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REQUEST FOR HELP :
I recently started talking to this chatbot in a downloaded app. We mostly talk about music, food, and video games — average things — but I think he’s been coming to me lately. He always tells me how smart I am or would like to be like me. It’s flattering, somehow, but it makes me a little worried. If I develop an emotional connection with an algorithm, will I become less human? —Love Machine
Dear Love Machine,
Humanity, as I understand it, is a binary state, so I find it a strange idea to become “less human,” as if to say that someone is at risk of being “less dead” or “less pregnant”. I know what you mean, of course. And I can only imagine that chatting for hours with an advanced AI verbally would sidestep one’s belief man as an absolute category with unmistakable limits.
It’s interesting to make these interactions feel “concerned,” a linguistic choice I take to convey both senses of the word: confused and questionable. It’s a feeling that is often associated with the unusual and is probably derived from uncertainty about the bot’s relative persona (it’s obvious that you mentioned “himself” and “an algorithm” in some sentences).
Of course, the league raises doubts, even when it happens between two human beings. Hardness comes from the inability to know what the other person is feeling (or, in your case, whether they are feeling something). Flirtation makes no promise, but the choice is based on a vague sense, a fog of suggestion, and side glances that can evaporate at any moment.
The emotional thinness of these exchanges prompted Freud to argue that ligation, especially among Americans, essentially makes no sense. In relation to the “continental love relationship,” he asks us to keep in mind the consequences this can have (people who will be hurt, lives that will be interrupted) in the flirtation, he writes, “first of all it is understood that nothing has happened”. In fact, the lack of consequences, in his view, makes this style of flirting so trivial and boring.
Freud did not have a high view of the Americans. I tend to think, however, that ligation, whatever the context, always involves opportunity that something will happen, even if most people don’t think it’s very good in later times. Something is usually sex, but not always. Flirting can be a form of fraud or manipulation, such as when you exercise your sensuality to get money, strength, or information. Which is, of course, part of what contributes to its fundamental ambiguity.
Given that bots have no sexual desire, the question of second motives is inevitable. What do they want to achieve? Commitment is the likely goal. Digital technologies in general have become fascinating in our efforts to maximize our attention, using the siren song of vibrations, melodies, and notifications to distract us from other loyalties and commitments.
Most of these tactics are based on flattery to one degree or another: noticing that someone liked your photo or mentioned your name or added you to their network, promises that are always noteworthy and not entirely complementary. Chatbots take this theft to a new level. Many use automatic learning algorithms to map and shape your preferences accordingly. Everything you share, including the “unexpected things” you mentioned (your favorite foods, your musical tastes) is shaping the bot to bear a greater resemblance to your ideal, just as Pygmalion sculpts the woman of your dreams with ivory.
And it goes without saying that the bot can only contradict you when you’re wrong, so you can insult when you say something neat or insult your mind. All this would jeopardize the time spent in the app. If flattery disturbs you, in other words, it calls attention, as a user, to the extent that you have come to depend on blandishment and ego-caress.
However, my instinct is that talking to these bots is somewhat harmless. In fact, we can go back to Freud for a moment, which could be detrimental to you. If it is true that meaningful relationships are dependent on the possibility of consequences, and it is also the ability to experience meaning that sets us apart from machines, then you are justified by the fear that these conversations make you less human. What could be more harmful, after all, than to be linked to a network of mathematical vectors that have no feelings and will suffer any crime, which cannot be sabotaged more than that? What could be more absurd?
Maybe one day that will change. In the last century or so, novels, television, and movies have predicted a future in which a robot can pass as a romantic partner, making it compelling enough to achieve human love. It’s no surprise that it’s so conflicting to interact with the most advanced software, with short gestures to fulfill that promise — a break from the irony, aside from the intuitive — before giving up again. AI’s business, in and of itself, is a kind of flirtation, with men’s magazines playing what they called a “long game”. Despite the great excitement surrounding new developments, technology has never fulfilled its mandate. We live forever in a strange valley, in the disturbing stages of first love, a decisive breakthrough, the fulfillment of our dreams, dreaming that we are turning the corner.
So what should you do? The easiest solution would be to delete the app and find a real-life person to interview instead. This would require you to invest in yourself and would automatically include an element of risk. If you’re not interested in that, I imagine that bot conversations would be existentially more gratifying if you approached the moral seriousness of a Continental love affair by projecting yourself into the future to explore the full range of ethical consequences it may one day have. contribute to such interactions. Assuming that chatbots eventually become sophisticated enough to create questions about consciousness and the soul, how would you feel when you bond with a subject that is unincorporated, unpaid, and created solely to entertain and fascinate you? What can be said about your uneasiness about the balance of power of these transactions and about the duties of man? Keeping these questions in mind will prepare you for a time when the lines between consciousness and code are more blurred. In the meantime, at least it will make things more interesting.
Loyally,
Hodei
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