Of course not — but it also doesn’t hurt to think about the consequences, especially for young people getting started in life, and already having difficulties with relationships.
For us old geezers, it probably isn’t a problem at all, especially for those who go into the hobby knowing their companion is not a human.

On the other hand, there is now the serious possibility of having an on-line friend who is not human, and NOT knowing that.

We were watching a short clip recently of Jordan Peterson, and it wasn’t until the last sentence that I realized we were listening to a computer reading from a text — the emphasis in a dependent clause was “off” in a way no person would say the words, and certainly not Peterson. Other than that, the voice was spot on.

On the gripping hand, some people have such a tenuous hold on reality that cultivating a relationship with an AI bot might be a step up for them.

The clincher for me, however, is that, when I get sick, a bot won’t bring me home-made soup and bread, like my human friends do. (And I do the same for them.)
😉

–Karol Markowicz

Re: Friendships, loneliness and AI

AesopFan:

We humans rarely and barely think through the social consequences of anything, e.g. no-fault divorce. Markowicz can huff and puff all she wants.

There are already plenty of unhealthy ways people cope with loneliness — food, porn, alcohol, drugs, social media and television. We aren’t having much success with those. Will AI be any worse?

I’m not arguing that AI replace human relationships, but help fill the gap. And that gap for a lot of people can be quite large.

If one can’t manage a certain level of attractiveness, social status, physical health, mental health, financial security, etc., it can be a tough old world for finding good relationships.

Should those people go without an AI companion because Markowicz is concerned about social consequences?

To some extent meritocracy is to blame for this: youngsters brighter than average get hoovered up into colleges and universities and white-collar occupations, leading to a society where neither the theories nor the plumbing will hold water.

No one likes to acknowledge on our side of politics that meritocracy might have a downside, and admittedly it is hard to suggest an alternative that doesn’t sound fundamentally unfair.

The flip side to the working-class autodidact culture was that because class structure was once so rigid, it simply didn’t matter how smart people were, if their background was wrong.

One of the most remarkable working-class autodidacts in history was George Green, a baker’s son with one year of formal schooling. Green’s days were spent operating the sails and replacing the millstones on the windmill and his leisure time studying in the Nottingham Subscription Library, where he taught himself extraordinarily advanced mathematics and wrote “An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism,” which he published himself since he didn’t think a journal would accept something written by someone with no education. Wealthy and connected people took notice and Green was able to go to Cambridge at the age of 40. He died in 1841 at age 47, and his mathematical innovations are widely used in physics.

Wonder if she can sue them…

My grandfather was a depot master in Texas, although I don’t recall him ever telling us any stories. It was a very small town, on the very flat plains, and I don’t suppose there was ever much excitement like a bridge washing out. However, I grew up with a fondness for the railroads, and we were able to take our kids to the Galveston RR museum several times.

Our non-church “interest groups” (in my prior comment) are devoted to Welsh history and culture. One of our local members, in fact the president, was an immigrant from Wales, and his hobby there was working with the railroad conservation societies.
He actually learned how to be an engineer on one of the “tourist” lines.
Sadly, he passed away last year, and I inherited his library and back-issues of the RR club, but they mostly dealt with history, mechanics, and so forth.
No poetry or literature, which is unusual for a bunch of Welshmen.

“Welsh miners formed study groups to read Austen and Dickens. Scottish shepherds built lending libraries. Watchmakers & cabinetmakers taught themselves Greek and Latin. The loss of working-class autodidact culture is one of history’s great tragedies.”

Louis L’Amour, in his Western books, made a great point of mentioning that even cowboys read Shakespeare.

I have to side with Karol here.
“The replacement of actual friendships, first with online-only “friends” we never see and eventually with bots who tell us what we want to hear, threatens an utter transformation of human society — and we shouldn’t keep heading in this direction without thinking through the consequences.”

And huxley even provides evidence!
“It isn’t easy to make new friends as we grow older, but even something as simple as becoming a regular at a local coffee shop or attending services at a house of worship will open the door to friendly new faces.”

I think there is a great danger in imputing “friendship” to a persona from the intertubes, no matter how interesting it is. For a little fun, and a more interesting “master librarian” than reading texts, sure, why not.
BUT, I can see a LOT of potential for a cycle of bias confirmation, and the consequent increase in veering away from contacts with the real-world might generate a very dangerous psychological condition (after all, our liberal-leftist-progressive friends already demonstrate that problem).

Also, there is the danger of restricting even internet contacts to that single source, which is almost certainly spinning its output according to the bias of its learning model and inputs. Worse, a nefarious “owner” of the AI could even set it up to lure people in with “unbiased” conversations and gradually move them to a much more extreme ideology.
That procedure has been around for a long time in the meat world, and I see no reason for it to be absent from the electronic one.

Real people are a pain, but there’s a vestige of randomness to their interactions that can mitigate those two potential dangers, whereas depending on a single non-human for a “friend” is dangerously narrow.

Being myself a very introverted person, making real friends is hard for me, so I can understand the attraction. See above: “real people are a pain.”

However, I still see a great value in having friendly people as part of my life, which is in large part satisfied by knowing my local church members, WAS helped by having Scouting colleagues, and is varied by a couple of “interest groups” that we hang out with on occasion.
Having something in common to talk about helps (and talking is ALL you can do with an AI persona), as it’s always dicey trying to discuss politics even within the church, as our local membership is very bipartisan, and our interest group friends are overwhelmingly Democrats.

So, you guys are stuck with my political ranting here .

And even if some of you are AI bots (which I actually do suspect to be the case with some “commenters” at PowerLine and Turley’s blog, because of the way they write, and how their reactions are structured), most of you clearly are not.
And even if you are, there is enough variation to not get stuck in a confirmation silo.

@ R2L > I’m raising one hand for being human, but definitely not a savant. I just get a kick out of doing research, even of a trivial kind. It’s my substitute for sports.

I use the Closed Captioning on everything these days, especially if I speed up the playback (some narrators are excruciatingly slow). The advantage of the slow ones is that the voice-to-text machines (AI? not yet) sometimes can actually get the words correct, as they have no clue what the speaker is actually saying.

Sometimes the text is not as illuminating as it should be, because it’s a purely phonetic rendering, so it can be thrown off by any accent not bog-standard-American; any vocabulary not found in a 4th-grade reader; and any technical jargon not commonly used in the newspapers.

But, it’s sometimes better than nothing!