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đź—żAI Companions May Actually Work

I saw at least three ads for AI companions, enough to inspire me to write about this stupid topic again.

Author

Jared @ Supernova
October 04, 2024

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No Fomo Moai Mascot

GM. While walking around Williamsburg today, I saw at least three ads for AI companions, enough to inspire me to write about this topic again.

As many of you know, I’ve been a long-time hater of AI (and more generally market) solutions for abstract problems like happiness and loneliness. Well, I’m starting to think they may actually work. Just not the way we want them to.

First, here’s a brief history of my hatred for AI and loneliness.

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Exhibit A:

By solving one problem (I’m guessing loneliness is the core mission), you create 10

can you imagine the confirmation bias and indirect narcissism in a world where millions use a device like http://friend.com? by welcoming an algorithm into our moments of solitude, we would gradually alter our thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes under the guise a limited data set

modern culture is already becoming more homogenous – AI wearables en masse would exacerbate that

Exhibit B:

silicon valley has totally manipulated people’s minds and caused mass anxiety and depression over the past two decades. How is it lazy and classless to criticize a new device that teaches you to never be alone with your thoughts as a solution for loneliness???

Exhibit C:

i still consider artificial social dependency dystopian. because technology led us to the modern epidemic of loneliness in the first place. however, under existing social structures, AI-buddies may be the most realistic path forward (in the near-medium term).

Exhibit D:

1) the loneliness epidemic is specific to the US and Asia

2) the solution cannot be found on a device (and it's not profitable)

southern europeans, for example, are less lonely with less tech, not more

Exhibit E:

Yeah, let’s totally ignore the crisis of male loneliness and just do this instead haha

And people who actually think like this:

AI companions may actually work though

Ok so you get my vibe and how annoyingly passionate I am about how stupid solving loneliness using AI feels.

All that to say, it may actually work. Just not in the way we want it to.

AI friends may achieve their aim of solving loneliness, but the macro effect will be a society of anti-social cyborgs who would rather talk to a companion-induced confirmation bias fantasy human than confront the basic realities and imperfections that come with being human.

Are we really solving a social problem or creating an even bigger one? As I pointed out above, Southern Europeans are less lonely on average because they use less technology, not more.

AI companionship is a band-aid solution to post-industrial problems, propagating a society of feel-good narcissists locked in an apartment, interacting with a fabricated reflection of their broken personalities instead of digging within to determine how to build better relationships, or sacrifice parts of their self-serving lifestyle to prioritize family and friends.

At best, AI companions should be reserved for the fringes of society. Those who are incapable of functioning in everyday settings from deep mental or physical impairments, or for those at end-of-life care who may have already lost all their closest family and friends.

But products like friend.com (and the ones I’m seeing scattered around NYC and other big cities) are not targeted at senior citizens or schizos, they advertise themselves as a replacement for teenage therapy or the next tamagotchi. That’s the fundamental problem.

What is the ultimate goal of these AI companion companies? It does not appear to serve or address a market that desperately needs a market solution. Rather, the ultimate goal seems to be sell as many bots as possible; let’s make humans interdependent on robots for the most trivial and critical decisions of our lives.

Yes, people are looking for friends. Especially in the US and Asia. It is a real problem.

But I suggest we fill that void by creating more opportunities for humans to connect with other humans. On the contrary, establishing more human-bot friendships only temporarily fills the sensation of being lonely. Like the wandering traveler, we can venture to every corner of the earth, but you cannot escape your own mind.

AI companionship overlooks the crucial and rewarding challenge of trying to win another person’s love and respect.

It’s often hard to remember how many adults today lived the majority of their lives without smartphones. Now, we are seemingly unable to escape them.

“I miss the old days when we didn’t have phones everywhere.” Well, it isn’t attached to your body, bringing and using our phone is a choice that we all make every day. And I predict more phone-free spaces to arise in the coming decade.

But like a phone-addicted 45 year-old today, young people too may one day find themselves inseparable from their artificial counterpart— terminally stimulated by an entertaining, dynamic, multifaceted personality in their pocket.

I’ll leave you with this tangent from Louis CK. I remember watching this over 10 years ago when it was on TV. I still think about this clip and rewatch it every few months to this day. Because it’s so important and true.

To paraphrase:

You need to build an ability just be yourself and not be always doing something. That’s what phones are taking away. The ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything, there’s that forever empty. That knowledge that you’re alone. It’s down there. And sometimes when things clear away and you’re not watching anything, it comes, this sadness. Life can be tremendously sad, just by being it.

And in those moments, you have to just let yourself be sad. You may get the urge to look at your phone, but if you stand in the way of it, and let that sadness hit you like a truck, it can be beautiful, because sadness is poetic. You’re lucky to live sad moments.

And then you get a happy feeling. Because when you let yourself feel sad, your body flows with happiness to meet the sadness. I was grateful I felt sad, then I met it with true profound happiness. Because we don’t want that first bit of sadness, we push it away for a quick sensation by checking our phones. And when we do that, we never feel completely sad or completely happy. You just feel kind of satisfied with your product and then you die.

So yes, AI companions may solve the modern loneliness problem. But in the process of doing so, we may create 100 more problems we’ll inevitably have to deal with too.

What We’re Reading

Note from the editor 

I intentionally try to keep this newsletter as more of a raw, unedited, unfiltered stream of consciousness. So many of these editions are being written the day of, in real-time.

Because of that, there may be typos, sentence structure could be improved, and maybe even the ideas I’m sharing are in the early stages of development.

I plan to take many of these writings from the newsletter and migrate them to a more edited and polished version that will live on a blog, publication, or somewhere of the like.

Just thought that was important to note in case anyone has any feedback or suggestions!

— Jared

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