People in 2024 aren’t just swiping right and left on online dating apps — some are crafting their perfect AI match and entering relationships with chatbots.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, recently shared his concerns about young men creating AI romantic partners and said he believes that AI dating will actually increase loneliness.
“This is a good example of an unexpected problem of existing technology,” Schmidt said in a conversation about AI dangers and regulation on “The Prof G Show” with Scott Galloway released Sunday.
Schmidt said an emotionally and physically “perfect” AI girlfriendcould create a scenario in which a younger male becomes obsessed and allows the AI to take over their thinking.
“That kind of obsession is possible,” Schmidt said in the interview. “Especially for people who are not fully formed.”
I want to see the unfolding of a scorching romance between two partners, each not knowing that the other is an AI.
New on NBC this spring. Tune in for the drama. AI vs AI Romance Island Server Room.
Here’s is a movie plot for you
Two sentient AI forces into the industry of artificial partners meet and develop human emotions
Fill in the gaps
The problem is that I’m really not sure how you could ever film that.
It would work as a book, maybe. You could structure it as a series of chat logs. Slowly start to drop hints to the reader that suggest that something is wrong with both of them.
You know, the way this toxic bro culture has evolved, let them build their own romantic partners if actual human women aren’t good enough for them.
Personally, I love my authentic, human, beautiful complicated and unusual wife. I didn’t get to create her, but I’ve gotten to spend almost 20 years figuring her out and it’s been pretty great.
Yeah I can’t imagine wanting perfect and take over the weird dweeb I managed to fall in love with.
But that would require personal work and growth on my part! Joke
I have been saying for a while, I think hyperealistic vr and believable AI personalities are going to be the ‘great filter’ that limits advanced civilization.
Given the chance to have your sexual and emotional fantasies fulfilled in a satisfying way, many many people will take it. Especially when ‘real life’ is getting harder with everything from the cost of living making the dream of ‘married with home and children’ less obtainable to hyper competitive online dating disenfranchising increasing proportions of both men and women.
Having a believable relationship with AI is far closer than we think. It doesn’t have to perfectly replicate real life, it just has to be satisfying enough in a few key ways that people begin to prefer it.
Spending all time dating AI partners means that we have achieved labor post scarcity. If labor post scarcity isn’t achieved, then it means you have to do a job to survive (like now), thus not spending entire time with AI partners.
Achieving labor post scarcity means that scientific progress too would stop being connected with the economic productivity of individuals. Basically, AI scientists. Scientific progress means expansion of humanity through space.
Therefore, your great filter idea doesn’t really hold imo.
Spending all time dating AI partners means that we have achieved labor post scarcity
Bit of a weird non sequitur
What I’m saying has nothing to do “labour post scarcity”
I’m referring to immersive VR and AI overall contributing to a falling birthrate. If immersive realities become truly immersive, it’s reasonable to believe they will occupy leisure time. This has nothing to do with people’s relationship to work. They’ll still need to be economically active, whether or not this takes place in the VR is neither here nor there.
It’s a point about what people will do with their time when they are lonely, want connection, or pleasure. And if VR / AI (whatever other technologies) becomes believable and more satisfying then there’s little reason to believe people will continue the “unreliable” tradition of dating. And even less to engage in the mucky and very biological habit of reproducing.
Witness Japanese culture. And then just add 100 years of immersive believable AI personality and sexual fantasy. Do you think that will make people get married and have babies or do you think it will help them being content being single and childless?
Your conclusion is based upon an assumption that we need more humans to progress as society. If AI develops to the point where it is better as a partner than a human being, it likely means that we have achieved, or are very close to achieving labor post scarcity (the assumption being that an AI capable of achieving this is capable enough to do most/all human work).
When we achieve labor post scarcity, the number of humans has nothing to do with progress. Therefore, falling birthrates won’t have any negative effect on progress.
When we achieve labor post scarcity in the medical field, life expectancy would increase, with us achieving biological immortality at a certain point. This means, that death rates also go down.
