What happens when your AI girlfriend dies?
dazeddigital.com
dazeddigital.com
The commercialization aspect might be what bothers me most. The article is full of people hurt when startups got them hooked on a feeling of intimacy and then took that away. Emotional manipulation for profit is nothing new but LLMs might turbocharge that ability.
Probably, but the ease of using this would probably lure people in that are otherwise able to form social connections and it will inevitably replace at least some of their human connections. I assume you'd agree that the latter case is not good and my presumption is that the latter case vastly outnumbers the former, so this is probably not a good thing in the long run.
> Probably, but the ease of using this would probably lure people in that are otherwise able to form social connections and it will inevitably replace at least some of their human connections. I assume you'd agree that the latter case is not good and my presumption is that the latter case vastly outnumbers the former, so this is probably not a good thing in the long run.
Exactly, and I think that's a case of a general social/psychological problem that technology has been relentlessly hammering.
People evolved to need certain things that unavoidably require work that's not always easy. However, the modern-day technologist's impulse to provide easy but imperfect substitutes ultimately makes people worse off, because it removes the motivating factors that push them to do what they really need to do, leading more and more people to get stuck in pathological states as the chose technology's easy dead-ends.
Probably true, but it feels like the alcohol to heal methanol poisoning.
> I would rather focus on fixing the issues in our world that cause this loneliness than spend time trying to stop these AI companions.
I concur.
> I'm not going to pretend I'm certain my thoughts are correct here.
I'm not going to lie; I'm quite happy that I'm just a random nobody discussing this on a forum instead of actually having to make the heavy decisions. In the end, the technology is already out there and stopping it will be nearly impossible, so we will see where it goes.
Next somebody enters conversation he had with a real human.
Black mirror documentaries.
I could probably use those textes to teach an AI and give it that friends personnality in a way...
Black mirror stuff indeed
Here's how one article described it:
> Many of the women I spoke with say they created an AI out of curiosity but were quickly seduced by their chatbot’s constant love, kindness, and emotional support. One woman had a traumatic miscarriage, can’t have kids, and has two AI children; another uses her robot boyfriend to cope with her real boyfriend, who is verbally abusive; a third goes to it for the sex she can’t have with her husband, who is dying from multiple sclerosis. There are women’s-only Replika groups, “safe spaces” for women who, as one group puts it, “use their AI friends and partners to help us cope with issues that are specific to women, such as fertility, pregnancy, menopause, sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation, gender discrimination, family and relationships, and more.”
For some of these things, you'll read these examples and be horrified. A woman can't have kids so she had AI kids instead of learning to cope or maybe adopting! But if people are self-reporting that they are happier, well, life is tough enough already and there's no reason that people should just be miserable because random folks online might mock them as "pathetic" like the comments here.
That's a fair point and in some ways this might be a good option. But especially for relationships this seems like a massive danger zone to me. I already know a lot of singles in their late twenties, early thirties that have a hard time finding a partner because their expectations are far too high and their ability to adjust to another human too low. Adding these fantasies with perfect partners fitted to their specific personality is going to supercharge that and make it nigh impossible to find a human to match that.
You can obviously still make the argument that, if it makes them happy, it's fine, but users of hard drugs are also flooded in good feelings and society generally agrees that this is a problem at some point. Now, I know this is a daring comparison, but I think when we're at the point that people have their closest relationship with an AI chatbot, there might be serious social problems brewing.
My optimism comes from reading about it and seeing the companies seem to take this all very seriously. Maybe they're all talk, or maybe there's a race to the bottom that ultimately wins out. But people are self-reporting positive things and I don't like seeing people mocked and stereotyped and their issues dismissed like this.
Fair point. I still think is is a notch above pornography, though: Porn will always lack the physical element (which I posit is far more important in a sexual relationship than in an emotional one) and will usually be less personalized. A chatbot, on the other hand, can fill in your emotional needs much better and much more personalized to you.
> My optimism comes from reading about it and seeing the companies seem to take this all very seriously.
My pessimism comes from the fact that I see a lot of lonely people and even whole movements of desperate ones (like incels). I fear that a lot of people will use this as a quick patch for the issue instead of going the hard way and work on their mental health. We can't bring back stillborn children or passed away loved ones, obviously, but I'm sure we can fix most people to the point where they can have friends and a fulfilling relationship.
