Outsourcing emotion: The horror of Google’s “Dear Sydney” AI ad | The company suggests using AI to write a child’s fan letter and the ad is so bad that Google turned off comments for it on YouTube
Opinion: "Help my daughter write a letter" is not the same as "Help me with boring busywork."
If you've watched any Olympics coverage this week, you've likely been confronted with an ad for Google's Gemini AI called "Dear Sydney." In it, a proud father seeks help writing a letter on behalf of his daughter, who is an aspiring runner and superfan of world-record-holding hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
"I'm pretty good with words, but this has to be just right," the father intones before asking Gemini to "Help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is..." Gemini dutifully responds with a draft letter in which the LLM tells the runner, on behalf of the daughter, that she wants to be "just like you."
I think the most offensive thing about the ad is what it implies about the kinds of human tasks Google sees AI replacing. Rather than using LLMs to automate tedious busywork or difficult research questions, "Dear Sydney" presents a world where Gemini can help us offload a heartwarming shared moment of connection with our children.
Inserting Gemini into a child's heartfelt request for parental help makes it seem like the parent in question is offloading their responsibilities to a computer in the coldest, most sterile way possible. More than that, it comes across as an attempt to avoid an opportunity to bond with a child over a shared interest in a creative way.
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189 comments
Being a non native English speaker this is actually one of the better uses of LLMs for me. When I need to write in "fancier" English I ask LLMs and use it as an initial point (sometimes end up doing heavy modifications sometimes light). I mean this is one of the more logical uses of LLM, it is good at languages (unlike trying to get it to solve math problems).
And I dont agree with the pov that just because you use LLM output to find a good starting point it stops being personal.
Well, if you get anywhere with that fake facade, then it will catch up to you.
Better start reading nicely written English books while doing this...
I have been reading English books of all kinds for the better part of the last 30 years. Understanding languages is fine but utilising in an impressive and complex way simply does not come very easily to me.
Learning to use the tools available to you is not "fake" it's being smart. Anyone who would be like "oh you recognize your weak point and have found and used a tool effectively to minimize it...you're fired/get out of my life" is an asshole and an idiot.
If you use binggpt as a translator tool, and put a disclaimer that these are not your own words - kudos, you removed the need for a translator and the latency associated.
However, if you claim that you speak English and use this tool to create a false impression of proficiency, that is just usual lying.
Furthermore, lacking proficiency in any language and using a tool to "beautify" a paragraph in said language will generally fail to improve communication, because chatgpt is trying to infer and add information which just isnt there (details, connotations, phraseologisms). Will just add more garbage to the conversation, and most likely words and meanings that just arent yours.
It's fine. Eventually when people start using this crap en masse the people on the other end will just be using LLMs to distill the bullshit down to 3 key points anyway.
That would be bizarre, lol
Let’s say one person writes 3 pages with some key points, then another extracts modified points due to added llm garbage then sends them again in 2 page essay to someone else and they again extract modified points. Original message was long gone and failure to communicate occurred but bots talk to each other so to say further producing even more garbage
In the end we are drowning in humongous pile of generated garbage and no one can effectively communicate anymore
The funny thing is this is mostly true without LLMs or other bots. People and institutions cant communicate because of leviathan amounts of legalese, say-literally-nothing-but-hide-it-in-a-mountain-of-bullshitese, barely-a-correlation-but-inflate-it-to-be-groundbreaking-ese, literally-lie-but-its-too-complicatedly-phrased-nobody-can-call-false-advertising-ese.
What about using an LLM to extract actual EULA key points?
I wouldn’t rely on LLM to read anything for you that matters. Maybe it will do ok nine out of ten times but when it fails you won’t even know until it is too late.
What if Eula itself was chat gpt generated from another chat generated output from another etc.. madness. Such Eula will be pure garbage suddenly and cutting costs no one will even notice relying on ai so much until it’s all fubar
So sure it will initially seem like a helpful tool, make key points from this text that was generated by someone from some other key points extracted by gpt but the mistakes will multiply in each iteration.
everyone assumes I am talking about taking something chatgpt spews out and using it as it is whereas only the thing I said was to use it as an initial starting point i.e overcoming the blank slate block. When everyone is so horrible in understanding what other people try to convey I assume you wouldn't lose much if you used chatgpt as it is anyways lol.
I see your point and can agree in the cases where the tool won't be available to you, or if there is an intent to deceive.
But to flip the script, I'm pretty good at spelling but even then there are words I fuck up the spelling and it's caught by a spell checker. Am I a liar for submitting things without pointing out my spelling errors that a computer caught? Or is there a recognition that this is a common tool available and I've effectively used it to improve my communication, so this is just standard practice?
I would accept spell checker, for a few reasons: one - it doesn't really change the meanings, or the words, just polishes tiny fails; two - English is an abysmal language which has the largest percentage of dyslexic people of any language, and it's associated with the fact that the dictionary is a mix of words from many languages, and neither they adhere to some single rule of spelling, or nor to 5 of them...
The problem with this is that effectively you aren’t speaking anymore, the bot does for you. And if on the other side someone does not read anymore (the bot does it for them) then we are in very bizarre situation where all sorts of crazy shit starts to happen that never did.
You will ‚say’ something you didn’t mean at all, they will ‚read’ something that wasn’t there. The very language, communication collapses.
If everyone relies on it this will lead to total paralysis of society because the tool is flawed but in such a way that is not immediately apparent until it is everywhere, processes its own output and chokes on the garbage it produces.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was immediately apparent but it seems so helpful and nice what can go wrong