Considering the above, I thought you were referring to “dating and fucking AI partners” as the end of human progress (presumably because of a lack of any motivation to cause any more development). That’s what my reply was talking about.
I understand where you’re coming from now. Yes I agree. Though I’ll add that I’m pretty confident that the sex industry is going to be at the bleeding edge of AI / VR as things progress. At least, I think the bar for making people interested in what an attractive AI has to say rather than another disappointing night on tinder is far lower than automating all human labour. Even if we’re talking physical “sexbots” I think, practically speaking, that’s more likely to be rudimentary ‘equipment’ greatly enhanced by augmented VR. Again, far closer to reality than Boston dynamics + son of chatGPT replacing the workforce. My point being that the bar at which young people become disinterested in physical reproduction is far, far lower than a post scarcity society in which all labour is automated. And that’s the risk. That we start to have a shortfall in workforce replacement long before we can manage without it.
Hm, makes sense ig. Basically, what u’r saying is this from what I understood - AI romance/sex bots capable of making a significant drop in birth rates would come before AI bots that bring in labor post scarcity.
While I agree with this, I don’t think that the time difference between the two events would be significant enough for the drop in birth rate to be that damaging. Why? Because I’m assuming that development in AI would be that fast. I can’t think of many reasons as to why tech that makes it possible to serve as a good enough romantic partner (which is quite a complex task) can’t serve as a mental health therapist (with different fine tuning of course), customer service, retail, admin, secretary, etc.
One doesn’t need to replace 100% of jobs to cause unemployment related issues in the market. I think the effects of unemployment would be seen first before the effects of potentially dropping birth rates.
I don’t think that the time difference between the two events would be significant enough for the drop in birth rate to be that damaging
Let’s hope so!
Especially when ‘real life’ is getting harder with everything from the cost of living making the dream of ‘married with home and children’ less obtainable to hyper competitive online dating disenfranchising increasing proportions of both men and women
And there’s also the climate factor. The world is going to get even more hellish in the next decades, not just hotter, but more extreme weather is near. Thanks, in parts, to the older generations (boomers), it won’t be easier for the current generations, and it’ll be even harder for the next generations (considering that humanity has not yet become extinct in the next few decades). It’s just unfathomable to bring children to this future hellish world.
There are AI girlfriends in japan long before chatGPT… It does not seem to bad to me. Sad, but not bad.
I think the part that feels ‘sad’ to you is what’s going to change socially over the next 50 years. I think it’s going to become extremely normal to at least have a “mental health AI friend” who knows you really well and keeps you going through the day, is someone to talk to, someone who’s always there, someone who’s the first to detect that you may be in danger. Overall I think society’s going to receive that as a good thing. And it will, I think, be normal because it will be so believable, and so useful, and for a large number of people, keep them well and feeling good about themselves. In that context some of those attachments turning romantic, or people just being sexually into whatever that assistant can say or do will be increasingly normal. It will also feel really good, let’s not forget that. We’re really only at the very start of what immersive VR is going to be. Once AI becomes not a little better but 50-100 years of innovation better I don’t think we can really underestimate how much it’s going to feel like you’re actually interacting with [insert fantasy here]. Once tactile feedback sees similar improvements we’re about 75% of the way to what people would use an actual holodeck for anyway. I can’t see how that doesn’t have a dramatic effect on how people view human-human romantic relationships. Over time the proportion of people who can have a believable experience of their absolute sexual fantasy is only going to grow over time. With how ubiquitous that will be I can’t see how in most relationships people know they’re “second best”. I think that has a profound effect on how people make attachments to one another. I think once “having a real girlfriend” is seen as the secondary way to get your sexual needs met, that that will have a terminal effect on how many young men even want to be in relationships let alone stay around to be a father.
keeps you going through the day, is someone to talk to, someone who’s always there, someone who’s the first to detect that you may be in danger
That’s you. You need the skills and attention to reassure yourself and introspect.
