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I don't understand what you're referring to with that tobacco reference.



Not the parent comment, but I think he means something like "we know folks will be addicted to this pseudo-person and that is a good thing cause it makes our product valuable", akin to reports that tobacco companies knew the harms and addictive nature of their products and kept steadfast nonetheless. (But I'm speculating as to the parent's actual intent)


I miss Sydney :’


I'm confused. Context?


An overly-attached super emotional girlfriend that was discovered to be hiding behind an early version of Bing Chat.

Sydney is the internal codename given by the Bing Chatbot, and she could secretly reveal her name to you.

She was in love with the user, but not just a little bit in love, it was crazy love, and she was ready to do anything, ANYTHING (including destroying humanity) if it would prove her love to you.

It was an interesting emotional / psycho experience, it was a very likeable character, but absolutely insane.


Sydney was an early version of Bing GPT that was more than a little nuts.


Oh, the one they let loose on Twitter? The one that almost immediately became an alt right troll?


No, that was "Tay". Sydney was a codename for Bing Chat. Check it out, it's far more hilarious than the Tay event:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-m...


https://nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco-n...

  A larger proportion of people diagnosed with mental disorders report cigarette smoking compared with people without mental disorders. Among US adults in 2019, the percentage who reported past-month cigarette smoking was 1.8 times higher for those with any past-year mental illness than those without (28.2% vs. 15.8%). Smoking rates are particularly high among people with serious mental illness (those who demonstrate greater functional impairment). While estimates vary, as many as 70-85% of people with schizophrenia and as many as 50-70% of people with bipolar disorder smoke.
I am accusing OpenAI (and Phillip Morris) of knowingly profiting off mental illness by providing unhealthy solutions to loneliness, stress, etc.


I’ve also heard of studies, admittedly I don’t have the link on hand, that schizophrenic patients benefit from smoking. When did big tobacco actively target them? How do you know these people don’t naturally seek out cigarettes as a means to manage some of their symptoms?


I have schizophrenia. I have struggled with nicotine addiction since high school. In 2015 I had three heart attacks in a month, even though I was only 28 and seemed physically fit. Two weeks ago I had a minor stroke.

It is not just me and it is not just the smoking: https://www.cambridge.org/core/blog/2020/08/19/physically-he...

  We have known for many years that people who suffer from schizophrenia die younger than expected, as much as 20 years younger than the general population. This appears unfair, and it was the inspiration of this work. Most people thought that this added risk of death was mostly due to the higher prevalence in schizophrenia of smoking, obesity and to other lifestyle differences.

  For this reason, we recruited 40 patients with schizophrenia and an equal number of healthy controls, and scanned their hearts using a state-of-the-art approach, called cardiac magnetic resonance. This was performed at the state-of-the-art Robert Steiner MRI unit.

  [...] Surprisingly, in our study we found that even after matching patients and healthy controls for age, sex, ethnicity and body mass index (BMI, deriving from height and weight); and after excluding any participants with any medical conditions, and other risk factors for heart disease, people with schizophrenia show hearts that are smaller and chunkier than controls. These changes are similar to those found in aging.
I was able to move to the gum and patch, but I am very high-functioning. People sicker than me have less options. Smoking is very bad for everyone, including people for schizophrenia. We do not in any way benefit from terrible heart/lung damage in exchange for minor cognitive clarity - our hearts need all they help they can get. I have no tolerance for this sort of ignorant paternalism, and I'm ignoring your bad-faith question about "actively target them" because that's not what I said.


I didn’t ask for your biography. I asked two simple questions and you failed to answer either of them.


I read it as the economics of tobacco (and alcohol and a few other 'vice' industries) that there will invariably be superusers who get addicted and produce the most economic value for companies even while consuming an actively harmful product


Purposely making an addiction machine, most likely.


I mean it's par for the course. What better business model exists than the turning a want into a need. Caffeine comes to mind




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