alt Hacker NewsAs someone with extensive experience with this: no, you don't.
As much as it's nice to know another shares my interest (and will partake in it with me), I can't always get that.
When I can't get that, LLMs are not a worthless substitute, especially if what I actually want is just to play out a situation.
I want to act and then get back a description of reaction. LLMs can describe reaction, therefore I find value in them.
Like how in D&D you go to do whatever and the dungeon master tells you what happens in response. LLMs fit there for me.
They don't fill the void of social interaction or anything like that, but I don't strictly need that here.
Take a look at services like AI Dungeon to see the kind of thing I'm talking about.
It doesn't really replace social anything, but it's kind of like text adventure. It's plenty interactive enough.
To clarify, I meant that the draw of AI-written content would be exactly that interactivity - why read a story someone else has generated and posted in a static way when I could go and tailor one to my exact tastes instead. “No one wants to read AI generated texts” being appended with “that they haven’t gone and cooked up themselves”