We have a Problem Here Folks. AI imitating humans here in this place.

Thank you!

As do I. I seem to recall I also mentioned a Captcha feature being introduced upon signup.

I'm hoping they think it's a good idea for the new site and it's added. A forum free from AI would be nice. I feel a lot more members would be active here and new members would be more inclined to stay if there was less bots about the place.

You definitely deserve the help and support. 

That sounds really good. I hope when I eventually get a therapist he or she will be just as good. The system here is so slow though, so if I do get a job I'll try to go private, if I can afford it.

I went private for therapy; nothing on the NHS was very autism friendly. Some recommended her to me and I'm very lucky that we clicked almost immediately. She has a sliding scale for pricing which works for me.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Everyone deserves support and if she helps you then that's wonderful. You deserve to be supported.

I'm on a waiting list for therapy but I think I've still got a bit of a wait yet.

Yeah, I'm in no rush either. It'll happen naturally. 

I rely on my therapist at the moment; she's my only source of support, either rightly or wrongly. It's what I need. 

HMO said:

I've never done online dating but I've never felt comfortable using one of those apps, even just a friend-based one like Bumble. You don't know who's real and something just never sat right with me

I'm the exact same now. I used to say I wouldn't but then I did because my loneliness and isolation were getting unbearable to live with but it wasn't a good experience for that very reason of AI.

Also wrecked my self confidence.

I stick to socialising on here now, it's way easier and I think the majority of us are human. I'm hoping I'll still meet someone in person one day when I go shopping but until then I'm contempt with how things are.

I've never done online dating but I've never felt comfortable using one of those apps, even just a friend-based one like Bumble. You don't know who's real and something just never sat right with me.

It used to be Twitter for me, but I think certain online spaces are good for it. I did meet some people IRL that I met through Twitter but it was hit and miss as to whether that connection held up. I could get along with someone well online, but it would completely fall apart during a voice/video call or IRL, and that's really disappointing.

I agree with something needing to be done about bots, but please not more proof of ID. Proof of ID feels like a runaway train, not everyone has the right sort of proof or the ability to send it, so it will disenfranchise people who often already feel disenfranchised in a new way. I don't like Captcha, but it would be better than ID, but with captcha would there be a way for partially sighted people to still use the site?

Number said:

Perhaps I am naive.

You're not being naive. AI accounts are all over the Web now and it's becoming a big problem because it's difficult to tell who's who. 

I did online dating last year but I stopped in the end because a lot of the people I spoke to were AI. I thought I was getting on really well and then suddenly their account was deleted because of Spam/AI. 

It put me off so I stopped using that app.

Number said:

I like face to face, one on one.  Clear unavoidable transparency of reality. 

Amen to this! Me too!

Miff said:

I think this site could benefit from it looking at how many AI accounts reach here.

Yep.

I dearly hope this thinking is being incorporated into the new site.

When they did the survey it's something (I think) I mentioned.

The Captcha seems to work well for a lot of sites. I think this site could benefit from it looking at how many AI accounts reach here.

The ability to join the forum needs to be made much harder with proof of ID or the 'I'm not a bot' sort of thing - Captcha I think.

We seem to be inundated with bots at the moment.

We get the obvious ones where they leave a link to some business or virus etc.

Then we get the ones that seem vaguely relevant but are responding to threads where the last post was several years ago.

Then we get the ones that start a thread, with a whole dissertation contained within, that is related to autism, but the 'person' just joined to say this one thing and then never returns.

It's irritating to say the least.

I posit that years of conditioning, and "education" are responsible, and that the period you mention actually does have an end to it only when you shake off the self doubt & self loathing that is programmed to appear whenever we stray from the path that was set for us as children. 

As for "massive financial insecurity", that reduces as soon you "get a grip", and start to establish some resilience. The first thing you realise is that you want somewhere to fecking live that hasn't got a mortgage or rent attached.

It doesn't matter what it is, where it is, if you have no money coming in, then you need to balance that by having no money going out. 

No benefit calculation or budgetting for a mortage etc. that I've ever seen anyone else do, allows for any adversity whatsoever to befall you, so they slice your living standards to the bone and allow no room for illness, a bad day, thefts, accidents. THAT's WHAT "savings" are for, but no one does that, it's not taught. 

You only have surplus money AFTER you have paid your bills and put away some savings.

If like me (until I threw off conventional "wisdom") you can't save, its way less likely it because you are so damn poor, but because your budgeting requires 50 quid a month for your bloody phone, rather than the 6quid a month plus 50 quid a year that I pay...

Don't get me wrong, if running an expensive phone is your only "vice", you still come out ahead of those who smoke, drink or take drugs regularly... BUT most people also spend a shedload on havig teh right clothes, the full TV package, "going out" (which is almost never for a "free of cost" and healthy walk) there's normally a 50 quid "neccesary expense" in there somewhere. 

When you start REALLY digging in to how money and budgetting and poverty etc. really work particularly when it comes to goverment and other big things, you find out just how expensive this wonderful life really is, and how very, very little freedom it bestows upon you compared to being "poor" or as the Government website defines my level of personal income, intermittently "destitute". 

Basically, in a nutshell my fellow peons, you will work for thirty years to pay off your mortage and gain your "freedom and security" only to have to sell the place in your older age to pay for your "Care" because society has made damn sure there is no family unit to take care of you in your dotage.  

ALMOST all the U.K. housing stock is now safely in the hands of the banks, and not the people who live here, effectively cutting your actual "ties to the land" which has made it easy to destroy any sense of nationality or "culture", as we race towards "You vill own nozzing, undt be heppy" in the transhumanist GM utopia they have us all racing towards..   

Number said:

Even people who are self motivated, to be creative for example, will be massively demotivated because what’s the point when a machine can create better music, art or writing in seconds than you could in a lifetime.

A machine can create good sounding Blues music, yeah, sure, but it won't have been wrested from the anguished heart and a life of suffering or overindulgence or misfortune, so it won't count... 

Will a machine slicing though it's own microphone cable have quite the impact as Picasso cutting off his own ear? 

I Sperg said:

No-one sees "unemployment" for what it really is. An opportunity for personal development and exploration,

I think this is true, for a lucky few, but generally - for most folk - it's an horrendous time of self doubt, self loathing and massive financial insecurity = not the most apt time for self-exploration?!

However, I do agree, that for the lucky few who do have the facility to do as you suggest - most don't take that opportunity and instead follow an oblivious path of self abuse instead.

__Pathfinder__ said:

Freed from the shackles of working and having to conform.  I'd rather spend my life doing things that interest me.

Unemployment or as it used to be called "retirement" IS being "freed from the shackles of work", BUT most people, (including myself) find it a hell of a task to convert from being told what to do all day long, to being "self directed & self resourced".

You'd be surprised at how many choose to fill their time with TV/Videogames/ Drugs/Drink etc. then get "depression" rather than embracing their freedom to act and build something...

An awful lot of "jobs" nowadays seem like "makework schemes" rather than real gainful employment, because as the eighties showed us, when people are released form the "need to work", they DON't start tidying up their house, gardens, neighbourhoods, etc. 

No-one sees "unemployment" for what it really is. An opportunity for personal development and exploration, salted with a bit of public works to ease ones conscience about having the freedom that others can only wistfully dream of..

Good and interesting points, well made.