Culture journalist Mihika Agarwal shares insights from her recent reporting in The Walrus on AI companion bots, which mimic the experience of a close, sometimes even intimate relationship.
“Think chat GPT, but it will pretend like it’s your lover or partner,” she said.
Agarwal compares the situation to the 2013 film Her, in which a character played by Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an artificial intelligence voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
“At the time, it was a dystopian sci-fi movie, but now it would be a documentary.”
She says a recent survey from a marketing consultancy found that 20 per cent of people in the U.S. have flirted with chat bots, with around a quarter of those who’d done so reporting that they were feeling lonely.
Agarwal says surveys and studies have shown that this kind of technology can reduce feelings of isolation in seniors, while she says there are some, like MIT researcher Sherry Turkle who are skeptical about the long term impacts of AI companionship technology on society. Agarwal says Turkle argues that in the long term, “this technology is ultimately going to jeopardize our ability to foster meaningful human relationships.”
Agarwal says when it comes to using AI bots for sex and intimacy specifically, one of the biggest issues is the data sets that are used to train the bots, which she says are biased and could mirror harmful issues already present in society.
“Engineers are actively making female sounding and female appearing bots to cater to a misogynistic gaze. Many experts and psychologists worry that this will parrot some of the themes and tropes of gender based violence,” she said.
She says regulators need to do a better job of designing policy interventions for this type of technology.
“It’s been shown in studies that redirecting people’s focus to evaluate truthfulness before sharing content online can reduce misinformation,” she said. “Similar design interventions and approaches could highlight the dangers of AI addiction and make AI systems less appealing as a replacement for human companionship.”
“The way that AI is presented to society really matters because it changes how AI is experienced.”
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