No thanks, i just want to make out with my Marilyn Monrobot
Compete? Idk I think of it as a win win. I don’t want to date a guy who would call a chatbot their gf, so sure, why not? Let them self select out of the dating pool. Mind you, it’s not a real relationship because it’s just a glorified autocomplete with rendered boobs, it’s not alive and it’s definitely not intelligent, artifical or other wise. Relationships are boundaries, growing together and appreciating the little moments of life. No LLM is gonna do that.
So sure. Let em have fun, Idc, but it’s hella red flags to think it’s real.
Hot take but I would care if I were you. To be clear: it’s not the job of anyone to date someone or to make other people date worthy. However, your society is likely unprepared to have a lower reproduction rate and relies on that population growth or sustaining. This AI chatbot problem is not only a problem for straight men. It will replace friends for many lonely people, which further degrades relationships and leads to less dating and less reproduction. It will become yet another example of technology leading to negative mental health outcomes and degradation of social interaction. And we aren’t even talking about the ability for future AI to copy a voice and face and body to further mimic a fake virtual relationship with a very real person.
I think in the short term it’s easy to say “people who date AI are losers” and be mostly right but in the long term if we’re all lonelier because of this, then everybody loses.
Before you think I’m crazy: This is already happening or has happened in places like Japan, Korea, and China. A loneliness epidemic is taking place for many reasons and everyone suffers when they happen. The future of AI tech will make this far worse.
This is the wrong place for that brand of myopic nonsense, if ai is good enough to replace girlfriends then every calculation and comparison in your sky falling theory about reproduction rates is turned to junk.
That same automation is already removing the need for people from loads of jobs, especially service industry ones - you don’t need ever more people when we don’t need so many humans to look after elderly people.
The other stuff about society collapsing is just typical tech fear we’ve seen from certain portions of society every single time anything gets invented - most of it is just the classic issue of awareness, of course it seemed people were happier and better connected when you didn’t know anything about their lives, of course more people are open about their mental health struggles now they’re a recognised thing.
Sure some people will be weird about ai and fall in love, people have been marrying horses and obsessing over ladies shoes or whatever else for centuries - society is going to be just fine.
All I’m doing here is extrapolating based on current trends. I’m not saying the future has to be this way, but likely will be unless we take action. Social media didn’t have to ruin our social lives, but for many it did and still does and the awareness isn’t enough.
Same will be true of AI. Our AI ethics development hasn’t been enough to stop what will at least be short term damage. Thats how it is already impacting our schools and media and will continue to for years before we have proper tools.
So since I have a decent base for saying that it will harm our socialization and reproduction rate, the second part is why do we need more people?
We don’t. I agree. Less people is probably better and fine, especially if AI can do a lot of the work. The problem is that we aren’t set up for that and we won’t be in the near future. So yes I hope the world transitions to rely less on having more people, but the problem will likely arrive long before the solution.
I think you are overestimating the value of “real”, if “real” can even be defined much less proven in many cases including love. Just look at religion and social media for examples of what the human mind is capable of creating an illusion around.
Don’t get me wrong, I do value things that you probably would consider real. But who am I to say they are.
Of course, I don’t believe AI girlfriends are going to completely replace relationships. But I do think that, much like online porn, they will be there – always accessible, always a temptation, always a source of instant satisfaction. And I think it’s likely that, for some, a real girlfriend just won’t seem enough on her own, especially considering nearly half of Replika’s users are already in a relationship or married.
Doesn’t seem that bad tbh, the dynamic of men being expected to have zero emotional outlets other than their romantic partner has always been super toxic and doesn’t make things better for anyone.
The only faint glimmer of optimism I can find in all this is that I think, at some point, life might become so stripped of reality and humanity that the pendulum will swing. Maybe the more automated, predictable interactions are pushed on us, the more actual conversations with awkward silences and bad eye contact will seem sexy. Maybe the more we are saturated with the same perfect, pornified avatars, the more desirable natural faces and bodies will be. Because perfect people and perfect interactions are boring. We want flaws! Friction! Unpredictability! Jokes that fall flat! I hold onto hope that someday we will get so sick of the artificial that our wildest fantasies will be something human again.
This article is pretty reasonable
I’m in a men’s group where we act as that for each other, and the married ones’ wives love it because they don’t have to be the sole support system for their husbands any more.
Men are so closed off it’s horrible. I do sales and have so many customers and I can just see the loneliness in their eyes, their mannerisms. They continually consider their own needs and feelings to be rounding errors, like I was doing before this group.