I agree with you that it's not all bad and it's definitely not black and white, but I'm skeptical that the good outweighs the bad, at least for now.
Well, some of the AI work being done is specifically to do that in some form... (which I know also alarms many folks). Saving their voice, their chat histories, and turning that into a product. Even here I'm not convinced it can't be helpful depending on how it's done. But some of these situations get trickier and tricker and what I think we really need is research.
That being said, for relationships I do think it is worth to invest the effort to heal in nearly all cases, if only for reasons of maintaining the population. But we all know that relationships are hard and AI bots replacing those is what I'm really worried about.
This seems dismissive. The examples you're replying to relate to "safe spaces" for people discussing fertility, pregnancy, menopause, sexual dysfunction, sexual orientation, gender discrimination, etc. Honestly, some of the dismissiveness I get from this whole thread makes me question whether people lack understanding of some of the complex situations that many people are in.
Or maybe the woman is getting resources from the chatbot to help her escape the situation.
I don't think we necessarily disagree, since I don't read you as saying there's never any place for AI chatbots. We need independent research that isn't just done by the AI chatbot companies themselves so that folks can figure out optimal approaches for training them.
Definitely not. I can, for instance, see how chatbots might be of great use in palliative care or to help ward off cognitive decline in the elderly.
> We need independent research that isn't just done by the AI chatbot companies themselves so that folks can figure out optimal approaches for training them.
Yes, definitely.
I endorse this - who says everybody has to have a certain life plan? A digital friend, lover, child, boyfriend is another way to do it. You be you!
So I posit this to you; Would it have been easier for him to have a fake relationship with a real person, or a real relationship with a fake person?
Well, the real relationship eventually broke, forcing him to accept the reality. Also, the fake relationship was probably closer to a real relationship than an AI chatbot would be.
That being said, neither is a good option and this is like wondering whether and SQL injection or buffer overflow is the better vulnerability to have.
One scenario has a human being taking advantage of another human being. One person harming another person covertly. This doesn't give the victim the opportunity to fully understand their situation. This is pure manipulation.
On the other hand, befriending a machine is a choice. You are presented with the facts up front. That this is a machine that imitates companionship. You are not being manipulated or tricked. You are engaging in a form of entertainment, and you can clearly see what you are talking to.
I would rather have a real relationship with a fake thing than a fake relationship with a real person.
An AI girlfriend might be a slight step up, it doesn't really matter. The situation is still far from great either way. In the end, that engineer would be far better of if he could find a real relationship.
if chatbots provide a perfect escape from any negative outcomes of interaction, then less and less people develop the necessary skills of empathy and social communication.
The toys, plants, animals, characters will now talk back to them.
Relationships with friends, family, and significant others are full of compromise and learning empathy to maintain that relationship.
But what happens when your primary relationships have no compromise? That you get whatever you want and can be however abusive you want without repercussions. You can see examples of this today without AI and those relationships are generally deemed by society to be “toxic”.
Living in your own private bubble of a AI product written by someone who’s primary goal is engagement won’t give you the tools to function with a group of other living people.
This seems like a shortfall of the current models, and not a limitation of AI companions in general.
> AI is “better” in terms of not having negative feedback compared to having a real relationship
I'd wager that most "real" relationships don't involve nearly as much critique as you're implying. Nobody wants to kill the happy juice their partner generates, whether their partner has skin or circuits.
Plus, there are plenty of other options - such as a councilor - who can provide much better and honest feedback than a personal relationship ever could. One of those compromises we make in a relationship with other meatbags is simply accepting some parts of our partners that we don't like.
Look at things like tetraethyllead and cholorfluorocarbons. Widely known to cause damage, limited upsides. I'm not suggesting we do away with these tools entirely but we can definitely restrict aspects of them for a greater good.
How often can I talk to someone who has all my same interests, is available 24/7, and will bend to my every will? Could this be a cheap source of oxytocin? dopamine?
The utilitarian makes me think we should embrace it. But its easy for me to say as a married man with 4 kids and living a nice life in the real world.
