Mathilde

In what way does talking with an AI companion differ from talking with a friend or family member?

One key difference is that the large language models that form the backbone of these companions tend to be sycophantic, giving users their preferred answers. The chatbot learns more about the user’s preferences with each interaction and responds... See more

AI companions: Character.AI, Nomi, and Replika.

Nina Vasan, MD, MBA, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine.

Though some of the products like Folo, Grok, and BubblePal promised to be for teens, the marketing photos designed to sell the product showed photographs of 4-and 5-year olds playing with a teddy bear. Folo, in particular promises: “My first AI friend who listens and grows.”

AI toys are already flooding the market and they are BIG business. A Newsweek article from mid-November estimates that this is a 34 billion dollar business!

This is where our thinking about education feels strangely outdated. We still talk about it as preparation for the labor market. As if the point is to produce workers who can compete economically. But that frame starts to wobble the moment machines take over most cognitive labor.

If machines do the work, what remains is not work. What remains is... See more

Consumption of video podcasts is growing 20x faster than audio-only podcasts, while over 50% of the top shows now release video versions.

Thompson cites an FTC filing that sums it up well:

Only a fraction of time spent on Meta’s services—7% on Instagram, 17% on Facebook—involves consuming content from online “friends” (“friend sharing”). A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short-form videos that are “unconnected”—i.e., not from a friend or followed

... See more

From “You Should” to “Let’s Notice”