“The most challenging aspect, although it doesn’t sound like it, was the communication delay,” [Anca Selariu] explains.Even with data traveling at the speed of light, any future chatter between Earth and Mars will take a frosting amount of time given the average distance of 140 million miles between the two planets. Every message will involve a 22-minute journey each way, meaning that even the most basic back-and-forths will turn into almost-hour-long processes. So, for the purposes of CHAPEA-1, every message sent between NASA and Mars Dune Alpha inhabitants was artificially delayed by the same amount of time.“[It] requires a completely different mindset for how you formulate the communications, how you deliver it, the correct timing,” Selariu recalls. “It’s so interesting because this is a unique type of challenge for modern humans. Most humans nowadays do not know what it’s like to live like that. They don’t know what it’s like to live offline.”Selariu explains that unlike an unplugged, week-long getaway in the woods, the extended isolation and conversational delay made for an entirely different psychological experience.
In a paper published in July called “Personality Traits in Large Language Models,” DeepMind scientists examined whether they could get LLMs to accurately simulate and change its personality based on the prompt. The answer is yes... Which brings us to my next point: If LLMs can adopt an arbitrary personality, then they can adopt your personality. I know this because I tried it.
Might the stress of communication delays be alleviated with AI personality simulation: i.e., local sims of friends and family?
