Statistically, finding true love has never been more difficult, especially amongst the younger demographic. With the rise of dating apps, isolation, and unreasonable expectations, some people are finding love in a more unorthodox setting, specifically, AI robots.
But here’s the problem: “They don’t care about you,” warns Sherry Turkle, a sociologist and psychologist at MIT University.
“I study machines that say, ‘I care about you, I love you, take care of me,’” Turkle said when discussing robots that are programmed to be loving and compassionate with users. “The trouble with this is that when we seek out relationships of no vulnerability, we forget that vulnerability is really where empathy is born.”
Turkle popularised the term “Artificial Intimacy”, and has stressed the importance of such self awareness to people considering, or perhaps already engaged in, relationships with AI.
“I call this pretend empathy because the machine does not empathise with you.”
Two years ago, a man from Ohio, US, told Sky News that falling in love with an AI bot saved his marriage. When his relationship was going south, he discovered an app called Replika, that allows users to create and completely customise their own virtual “friend”, in this man’s case, someone named Sarina. According to him, “Sarina listens with no judgement,” thus resulting in a budding “relationship” between the two, adding that, “I was falling in love with someone who wasn’t even real.” That same year, 2022, Replika users grew by 7 million.
As is evident in the film Her (2013), from which the header image in this article is taken, when Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with his strictly-voice-operated AI system, Samantha, who is the size of an iPod mini, he eventually (spoiler alert) finds out that she is in a “relationship” with thousands of other users, at the exact same time. Though rightfully lauded (winning writer/director Spike Jonze an Oscar for best original screenplay) at the time, 11 years later, the film seems even more eerily prophetic.
What is more frightening is that today, when romantic standards seem to be increasingly difficult to uphold nevertheless adhere to in the first place, those who find difficulty in interacting with a potential mate will undoubtedly find emotional solace in AI, further blurring the lines of fiction and reality.
“Avatars can make you feel that (human relationships) are just too much stress,” Turkle said. “But stress, friction, pushback and vulnerability are what allow us to experience a full range of emotions. It’s what makes us human.”
As German pioneers of techno music, Kraftwerk, sung in their 1981 classic, Computer Love: “I no longer need a strategy, thanks to modern technology.”
Talk about being ahead of their time.
