AI friends & lovers: utopia or dystopia?

This will probably surprise no one, but I am a big Star Wars fan. From the moment I watched the original trilogy as a kid, I became obsessed with Jedis, galaxies far far away and defeating the Empire to build the New Republic on the shoulders of the Resistance. I also wanted R2-D2 to be my best friend. Funny enough, R2-D2 always seemed more fun and human-like to me than C-3PO, even though the latter talked and R2-D2 didn't. Since then, the possibility of a future where we could befriend robots always seemed an exciting one. I still remember, not too long ago, how fascinated and weirded out I was after watching Her, the 2013 Spike Jonze movie in which a middle aged man falls in love with his AI assistant. A similar relationship set in a much more dystopian world can be found in Blade Runner 2049, the 2017 sequel in which Officer K, the character played by Ryan Gosling, develops a romantic relationship with Joi, an AI lover played by Ana de Armas. Back then the technology behind such a human-like AI chatbot seemed sci-fi-ish; but then in November of 2022 OpenAI released ChatGPT, blowing everyone’s minds and making us feel like the future had already arrived.

Now it is 2024 and we have seemingly human-like AI-powered friends and lovers only one click away, and they are getting better and better every single day (meaning that quite soon we will not be able to tell an AI chatbot from a real person apart). Already millions of people around the world have AI friends and partners with whom they talk on a daily or weekly basis; chatbots they often consider as close as their human friends or family members. Is this the natural next step on humanity’s evolution, or a dangerous dystopia poised to destroy the fabric of society? Are AI friends and romantic partners replacing human ones, or are they just a new type of entertainment, similar to watching a Netflix TV show or playing video games? The following are four truly interesting and thought-provoking articles & podcasts to explore this topic and discover different points of view:

a) The Man of Your Dreams (The Cut, article by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz; published on March 10th, 2023). In this article, the author describes the phenomena of thousands of women around the world who found love in male AI-powered chatbots, many of whom have made up their minds: they are never going back to a human, male partner. Moreover, the article covers their deep anger and fear when the company running the AI chatbots (Replika) made changes to the AI large language models, which of course meant their AI partners suffered personality changes overnight.?

b) You can’t truly be friends with AI (The Atlantic, article by Ethan Brooks; published on December 14th, 2023). Author Ethan Brooks has heard every single argument in favor of AI friends, but he is not convinced. In this article, he describes the many ways in which AI chatbots are designed to exploit our human flaws and make us believe we are experiencing real friendship when in fact we are just paying for a shallow experience. According to the few experts Ethan interviewed for this article, true friendship is based on two principles: reciprocity and selectivity, neither of which occur when a human befriends an AI chatbot.?

d) Meet Kevin’s AI Friends (Hard Fork - The New York Times), a podcast by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton; published on May 10th, 2024). In this episode, journalist Kevin Roose shares his experience creating 18 different AI friends from different apps and spending time with them over the course of a full month. On top of that, Kevin and Casey chat with both an actual AI friend of Kevin’s and the CEO of the company responsible for such a friend. While they acknowledge the potential benefits of AI friends for people suffering from undesired loneliness, they are also openly creeped out by a dystopian future in which many of us get so used to AI friends whose personalities are engineered to always feel pleasing and accommodating to us, unlike real, human friends who sometimes get upset, contradict us and thus require actual emotional work on our part.

d) What Relationship Would You Want if You Believed They Were Possible (The Ezra Klein Show - The New York Times) a podcast by Ezra Klein; published on February 5th, 2024). Unlike the rest of the articles and podcasts I recommend in this piece, this episode does not discuss AI friendships or romantic relationships. Instead, Ezra and guest Rhaina Cohen talk about the many ways in which we are currently stuck with a rather limited, simplistic idea of friendship as adults. When we are children and adolescents, friendships are probably the most important component of our social lives; as adults, however, the societal ideal of an all-encompassing romantic love takes over. We are supposed to search for a romantic partner who will satisfy most (if not all) of our needs, while friends become that secondary thing we try to catch up with over beers every once in a while. But, what if we could rethink what a friendship is? What if we could give friendships more space and roles in our lives? Inevitably, this discussion and the emergence of AI friendship collide with each other in an explosive, unpredictable way.

Do you or someone you know already have an AI friend? If so, what has been your experience so far? What do you think are the potential benefits of AI friends and partners? And the dangers? I would love to hear your thoughts and views in the comments section; thank you!