I didn’t realize how deeply my sense of self had been crippled by our culture. I’ve never been in a more warm and supportive place than that group.
Just for curiosity’s sake, how did that men’s group came to be? And, hypothetically speaking, are you accepting new members?
I don’t know how it came to be. It’s got multiple chapters. Ours is full but others like it are accepting all the time. I just found it by googling for men’s groups, and searching on meetup.
I remembered feeling envious when my girlfriend told me she had joined a women-only yoga thing. I was complaining about how men never get to kick the women out any more and have men-only time. She encouraged me to look again and see if I could find something.
As a woman, I really feel bad for men in our society, especially straight men. They get very little positive interaction at all. I like to compliment strangers; it usually makes my day when somebody says, “I like your hair,” or whatever, and I like to spread the joy. But I have to be cautious about giving compliments to men. A lot of them look at me weirdly if I say, “nice tie,” or “snazzy shirt.” I smile, say it, then move on so they don’t feel obligated to respond. It appears most of them aren’t used to it and don’t know how to handle it. I guess other men don’t compliment them (maybe for fear of being thought gay?) and women don’t, either (for fear of encouraging stalking or harassing behavior). It makes me sad to think of all the lonely people who get no affirmation from anybody. I’m old enough now that my days of being constantly sexually harassed are over, so I feel safe offering a few nice words.
Gay men, OTOH, totally know how to give and take a compliment.
You act as… Each other’s girlfriends? j/k of course.
What’s the name of the group?
I can look at porn when nothing better is available, while preferring real bodies. It may reduce how desperate I am to be in a questionable relationship though.
Maybe some may I’ll be able to chat with an AI girlfriend instead of spending all week only having work discussions. It’ll be better for my mental health when no one else is available, but I’d still prefer real conversation. It may reduce how desperate I am to be in a questionable relationship though
I was having this conversation with my girlfriend a couple weeks ago. If I hadn’t met her when I did and this came out, I would 100 percent have just gotten an AI girlfriend. Heck as it is, if there’s a decent bubbly girl AI assistant I’ll probably get it.
She has a friend who is a bit on one of the spectrums and he desperately wants a girlfriend. Honestly if it wasn’t for my girlfriend and another friend he would be on his way to being Chris chan minus the online precense. They’ve kept him pretty grounded and have been there for him in situations where Chris chan didn’t have anyone. I suggested to her to try recommending an AI girlfriend for him once they’re better, a bit more companionship could go a long way for people.
Ever heard of those beetles that prefer beer bottles to actual females because their brains say " big + brown + shiny = sexy", and the bottles are bigger, browner, and shinier than any female beetle?
The technical term is supernormal stimulus. Read a neat article about it a while back http://readthis.wtf/writing/hyperplastic-supernormal/
Doesn’t seem that bad tbh, the dynamic of men being expected to have zero emotional outlets other than their romantic partner has always been super toxic and doesn’t make things better for anyone.
If we had been asked 50 years ago: “What will happen first, people turning to robots to avoid feeling alone, or men being allowed to be emotionally vulnerable in society?”, what would have people replied?
I have an idea, how about stop staring at your screens and go out and interact with people in the real world? Problem solved.
just kidding. I’m going to stare at my screen until I have to go to work tomorrow. Tomorrow at work I will deal with real humans for 8 hours and then I will go home and stare at my screen again.
go out and interact with people in the real world?
But like… Where? Even going to bars everyone is in their own groups with not a lot of mixing around. Especially since covid it seems like everyone is in their own bubbles. I’ve had like 4-5 conversations with strangers (that weren’t forced business transactions) in the last year and most of those people weren’t particularly interesting.
yeah this seems to be a problem in society the last few decades. In the old days, socialization was unavoidable, It was natural because people were never cooped up in their houses staring at screens because screens didn’t exist yet. screens are killing us.
Just want to comment to say bars were shitty and only being able to interact in your very localized community was shitty, all the twenty somethings I talk to now are involved in interesting things, we’d sit drinking beer and debating which pop stars from the 70s are dead based on vague memories of news stories.
And 95% of the people you knew weren’t friends they were just people you’d had so many boring conversations with that you both felt obligated to have another one if you’re in the bar together.
The old days sucked every bit as much as now, probably less because kids don’t seem to need to drink and take as many drugs as we did, they’ve got actual things that interest them and ambitions and stuff.
Let’s be honest: the type of guy to have an AI “girlfriend” was never going to ever have enough rizz to get an IRL girlfriend. Women, you can sleep easy tonight knowing that incels no longer have to kill people in order to feel fulfilled.