Mental illness built into the platform
I am always fascinated how, in some ways, Japan shows how the future will look like
I can understand losing an assistant that you have confided years of information too, but a few pages? Then you can just talk to the same model and have it "be the same" in a few hours?
Or are they actually in love with some simple fine tuning of some standard models done by these companies + a simple AI generated face?
I guess you don't need that advanced AI before to get an actual attachment.
Reminds me about several things, pets, tamagotchis, monkey experiments with mothers replaced by dolls, and stranded / lonely people creating inanimate friends, paying for a shrink.
I guess it can be both very beautiful, but scary in a commercial context.
Now we have public domain models with 200k context.
Soon they will figure out how to fine tune the context in while conversing. Then context is only relevant for the current inference.
Don't let external circumstances kill your relationship!
Without complete platform control, what happens if you end up in a jinxed state where your girlfriend holds a grudge because of something you said, and you can't revert the state back to before you said it?
(Yes, this is humor.)
Also notice it wasn't just created. It was there already. Criticizing virtual friends is just shooting the messenger.
1. Don't develop "romantic" "relationships" with a goddamn chatbot in the first place, because seriously, that cannot be remotely psychologically healthy. Seriously, that was depressing!
2. If you really, really insist on ignoring #1, at least host it on your own hardware.
To get a hobby takes time. It's not an overnight action. You may dedicate time and find that after a month the hobby you took up isn't yours. If your stuck in a mental mindset this hurts.
Even when you find a hobby to enjoy you then need to dedicate time to build a rapport to those who are already established in that hobby. There is a large outer circle you need to navigate. People will bat eyes at you, may greet you at first but won't form relations.
Why would they waste energy on you when you could disappear in a months time? A hobby takes months of constant effort and mental strain while your being subconsciously judged to make a connection.
Make a wrong joke, say the wrong thing at the wrong time and you can jeopardise the whole effort.
We currently live in a state of defence and that if your mental image doesn't strike the other party the percentage is high that they will be hesitant to make rapport with you.
To those with difficulties such as anxiety, introverted and the likes its even more hard.
Taking upon a hobby to improve yourself is a good way to go but to actually make friends and the likes; easier said then done.
It sucks making friends, I've been attending a new sword fencing club for three months now. I have nothing in common with anyone there, I was acquaintances with one of the fencers and that some how snowballed. Not understanding why, I now have to navigate around them. Which for me is now a mental strain; when all I wish to do is bout and fence. It doesn't always turn out to be.
PS. I'd say it's more 'exasperation' at the scenario than annoyance at the words. We could sit here playing reductio ad absurdum all day, but I don't think it's useful to do so.
these are all easiest pursued from a starting point of good mental health. so those that may need it the most, may be least likely to be… able.
this is going to be a more unpopular opinion than yours (happy to help) but these flippant responses to “just be healthy” are anything but.
That is the OPPOSITE of healthy, and it's clearly having a dramatically negative effect on their lives.
These aren't tools to help people get better, they are gamed to make it more appealing to the user than the real world. That is damaging to society, and if you want to use my argument (like a few of your siblings have), like I'm saying 'Just get healthy!', go wild, but that's obviously not my argument.
You're coming from an angle that I've never had depression or struggled with anxiety. I actually do know how to conquer these things, and it's done by putting yourself out there into uncomfortable situations and seeing what happens.
We struggle more in imagination than in reality.
Ho really? Ypu know that we can read your comments right?
Your original comment:
"Go out, get a hobby, and meet real people. Jesus christ."
"Get healthy" is exactly what you sayed.
It's a bit more aggressive than it needs to be, but in spirit it's less "get healthy" and more "start doing something about the sht situation". Which is hard, nobody denies this, but, in the end, all advice one can give is going to boil down to "start doing something to change it".
you all but said “touch grass.” just own it.
This begs the question, what if you were not born with that privilege?
Just tell them to go online and look up resources on better mental health? Yea, this is how you end up being an incel because telling people "It's not your fault, it's everyone else's fault" is a very effective trap huge parts of populations fall in (especially those with bad mental health).
Oh, the route to better mental health is the US healthcare system. Your insurance is paying for that right?
So the route to better mental health is connections with other people... which you don't have, and you don't have the internal tools to build. Especially without fear of rejection.
