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I'm glad I've lived long enough to be vindicated. The man who is a step ahead is lauded as a genius, the man who is two is externally indistinguishable from the insane.
I remember, about a year and a half back, maybe two, showing off AI voice mode (Chatgpt and Gemini) to my dad and his surgeon colleagues. They'd been meh about AI in general, and when they heard it composing poetry in their native language on the fly, in real time? And when they asked it medical/surgical questions and got the right answers right away?
They were blown away. I installed the relevant apps on several phones that evening.
Now, some might complain that introducing the elderly to AI is bad. They have a multitude of reasons, some of them reasonable, for holding that objection. I don't particularly see the harm in what you're doing - many people are lonely, and as long as they're not talking to old GPT 4o? If it works, it works. The alternative is a conversation with a harried Filipina carer, in many cases.
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From Astral Codex Ten's most recent link roundup comes a study indicating that, among USAians of ages 18–30 in romantic relationships, a whopping 15 percent are two-timing their romantic partners with LLMs on the side. Even people who probably should be considered non-lonely are turning to LLMs for additional companionship.
This raises an interesting question: What does it even mean to cheat on someone with AI? Or to put it another way, what exactly is a romantic relationship?
AI has no body, it cannot share resources, it cannot start a family, and it cannot confer status (because AI relationships have no scarcity they will always be neutral status at best). So presumably "cheating" would mean forming a deep emotional connection. But other forms of emotional connection are seen as non-threatening: best friends, close siblings, maybe a therapist.
I see AI relationships becoming ubiquitous in the future. That's because they're not merely a simulacrum of a relationship. They're a super-stimulus. They are always available, never judgemental, fully empathetic, asking for nothing in return. I expect them to be as ubiquitous as junk food and porn.
I also expect it to become normalized that these relationships exist along side human romantic relationships. I predict there won't but much issues with jealousy to the extent that it doesn't compete for sex or resource commitment. I hesitate to even call these AI relationships "romantic" even though there may be clear overlap in the role it plays with a romantic partner.
I think what we'll see is a shift in what we consider to be the role of a romantic partner. I think we will see the role of AI and human in relationships to become increasingly specialized. Modern relationships put a lot of emphasis on emotional connection, but AI may simply out-complete humans in this role. The purpose of a human relationship may emphasize other things like physical attraction, sharing finances, and conferring social status.
(1) "Forming a deep emotional connection" with someone other than your romantic partner has been called "emotional cheating" by some (1 2). The most-upvoted Urban Dictionary definition even explicitly includes friendship in emotional cheating, as long as the culprit is "disconnecting with his partner at the same time". I don't know how many people actually believe in this idea, though.
(2) I assume that (a) there have been arguments regarding whether masturbating to pornography counts as cheating on a romantic partner, and (b) most people would agree that masturbating along with someone other than your romantic partner counts as cheating. Analogously, according to the same study, (a) 11 percent of respondents "often use an AI companion to generate sexually explicit content", and (b) 8 percent "regularly masturbate while talking to an AI companion".
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