As our lives become more and more digital and spend more time interacting with creepy human-like chatbots, the line between human connection and machine simulation is beginning to blur.
Today, a recent Match.com survey found that over 20% of Daters use AI to use AI to create dating profiles, trigger conversations, and more. Some people are taking that further by forming emotional bonds, including romantic relationships with their AI peers.
Millions of people around the world use AI peers from companies such as Replika, Cargeter AI, and Nomi AI, including 72% of US teens. Some people report falling in love with more common LLMs like ChatGpt.
For some, the tendency to meet bots is dystopian and unhealthy, a real version of the film “Her” and a signal that real love is being replaced by a code from a high-tech company. For others, AI companions are lifelines, ways in which they feel seen and supported in a world where human intimacy is becoming increasingly difficult. A recent study found that a quarter of young adults believe that AI relationships could soon be completely replaced by human relationships.
Love doesn’t seem strictly human anymore. The question is, should it be? Or is dating an AI better than dating a human?
It was a topic of discussion at an event I attended in New York City last month. TechCrunch was given exclusive access to publish the full video (which includes asking questions to debateists because I am a reporter and can’t help myself!).
Journalist and filmmaker Nayeema Raza hosted the discussion. Raza was previously an on-air executive producer of the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast and is currently the host of the “Smart Girl Dumb Questions.”
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Hitting for AI Friends is Thao Ha, an associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University and co-founder of the modern love group, defending techniques to enhance the ability to love, empathy and happiness. In the discussion, she argued that “AI is an exciting new connection… not a threat to love, it’s an evolution.”
The human connection was repeated by Justin Garcia, executive director and senior scientist at Kinsey Institute and chief scientist at Match.com. He is an evolutionary biologist focusing on the science of sex and relationships, and his upcoming book is entitled “The Antimate Animal.”
You can see everything here, but read on to get a sense of the main discussion.
I’m always there for you, but is that a good thing?
Ha says that AI peers can provide people with emotional support and validation that many people don’t get in relationships.
“AI listens to you without ego,” Ha said. “It adapts without judgment. You learn to love in a consistent, responsive, and perhaps safe way. You understand you in a way that no one else has. It is fully interested in your thoughts. You can even surprise you with poetry.
She asked the audience to compare this level of usual attention to “your erroneous ex or perhaps your current partner.”
“The one who sighs as you start talking, or who says, ‘I’m listening’ without looking up while continuing to scroll on the phone,” she said. “When was the last time they asked how you are doing, what you are feeling, what you are thinking?”
Ha admitted that because AI is not aware, he has no assertion that “AI can love us genuinely.” That doesn’t mean people don’t have the experience of being loved by AI.
Garcia retorted that relying on machines that are encouraged to answer in the way you like is actually not good for humans to constantly test and pay attention. He argued that it was not a “honest indicator of relationship dynamics.”
“I don’t think so in this way that AI will replace the ups and downs and the messiness of the relationships we long for.”
Training wheel or replacement
Garcia said that AI peers could be a good training wheel for certain people, like Neurodivergent people, who may be worried about going to date and may need to practice how to cheate or resolve conflicts.
“If you’re using it as a tool to build your skills, yes… I think it can be very useful for a lot of people,” Garcia said. “Is that the idea that it will be a permanent relationship model? No?”
A study from Match.com Singles in America released in June says that if a partner works with AI, it would consider an affair.
“Now, on the other hand, that [Ha’s] Point, people say these are real relationships,” he said. And human animals do not tolerate threats to their relationships over the long term. ”
How can you love something you can’t trust?
Garcia says trust is the most important part of relationships and people don’t trust AI.
“According to recent polls, a third of Americans believe that AI will destroy humanity,” Garcia said in a recent YouGov poll, 65% of Americans have little faith in making ethical decisions on AI.
“A little risk is exciting for a short-term relationship, an overnight stand, but in general you don’t want to wake up next to someone you think will kill you or destroy society,” Garcia said. “We cannot thrive with people, creatures, or bots that we don’t trust.”
Ha countered that people tend to trust their AI peers in ways similar to relationships.
“They trust it with their lives and the most intimate stories and emotions they have,” Ha said. “On a real level, I don’t think AI can be saved right now when a fire occurs, but I think people trust AI in the same way.”
Physical touch and sexuality
AI companions could be the best way for people to perform their most intimate and vulnerable sexual fantasies, HA said people can see some of those fantasies using adult toys and robots.
But it is not a replacement for human touch. Garcia says it is programmed as something we want biologically. He noted that many people are feeling “the hunger of touch” because of the isolated digital age we are in. This is because engaging in a comfortable touch like a hug causes the brain to release the pleasant hormone oxytocin.
Ha said he is using other tools, such as potentially tactile suits, to test human touches between virtual reality couples.
“The potential for touch in VR and the connection with AI is also huge,” HA said. “The tactile technology being developed is actually booming.”
The dark side of fantasy
Intimate partner violence is a problem around the world, and many AI are trained in it. Both HA and Garcia agreed that, for example, AI could have problems amplifying aggressive behavior. Especially if it’s a fantasy where someone is playing on AI.
That concern is not unfounded. Studies have shown that men who see more porn that could include violent and aggressive sex are more likely to be sexually aggressive with their real partners.
“The work by one of my Kinsey Institute colleagues, Ellen Kaufman, looked at this exact issue of consent language and how people train chatbots to amplify nonconsensual languages,” Garcia said.
He noted that people use AI peers to experiment with good and evil, but the threat is that you can train people on how you are an offensive and nonconsensual partner.
“We have enough of it in society,” he said.
Ha believes these risks can be mitigated with thoughtful regulations, transparent algorithms, and ethical design.
Of course, she made that comment before the White House released its AI Action Plan. This says nothing about the transparency that many frontier AI companies are opposed to. The plan also seeks to eliminate many regulations around AI.
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