Wow. I was... kind of expecting that the headline was a bit sensationalised, and it would be more around gaps in the safeguards, but, no, wow, there's a rule giving it affirmative permission to do that, what the hell Facebook.
Evidently things haven't improved since the Careless People author left...
I was listening to a podcast the other day where Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed about Gen AI, and his take on Gen AI is that it will make the Internet a lot funnier[1].
I guess he finds this funny.
Edit:
Also, it looks like this was originally deliberate:
> Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said that after receiving questions earlier this month from Reuters, the company removed portions which stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children.
Reminds me of a conversation I had recently about the alcohol industry. It's not so bad if your local crappy bar markets to local underage college kids. But when sketchy tactics exist and are allowed at the scale of the biggest companies in the world, you've got problems.
Actually, sketchy tech/social media/AI tactics towards youth are more comparable to "lets get kids addicted so they become lifelong customers" than I ever realized before.
After reading Careless People, I would be more surprised if Meta was _not_ doing these things. The company is amoral/immoral in the truest "responsibility to shareholders" (number go up) way. It needs to be made to lose everything.
Reality is ugly? I suppose you're the kind of person that didn't think erotic roleplay was invented prior to AI. The real kicker is, I'll bet any amount of money that Apple and Microsoft held this same conversation and ended up with the same results.
Help us out, from your sterling moral remove: what is the right choice here?
Well, I mean, there is the option of, hear me out here, just not allowing the chatbots to do 'erotic roleplay' with children. That would, er, seem like the fairly obvious option to most reasonable people, I would think. Facebook appears to have instead opted to affirmatively permit it (though note that they reversed course on this once called out on it).
The fuck is wrong with you? In what universe does a corporation sit down to create guidelines of specifically what they consider to be ok behaviour and as one of their examples they write down trying to seduce children and you turn around and ask what is the problem.
Readit News
Evidently things haven't improved since the Careless People author left...
I guess he finds this funny.
Edit:
Also, it looks like this was originally deliberate:
> Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said that after receiving questions earlier this month from Reuters, the company removed portions which stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children.
[1] https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-2
Actually, sketchy tech/social media/AI tactics towards youth are more comparable to "lets get kids addicted so they become lifelong customers" than I ever realized before.
Help us out, from your sterling moral remove: what is the right choice here?
Can we not stick to coding stuff I know you folks aren't making profits, but please try to think about the consequences dammit.
Edit: I don't like AI code but atleast it can't harm anyone if we have decent guardrails.
Are you sure about that?