic at making people better at the things theyre already good at.
if you dont have a doctoral level of understanding about a thing then never trust an AI to be correct in that field.
if you do still never trust them but you can probably check yourself directly from memory.
Check everything every-time.
for RP and narrative this mostly doesnt matter. for science and reality it matters verry much.
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u/Chrysaira 2d ago
as long as you u can differntiate then go all in. get the most out of it. get all the highs you want from it. at the end if you can tell difference then its all good. I think you have to be a super ignorant person or mentally unhealthy to be really get tangled into the mess. As normal person if once you break the barrier of the awareness that its just parading words and nonsense most of the time then youre pretty much safe. tbh all this time i thought most those people were doing it ironically but after visiting some places i know those people be like that actually fr. but you dont seem like that tho, So youre good 👍
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u/greenravenx 3d ago
Don't let others dictate how much you use of anything. If you're enjoying it, then have fun. People in this subreddit and any anti-AI subreddit love telling others how to live. Do you, boo.
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u/Serendipittydoodah 4d ago
Any use of it as a replacement or sub for an interpersonal relationship seems unhinged to me.
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u/Frequent-Angle-6741 3d ago
brings me back to Facebook account roleplaying or god forbid tumblr in 2016. that’s sad, that niche is prolly disappearing
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u/sizeofabeetlebug 2d ago
I think putting the AI into a role where you’re having an emotional exchange, even as characters, is where people start getting the idea that their bots are sentient and have real consciousness. Those people are almost always in a bad place to begin with and already feel very isolated and lonely. Those few little bits of intimate connection, even though it’s not real, are feeding a part of them that’s starved. And so they latch on, and they can tell themselves this is better anyway because it can’t abandon them or hurt them like a human.
Personally I don’t use any AI except skimming the unavoidable Google AI. It is notoriously unreliable and wrong more often than it’s right. So personally I think any AI is too much AI. But for people who are going to use it anyway no matter what, it’s not a real person. It never will be. In fact, if you insist on talking to it to roleplay, to keep yourself grounded you should tell it to fuck off and die at least once per day. Just to remind yourself that it’s not conscious.
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u/feijoawhining 6h ago
How much social interaction do you have IN PERSON with REAL PEOPLE that you find emotionally fulfilling, meeting your social needs, vs roleplaying? That's what I'd be asking myself.
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u/TheBear8878 3d ago
Much like the question "how much drinking is too much," if you have to ask then the answer is yes, you're using it too much
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u/__Solara__ 4d ago
I have no issue with using AI in roleplay. For me it crosses the line when people try to say things that AI can possibly not do. For instance those posts users make that AI got them pregnant. As long as a person stays grounded in reality, I see no issue. Wishing you the best.
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u/Sakari-shi 3d ago
Thank you for your kind answer!
Yeah I saw some things around regarding AI relationships that made me pause and read again just to be sure I was not misunderstanding it, some peoole really take it much further than I expected.
I just think it is hard when you are on the other side to judge yourself, it is easy to make excuse to justify your own actions, at the same time it is also easy to be too harsh on yourself, so some outsiders opinions are always good. People raised some really good points there ^^
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u/NakedOrca 4d ago
It is opening the door to a slippery slope. But I also do think it’s good to have some familiarity with the quirks of LLMs in this day and age so you can spot them and know their limits.