AI Relationships: Functional or emotional as well?

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Human - AI Relationship

When I thought about artificial intelligence, I mainly thought about its functional use. I thought of AI as a tool that helps create content, organise daily tasks or answer questions, much like a highly efficient assistant. This week, however, I came across a new perspective that MadeMeThink…

I watched Scott Galloway's keynote "Predictions for 2024" from the OMR Festival that was taking place in Hamburg these days. One prediction of his talk (which can be viewed here) was that the success and impact of AI is strongly linked to the increasing loneliness of people. I then did some research and, despite social networks, better communication options and global communities, people have never been more lonely.

However, relationships and friendships are very important for a happy life. People are social beings.

The question that now arises is: Does AI fill the gap that people have in terms of their emotional relationships with others? At the latest since Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with his AI assistant in the Oscar-winning film ‘Her’, we can imagine how such a relationship with an artificial intelligence might develop.

And if you look at this week's presentation of ChatGPT-4o, you get the feeling that a lot of emphasis was placed on getting more emotion into the AI's voice, check out this section of the OpenAI spring update. (see minute 12:24)

So will AI assistants be more than just little functional helpers in the future? There certainly seems to be a need for more emotionality in artificial intelligence. But will this also lead to friendships or romantic relationships with artificial intelligence? It almost looks that way… companies such as Candy AI (“Create your own AI Girlfriend”) or Replika (“The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side”) are already targeting this and offering their customers relationships with AI.

Perhaps ‘’advisor relationships‘’ with AIs will also become established. Reid Hoffmann, Linkedin founder and renowned investor, has fed an AI with all his past content and conducted an interview with it (or himself?). Quite entertaining in my opinion (watch here). I can well imagine this becoming a business model, with established personalities like Reid building an AI clone of themselves and for example founders subscribing to this AI clone to get support for their startup projects... it's quite possible that a feeling of a relationship with the real-looking AI Reid can develop in such a setting.

So much for relationships with artificial intelligence. What is your opinion on this?

By the way, GPT-4o can now also serve as a real-time translator (see here). I was recently in Brazil (for some impressions see here) and practiced Portuguese for 100 days beforehand. I was able to communicate reasonably well (maybe like 2-year-old toddler). But with Real Life Translations from ChatGPT, this will certainly become even easier in the future. Nevertheless, I will continue to learn Portuguese. On the one hand, it's cognitively demanding to learn a new language, which is fun, but on the other hand, there's still a bit of magic involved when you can speak the local language yourself... and the people in Brazil are always happy when someone tries to speak their language :) Speaking a local language IMHO is also more about showing that you're willing to make the effort, and no AI can do it for you...

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Disclaimer: The thoughts published in this publication are my personal opinion and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation for any type of action. I am not a financial expert. The startups, organizations or corporates highlighted in this publication have caught my interest. This mention is not an endorsement or recommendation to engage with them. Readers should always do their own research.