I think a LOT about that post from some techbro about how one day AI will plan & execute his child's birthday party so he doesn't have to do any of it. just gobsmacked at the selling point being "You can avoid the joys of human behavior"
Replies
Basically Chuck-E-Cheese. They're going to spend millions of dollars developing an AI to simulate a Chuck-E-Cheese. What could possibly go wrong?
aug 27, 2025, 8:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Similarly those ads Google spent actual money on about how AI can write your little kid's fan letter to their hero for them.
aug 27, 2025, 9:00 pm • 3 0 • view
Speaking as someone who hates planning parties, it doesn't mean I don't love my kids if I'd rather outsource one aspect of parenting them. The selling point is "you don't have to spend time on things you don't like doing and are bad at".
aug 27, 2025, 8:43 pm • 3 0 • view
I'm actually not an AI person, at ALL, but if I thought AI could do a good job on a child's birthday party that would actually be an exciting application of the technology. I communicate my love to my kids in many ways but planning parties is Just Work to me
aug 27, 2025, 8:44 pm • 2 0 • view
I think the issue is that many people would argue the job is to do it with own ideas and emotions, no matter the own emotions regarding the task
aug 27, 2025, 8:53 pm • 2 0 • view
But planning a child's party in 2025 is almost all just...filling out forms, making phone calls, collecting contact info. The vast majority of it requires no ideas or emotion, just bog standard administrative/project management skills. Literally any adult could plan my kid's birthday
aug 27, 2025, 8:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Obviously there are two conversations to have with the kid: "what sort of party sounds like fun" and "who should be invited". But man, if AI could do the rest? HAVE AT IT. Plenty of administrative drudgery in parenting.
aug 27, 2025, 8:58 pm • 2 0 • view
Or we have actually different ideas about what the party preparation is. The project management is obviously a given, it's the least important part in this equation. And honestly: I would be quite pissed if someone wrote me something personal as an invitation and used AI for it
aug 27, 2025, 9:00 pm • 0 0 • view
The project management part is like 99% of planning a party.
aug 27, 2025, 9:13 pm • 0 0 • view
Disagree: it's thinking about activities and colors and food and preparing invitations and guest favors and supporting the child with being a host
aug 27, 2025, 8:57 pm • 0 0 • view
If your child wants a very bespoke event maybe (or if party planning is your love language)? My kid is very much looking forward to a mass produced birthday at the local bouncy castle party venue. It doesn't take a mother's love to buy the kinds of snacks kindergartners want at a party.
aug 27, 2025, 9:01 pm • 2 0 • view
Or maybe I grew up in a culture where it's not so common to pay for an event location and feed the little guest bought treats. In my imagination it's actually only a party if it is bespoke. Making a reservation or ordering stuff of course is a task I would outsource without a question
aug 27, 2025, 9:03 pm • 0 0 • view
Haha, ok, so when you say "party" you mean something completely distinct from what it means in my local parenting culture. I'm highly confident the AI exec lives in a place very much like where I live, and when he says he wants AI to plan a birthday party, the administrative work is what he means.
aug 27, 2025, 9:06 pm • 3 0 • view
Yeah, I am more thinking about home made cake and meat balls and hand written, customized invitations and self crafted decoration
aug 27, 2025, 9:09 pm • 1 0 • view
I live in a tech area and have multiple children and I don't believe I have ever attended a child's party where the food or cake was homemade. The invites are emailed and I'd say 90% of them are at a party venue or park, rather than a person's home. The administration is the entire task.
aug 27, 2025, 9:11 pm • 4 0 • view
Man. I had a coworker tell me she consulted with an AI to write her text responses to a friend going through a break-up, and it was one of the most soul-dead things I have ever heard
aug 27, 2025, 8:42 pm • 2 0 • view
it's literally a satirical Futurama joke!
aug 27, 2025, 8:42 pm • 6 0 • view
These techbros hate humanity in general, hate humans specifically, and most of all hate icky, sticky, non-standardizable, erratic, corporeal existence. They want to upload themselves to live forever in a non-messy environment with AI nannies/servants/sycophants so there's no need for all the excess
aug 28, 2025, 4:38 am • 1 0 • view
human beings and without them, there's also no need for non-strip-minable nature, either
aug 28, 2025, 4:38 am • 1 0 • view
That post drove me so nuts. ‘Here’s how little I care about my hopefully imaginary kid. I didn’t even think to do anything for their party until the week before and then delegated that task to a robot.’
aug 27, 2025, 8:49 pm • 2 0 • view
That's really the point, isn't it? The existentialists like Sartre and Camus would have had a field day pointing out how perfectly AI illustrates their thesis that most humans don't want the burdens of being human--free will is too much work.
aug 27, 2025, 8:45 pm • 40 5 • view
Hell is other people.
aug 27, 2025, 8:58 pm • 0 0 • view
@gilduran.com is all over this in his coverage of the barbaric anti-humanism of the broligarchs: bsky.app/profile/gild...
aug 27, 2025, 8:48 pm • 13 2 • view
Every time I hear the Zuck quote “the average person has 3 friends but has demand for 15 friends” (where his solution is AI chatbots), it almost makes me feel bad that he clearly doesn’t understand how special human connection is
aug 27, 2025, 9:41 pm • 1 0 • view
Kind of rhymes with the iPhone commercials where the phone remembers prior interactions so you don't have to be bothered with things like remembering people or what they are to you. Be an asshole in your day to day life: your phone will cover for you.
aug 27, 2025, 8:49 pm • 11 2 • view
Even better, or worse, that turned out to be fake. Apple hadn't developed that tech, and rolled it out early in the ad campaign with the expectation it would be ready by the time the phones were on the market.
aug 27, 2025, 9:04 pm • 2 0 • view