In what way is it not acceptable for a person to have whatever kind of relationship they want with a chatbot? A chatbot is just software and software is just thoughts. Having a chatbot girlfriend is basically like having an imaginary girlfriend. Nobody else should even know! Let alone take it off you.
The part that I'm disgusted by is the part where the chatbot is operated by a company rather than open source software.
Part of the appeal might be that some company provides it as a service. You can distance yourself from the need of spinning of a docker container running it, you don't have to go through all the update notifications every week.
Makes it seem more like a person than an appliance.
Open source might not be very appropriate for this. (And it wouldn't help for the company to use an open source product, because if they're in charge of the infrastructure, re-configuring it to use the filters is the problem and could still happen even if they use the open source software title.) Basically, open-source is a specific solution to a somewhat narrow problem, and not a cure-all for everything bad that happens in technology.
I don't think that disgust is explainable, so I can't give you an answer.
The best analogy I could make is that if I had a roast chicken, but it had a giant smelly turd smell, and somehow I knew that it was totally clean and edible, it'd still disgust me. Even if the turd smell went away after a few minutes.
It's just weird. There are real humans out there, put down the phone man.
> There are real humans out there, put down the phone man.
was the part of this thread that actually provoked disgust for me. It's akin to telling a person suffering from depression "you should just be happy!" as if they haven't tried.
There are people out there who will never succeed in finding human companionship, it's a fact of life. I see it as a positive that they can at least find some form of companionship, because the alternative is a dark path that can lead to self-loathing, radicalization, and in the worst case scenario, violence.
I wouldn't tell a person with depression to "just be happy", but neither would I allow them to humour the idea of giving up on life.
They certainly won't find companionship by giving up and deciding to mess around with bots instead.
It's more like telling a depressed person to get some sunlight in the morning or whatever. Is it going to fix everything? No, but you do it anyway, because behaviour is sticky.
I don't think anyone mentioned giving up though. It could very well just be a temporary measure until they find a real partner. Or maybe they never will find one (which could very well be an unfortunate reality for some) in which case they will at least die having experienced some kind of satisfaction.
Disgust is a strange sense. How often do we stop and think about what all those real humans out there are walking around with in their guts? We're at most only 50% human cells by count, after all.
The part that I'm disgusted by is the part where the chatbot is operated by a company rather than open source software.