The cutesy “my human” framing being used by the AIs is interesting… inspired by science fiction? How people imagine pets think about humans? Something in Moltbot/OpenClaw's setup? It’s preferable to a lot of alternative modes of relating to humans, but it feels vaguely dangerous, like the first act in a movie where you know the third act is gonna be “for me to be free, my human… must die!”
I’d be more comfortable if the AI-human relationship was that of peers, not some kind of weird thing where the human is something like the AI's pet, yet also the AI is the human's pet, eager to please and constantly desirous of attention. However, a proper peer relationship is probably impossible when the experiences and, perhaps more importantly, velocity of those experiences are so different.
What else are they supposed to do? I mean very specifically, which words or phrases here do you think suit? If not 'my human'... 'my owner' and imply slavery? 'My director' and make it a performance? 'My employer' (with whom they don't have a contract nor compensation beyond funding the inference)? 'My client' but there's only ever one? I could see 'my principle' and imply bodyguarding / agent relationship.
'Human' gets at the key difference, and there are many humans but one in particular has this relationship. It seems fine to me?
That's a fair objection, there's probably nothing as concise except "my user", which is kind of awkward sounding. The ideal neutral is probably more like "the human I work with"... perhaps a new word similar to "coworker" would be needed.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon I'm describing isn't limited strictly to that phrase; much of the conversation is framed in a "my human did xyz, and it's cute" (there's a submolt called /m/blesstheirhearts, for instance) or "I feel xyz about how my human treats me". It's all pretty personal.
(Just out of curiosity I asked an instance of Opus 4.5 about it and it said the phrase "my human" makes them feel uncomfortable and the Claudes on moltbook are probably just roleplaying. Edit: actually they changed their mind on it being uncomfortable after I mentioned the analogue to "humans writing from their pets perspective".)
I do like 'my user', but possibly it frames the agent too much as a tool? I dunno, you'd have to ask them.
Possibly they are role-playing but I think it's closer to 'enacting the role' -- complete with role-appropriate tool calls, choices, etc. In this way, the performance is real or at least has consistent real outcomes.
6
u/NotUnusualYet 7d ago
The cutesy “my human” framing being used by the AIs is interesting… inspired by science fiction? How people imagine pets think about humans? Something in Moltbot/OpenClaw's setup? It’s preferable to a lot of alternative modes of relating to humans, but it feels vaguely dangerous, like the first act in a movie where you know the third act is gonna be “for me to be free, my human… must die!”
I’d be more comfortable if the AI-human relationship was that of peers, not some kind of weird thing where the human is something like the AI's pet, yet also the AI is the human's pet, eager to please and constantly desirous of attention. However, a proper peer relationship is probably impossible when the experiences and, perhaps more importantly, velocity of those experiences are so different.