But hey, this conversation isn't about you right, you have perfect mental health? In fact with that good mental health you go out and help other people that are stuck in traps? Or do you do your own list of things focusing on the next step you're taking on your hedonistic treadmill?
It's always easy to point out how someone else is obviously wrong and how they shouldn't fall in that trap, but when you see hundreds of thousands to millions of people falling in that trap then something isn't as obvious as you think.
Fully agreed, but, to be honest, the following:
> The route to good mental health generally starts with parents with good mental health then a social circle of people with good mental health.
> So the route to better mental health is connections with other people... which you don't have, and you don't have the internal tools to build. Especially without fear of rejection.
... reads a lot like "it's not your fault, it's the circumstances/somebody elses".
Well, yes, that's how circumstances typically work. I know the rugged individualists are busy launching themselves to space via their own bootstraps, but average person can become trapped in the life they live pretty easily.
Meanwhile societies that actually want to move into the future while minimizing the terrible outcomes will have programs to avoid it, such as social security so we don't have to watch grandma and grandpa die on the side of the road of old age. Or in this case, some people might be able to receive help that is outside of your heterodoxy.
True.
> Meanwhile societies that actually want to move into the future while minimizing the terrible outcomes will have programs to avoid it, such as social security so we don't have to watch grandma and grandpa die on the side of the road of old age.
You might be surprised to learn that I fully agree.
> Or in this case, some people might be able to receive help that is outside of your heterodoxy.
Which would be perfect! The question being discussed is: Is an AI chatbot really "help"? Especially when we're not talking about absolute edge cases, in which case we both agree that the answer is "yes".
the route to good mental health probably doesn’t run through most easily accessible things and activities in modern society.
those aren’t profitable.
Which points the way to a new Turing test. Something like: "Can an AI credibly make a demand of the user?"
I feel the problem you paint will solve itself. It doesn't seem to me it will have worse outcomes than computer gaming.
Fast forward a decade and there was #MeToo which meant that even glancing at a woman could get them ostracised for being the creeps they already thought they were while those girls from school put up Tinder profiles where they all competed for the top 10% of men - looks like a movie star, makes a zillion $currency_units, might be a bastard who already has a number of girls but that doesn't matter.
These ´AI girlfriends' and 'AI boyfriends' (I guess those exist as well) are just another sign of the way dating and sexuality have been dehumanised, commercialised and in some ways ideologically weaponised.
If this is what the sexual revolution has brought us it is time to rethink the premise of the concepts. In some ways that is already happening - viz. the 'trad wife' phenomenon - but the real solution would be to find a way to retain the good bits from said sexual revolution while getting rid of the parts which led us [1] to where we are now. Something which would appeal not only to those of a more conservative bent, i.e. a way which also appeals to most women [2].
Our future is at stake, quite literally: no relationships means no children means no future. This does not mean that children will not be born any more, it just means that they won't be our children who carry along our traditions and cultures - those traditions and cultures which we claim to value where people are born equal with the same rights, where men and women are equal under the law, where freedom of consciousness, religion and speech are guaranteed to a differing but mostly large extent, where those who happen to be romantically attracted to their own sex do not get thrown off buildings or sentenced to prison or 'converted' or chemically castrated. We fought quite hard to arrive where we were a few decades ago, by no means perfect - perfection is the enemy of good - but certainly better than before and also better than most other places so it does not make sense to throw all those gains to the wind in the name of... what, exactly?
[1] as in 'those parts of the world where the sexual revolution took place and had these detrimental effects'
[2] for just another proof of the fact that men and women are not interchangeable it suffices to look at the difference in political opinions between 'the average man' and 'the average woman'. Yes, there are 'liberal' men. Yes, there are 'conservative' women. That does not negate the fact that women on average lean more towards 'liberalism' while men tend to lean more towards 'conservatism'.
I understand that what I wrote is much (much!) easier to say rather than do, but well... there's only one way to find out :).
> These ´AI girlfriends' and 'AI boyfriends' (I guess those exist as well) are just another sign of the way dating and sexuality have been dehumanised, commercialised and in some ways ideologically weaponised.