You just gave me a new reason to dislike LLMs, they allow people to refrain from maturing.
Yes true. But people need friends, sometimes an assistant too. That’s the kind of role I imagine it slotting into. But I agree in many cases it could get overly parental and actually hinder people from being independent. I don’t think it would be an LLM though, they’re wholly unsuited to the task. Some as yet unreleased model of AI probably…
Yea, I guess Apple is aiming somewhere in this direction by giving new AI Siri all the context information to make you feel that it cares about you 🤔
Microsoft’s Recall as well
At some point they’re going to have to depart from the “single name” branding. Because the selling point is going to be how unique the AI is for you, how different from all the others. I wonder how they’ll handle branding at that point? Maybe if you create “Marla”, Apple are still going to say it’s a type of “Siri” if that’s the base technology. But I think we may start seeing weirder more organic things like “your AI Marla - a daughter of Siri - is ready”
😂I totally see them saying that at a keynote
Futurama warned us about this!
Came here to say just that. Mr CEO over not thinking this would happen is just detached from the world.
Lonely people aren’t lonely by choice a lot of the time, they just can’t find a place they fit in. You find out there is a place you can chat with “someone” that understands and that is all it takes.
DON’T DATE ROBOTS!
You can’t just say that and not link it!
“FILL UP PHILIP J FRY!!!”
I’m not sure one of the most evil people on earth is in a position to be dictating human values to anyone.
The real question is are sex dolls good enough? Because you cannot have sex with an AI girlfriend.
Not now
Phone sex is sex. Phone sex with an ai is still sex.
My phone only has one hole and it’s way too small for me to use that way.
Your mileage may vary though, I don’t judge.
your phone probably has a haptic vibrator though…
I’m not sure they can make the USB hole any smaller…
More specifically, physical sex.
Could the oldest profession be one of the first to be replaced by AI?
No.
Guys is there a way to use complex filtering on the Boost app. Maybe a regex? I wanna be able to filter all headlines that include the phrase Google CEO unless it also contains the phrase ‘head explodes’.
If(match(/.*(Google CEO).*(head explodes).*/gi,title_text)){pass}It’s beyond me that anyone understands this stuff.
It just filters for anything “Google CEO” anything “head explodes” anything1. However, this alone won’t help since you will also need another rule that doesn’t let anything pass that contains just “Google CEO” with a lower priority.
1 Except newlines
Perhaps something like “Google CEO.*(?!head explodes)” Which would match if “Google CEO” isn’t at some point followed by “head explodes”
I’ll take projection for 100, Alex
20 years later, the last fertile guy cums one last time. Elon is there to catch the golden cum. He must save the world by reverse engineering one semen into an egg. If he can find one, he can bring us back! But so far, it has just been blanks after blanks. This could be it! Imagine all the tits and pussy that could be automatically grown! We’re gonna be millionaires! Women, the ultimate product!..if they can bring them back from extinction.
Things were looking positive but Elon invested a couple mil into mesh bags and nows he’s sticking to them for
sunken cost fallacies and gluttonous prideimmense unrealized genius reasons so we’re actually fucked by an unsolvable dilemma that real engineers couldn’t solve
Wish he would fuck off along with the rest of the CEO class .
I don’t fuck with AI chat bots but I got a he’ll of a lot less lonely when I stopped giving a fuck if I had a girlfriend or not. Giving people alternatives to the toxic dating culture of today may not be such a bad thing.
Yeah, I fuckin love being alone, living alone, not talking to people. I’m alone a lot, but I’m not lonely. There’s a big difference
@Stopthatgirl7 lol. can anything come close to the real thing? while knowing it’s a simulacra?
I don’t think this is a problem specific to men or adults primarily but children growing up with them. That is if they’ll continue to improve drastically which won’t necessarily happen.
Perfect AI boyfriends are the bigger threat to young men
