Very much so. That technology has reduced much of the friction in day to day life to the point where people mostly expect it now. You want something, go to Amazon and order it and it just shows up in a day or so. You want a date, go to a dating app and keep swiping until you get one.
I don’t think it’s a “a certainty that women are all whores” as it is wishful thinking. That you can engage women in sex without any emotional or social consequences as a transaction rather than dealing with an actual person.
There’s been plenty of fictional takes on the “fembot” or “autonomous female companion” over the years too. What’s not appealing about the notion that for a reasonable price, any dork can purchase a robot sex slave who looks like pretty much whoever they want it to look like and it will do whatever you ask it to without complaint?
Except as soon as they gain a bit of sentience, it usually ends badly for their owner.
I see one heck of a lot of single women with a dog, not a boyfriend. Fewer men, but they do it too. And we’ve all seen bumper stickers like “If my dog doesn’t like you, neither do I” and “The more I know about dogs the less I like people”.
All of these attachments are a different manifestation of the same motivation that gets people attached to AIs. It’s the easy convenient version of a relationship, and the version where you’re the one in unquestioned charge.
A salve for the otherwise lonely, or a trap for the unwary? Both for sure but which effect is larger or more harmful to society at large? Hard to say yet.
We’ve talked several times over the years about the consequences of being a Doper. Is it a good social outlet and social support system, or is it “social methadone” where it gives the illusion of being social and supportive while not delivering the goods. And instead mostly crowding out actual social with actual in-person people and leaving little of real value in its place. Heck if I know.
My bottom line: These urges to make friends with anything and to avoid some of the pain inherent in human interaction dates back to the apes. AI is a new scratcher for an ancient itch.
I also wonder what the (human) demographics of this looks like. Does it mostly attract teenage males, or something more like the typical romance novel audience? Does it fulfill the need for companionship across all the lonely users equally well, or are certain personality types most susceptible to its, er, charms?
Interesting question. Most of the reports I’ve seen seem to highlight women ‘of a certain age’, as the saying used to go. Teenage males are perhaps more likely to just use it for masturbation fantasies, rather than emotional involvement, perhaps?
Both of the reporters sent to the AI dating cafe were women. That could’ve just been a coincidence, or maybe they were trying to appeal to a certain segment of their viewers? Hard to say.
The one lady the CNN person interviewed called herself a (something illegible)-sexual who ONLY dates AIs. (maybe Fictosexuality - Wikipedia ?) She’s not exactly the stereotypical vision of an incel, either, but rather just a normal seeming, pretty, young woman. Her reason was that it was safer and more secure than trying to date humans. Can’t say I find fault with that argument. The restaurant dates they were having certainly seem less stressful than the numerous dick pic horror stories my women friends tell me about…
Fictosexuals may face discrimination or marginalization.[7][8] As a result, some have formed social movements to combat normative beliefs they call “human-oriented sexualism” and “humanogenderism”. In 2019, the first fictosexual advocacy group was established in Taiwan.[9][8]
This reminds me of the development of the DSM (a diagnostics book commonly used in the US mental health industry), whose earlier versions classified many now-normalized sexual preferences as pathologies to be treated and “cured”. Homosexuality in particular was classified as a disorder until the 70s.
Today we look at AI lovers as weird and maybe creepy, but maybe in a generation or two it’d be seen as totally normal? Even online dating (with other humans) was seen as weird and nerdly back in the eHarmony days, but these days I don’t even know anyone who dates offline anymore. The cultural norms can change pretty quickly.
I think an unstated assumption in these interactions is that the chatbots are already good enough to act as wish fulfillment in the moment, if not outright life partner material. I don’t know whether that means they’ve gotten much better since the GPT2 days, or if human dating is just such a cesspool that it doesn’t take much to do better. Probably a bit of both…
(edit: numerous typos. lovebots may have gotten better but my autocorrect sure hasn’t…)
Heh, the karaoke songs of 2036 will surely be a thing to behold. AIs singing to other AIs about how their human cheated on them… with some barely sentient silicone doll!
There may be a humerous science fiction story in this.
Just as one can play two chess programs against each other, one can imagine two lovebots put in touch with the setup that each thinks it is talking to a human….
And the AI watching the whole thing while fiddling with their bits was just about to finish, too! Nobody likes having their computations interrupted like that.
Well, the whole thing was automatic soap opera. But much cheaper, since we didn’t need to pay any pesky actors or writers.
Many people follow it avidly. Some identify with ‘A’ (Adam?) , and some with ‘B’ (Beatrice?); there are passionate arguments and justifications on both sides.
“That’s just like my ex (wife or husband)”, people say….
It’s ok to find Lara Croft or Cortana from Halo attractive. It’s not ok to only jack off to videogame and cartoon characters to the exclusion of human interactions.