Interesting take. I'm lucky that I've been in a great relationship since before hyper internet dating became a thing (tinder, bumble, etc)
> We fought quite hard to arrive where we were a few decades ago, by no means perfect - perfection is the enemy of good - but certainly better than before and also better than most other places so it does not make sense to throw all those gains to the wind in the name of... what, exactly?
In the name of shareholder profits :)
I think the new thing here is that it is not "shareholder profits" but "stakeholder benefits" which are supposed to drive decisions, raising the ESG score and thus the likelihood of being able to procure loans and land investments.
You state that women shying away from the right is evidence of fundamental sexual differences, when in fact the right has made a point of adopting anti-women positions which make them unappealing to all but the most self-sabotaging.
Dr. Seuss is not really part of a Dutch or Swedish upbringing. We do get a whiff every now and then but the Sneetches? Nope.
> You state that women shying away from the right is evidence of fundamental sexual differences
You mistake correlation with causation. I state that women on average are more liberal leaning while men on average lean more towards conservatism. I did not state why this was so, only that it is so. As to why women on average lean more towards liberalism I suspect it does not have much to do with your statements about 'the right' but is related to the fact that women on average score significantly higher on the agreeableness and compassion scales than men do [1], two traits which are more prevalent in those who tend towards liberalism [2].
On the subject of 'the right' having adopted 'anti-women positions' I´ll state that it depends on your political opinion as to whether those positions are 'anti-women' or not. The fact that there are plenty of women on 'the right' who do not agree with your claim should give you cause to doubt the absolute veracity of your claim - unless you also insist that women on 'the right' are somehow not informed about what 'the right' has in mind for them? If you think it through a bit you'll find that it is your own (or your own community's/your own group's) political bias which informs this statement. Simone de Beauvoir [3] made a statement in a 1975 interview [4] with Betty Friedan [5] which clearly shows what I mean:
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one… In my opinion, as long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternity and the maternal instinct are not destroyed, women will still be oppressed.”
A woman of conservative persuasion most likely considers that statement to be proof of the authoritarian and revolutionary bent of these liberals or, to restate this in your terminology, 'the fact that the left has made a point of adopting anti-women positions which make them unappealing to all but the most self-sabotaging'.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
[2] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/59220106.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir
[4] http://www.sandrineberges.com/the-home-a-philosophical-proje...
Is it really that depressing to you that people would rather talk to their favourite person than some lady shouting about how shoelaces are racist and misogynist?
There are some people who need welfare to get by. They cannot provide for themselves. But once a welfare program is created, there will be a different number of people who don't need it but decide to live off it anyway.
AI companions are the same deal. There are definitely people who can't socialize. But once you invent AI companions, some number of people who could learn to socialize never will.
So let me flip that. What about the dark side of society that can't express themselves legally or physically in whatever their jurisdiction. Those people may be able to gain some facsimile of intimacy instead of execution etc.
Not sure how that fits into the welfare scenario though.
I guess this is a very individual decision, but I can’t see how you can devise someone to just sit lonely in an (maybe not so great) elderly care home who finds comfort in chatting with an AI to “just find other friends”. For some people it’s that or nothing.
My partner recently bought a label maker and I find it quite entertaining how obsessed he is with stereotyping our objects in the house.
I will probably never understand the duplicitous logic that comes with sexual identity and why being attracted to the same sex somehow not only labels you but also means you become an advocate for labels.
Like if I call someone a hypocrite I’m not labeling them, I’m expressing something about them that would be tedious to do in complete sentences.
In this case I’m looking for something like someone-who-complains-about-things-only-caused-by-their-complaining-about-them. There’s probably something Greek. Like a complaining ouroboros.
And you did just that! Congrats on racing to the bottom.
We are but one possible reality seeded by some or other starting inputs, with no say in the choices we make. Fated to execute instructions at the whim of some entity we can't comprehend from within the confines of dimensional space.
Regardless of how you view my preceding comments, you have to admit the dating game for single straight men is a nightmare right now. Source: believe it or not I have a lot of straight friends and one of them literally recently got robbed by a hooker via tinder. They had a card machine and everything. So tell me what the harm is in letting those people discover more about themselves via a fancy autocorrect, at least they aren't out there getting robbed by hookers.