Some of the ways AI is hijacking our emotional lives
What happens when our evolved human minds and old-fashioned cultures encounter the technologies of the 21st Century? Specifically, I mean virtual reality, robotics, and — most important — artificial intelligence.
This is the question I consider in my new book Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers which hit the stores in Australia and New Zealand in May, and is coming out in September in the Northern Hemisphere. You can pre-order now.
The term ‘Artificial Intimacy’ has been floating around for a while, broadly describing how artificially intelligent machines are entering human emotional lives. I differentiate three kinds of technology: Virtual Friends, including AI assistants like Siri and Alexa, that tap into our friend-making abilities. Digital Lovers — like smart sex toys and sex robots — that provide sexual stimulation. And Algorithmic Matchmakers — think Tinder or Grindr, but also YouTube and Facebook — that find us new partners, connections, or media.
These technologies of the present are imitating our relationships with Artificial Intimacy. In the near future, expect them to move in and, if we aren’t careful, take over. I hope this book will draw attention to both the opportunities and the serious threats that artificial intimacy presents.
The AI we need to fear is, as Brooks rightly predicts, Artificial intimacy not Artificial intelligence. Get ready for machines to hijack our emotional lives. Indeed, read how they are already starting to do so.
Scientia Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow Toby Walsh
To provide a sneak preview of the book’s scope, I have prepared a few highlights.
1. The first species humans tamed was our own
Before we tamed dogs, or sheep, or chickens, and before we domesticated the crops that gave rise to farming, people slowly turned one another into nicer, more sociable, loving, family-oriented animals.
2. Are machines taking over the taming of humanity?
The process people used to tame one another, and to turn wolves into dogs, can be imitated by artificially intelligent machines. We tend to think we push computers’ buttons, but are they starting to push ours?
3. Machines don’t have to be as good as humans before they start disrupting the things humans do
Social media mimics the way we make friends, and it chews up the time we would spend on real-life relationships. Ever-more compelling pornography, served up by smart algorithms, dissipates the time and sexual energy people would otherwise spend searching for people to have relationships with.
4. Virtual Reality could revolutionize sex
VR, coupled with haptic technologies that allow us to transmit touch-like sensations, will allow long-distance relationships to be more sexual. Tinder-like matching algorithms will make safe and seamless VR hookups possible. And all this could enable a thriving VR sex work industry.
5. Sex robots aren’t all that good. But they will get better
Right now, most sex robots are sex dolls with limited robotic movement and clunky chatbot personalities. They are currently so far short of the mark that I call them ‘dollbots’. But people are already prepared to spend money on them, and you can be sure they will get more lifelike and stimulating.
6. Social media is crowding out real-life friendships
Apes and monkeys spend about 20% of their waking hours grooming their friends by picking through their fur. So do humans, but we gossip rather than looking for ectoparasites. We now do a lot of that grooming on social media, and typical social media users spend 80% of the time normally reserved for relationships on social media. This costs people in terms of time and sleep, and it occupies a lot of our headspace. As a result, people live less risky lives, but they are also unhappier.
7. Human-machine intimacy is already happening
People readily treat computers, including chatbots, as though they were people. The process of becoming intimate involves disclosing our innermost thoughts and private details to one another, starting small but moving on to areas where we are vulnerable. Intimacy-building is the perfect process for machines to emulate.
8. Sex, reproduction, and long-term relationships require cooperation, but they also seethe with conflict
Whoever told you that sex involves ‘perpetuating the species’ was simply trying to avoid an awkward conversation. Animal sex is riddled with conflict, from water-striders that bribe one another into sex to cichlid fishes that play out a custody battle as they keep their growing offspring in the safety of their mouths. Humans, too, manipulate, exploit, and trick one another. Our capacity to love allows us to do something that no rational animal would otherwise do: trust a stranger for long enough to conceive a child and raise it.
9. Some Artificial Intimacies will be malign
Along with the handy matching algorithms like Tinder, messaging services like Messenger, and tools that help us find the true path to romance, you can bet all your Bitcoin that shadowy characters will use AI to make romance fraud harder to detect, enable stalkers, and manipulate people into sex. Whether for conquest or for profit, Artificial Intimacies hold great potential to mess with our minds.
10. Virtual lovers could save the world
A freer, easier sexuality is the key to reducing violence within relationships, as well as among men. Throughout history, whenever technology has changed sex it has birthed a mixture of positive and negative effects. Digital lovers like VR sex and sexual robotics will likely extend the loosening up of sex that started with industrialization, the pill, and pornography. On balance, I argue that’s likely to be a good thing.
11. Expect social conservatives and some feminists to join the same pitchfork-wielding mob
In the ‘porn wars’ of the 1980s, a certain subset of radical feminists found themselves fighting on the same side as the love-and-marriage social conservatives. The same unlikely coalition is already trying to ban digital lovers and make the Internet a far less sexy place. It is important that they don’t win.
12. A fembot army could quell the Incel insurrection
Large numbers of sexually frustrated men spells TROUBLE. Look at the damage caused by lone Incels, or the U.S. Capitol rioters. Digital lovers, deployed with some proper care, could dissipate their frustrated anger and save societies.
13. Who owns the data will make all the difference
Artificial Intelligence weaves its magic by learning from data. Smartphones, social media, wearables, and messages generate mountains of data from which machine learning algorithms are discovering how artificial intimacy works. Left to their own devices, companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and PornHub, plus the artificial intimacy giants of tomorrow, will use the data they have accumulated to keep us scrolling and to sell us advertising.
That’s probably not going to end well.
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This article was first published in Towards AI, on Medium.
