Mark Zuckerberg is right about loneliness but his solution is flat out dangerous
In the 2013 Spike Jonze film "Her," Theodore (played brilliantly by Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely writer who begins interacting with an AI system that names itself Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).
Spoiler Alert: As the operating system expands its capabilities via artificial "learning," Theodore becomes fully emotionally involved with the technology.
Meta wants to make this into a reality. Mark Zuckerberg went on a recent media tour to promote that Meta is seeking to transform its Meta AI chatbots into friends, under the guise of helping the very real loneliness epidemic.
He shared on a podcast, "The average American has, I think, it's fewer than three friends… And the average person has demand for meaningfully more," guessing that desired number at around 15. And instead of promoting connections with real souls, emotion, flesh and blood, he wants to fake that experience with technology-- the movie "Her" delivered to your smartphone.
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What could go wrong? A whole lot! As we have seen with social media’s negative impact on individuals, especially kids, leaving relationship engineering to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world seems like a terrible idea.
Humans are tribal and we desire connections, and yes, sometimes our connections aren’t optimal. From creating imaginary friends as children to settling for friendships or relationships that may be unsatisfying in certain areas, that’s all part of human experience.
Your imaginary friend is you exercising your creativity, and you have full control over it. While certain friendships and romantic relationships may be less than ideal, there are typically good and bad takeaways, benefits and issues, and learnings that you can apply to a new relationship and help you grow and develop as a person.
I often say that people don’t fall in love with other people; they fall in love with the way other people make them feel. "Friendship" bots exploit that human desire in a non-human manner, faking emotion and connection to ensnare and ultimately control the human user. It’s catfishing to an exponential degree, but done, ironically, with the consent of the human user.
The human experience is messy, not sanitized. Creating the illusion of a long-term perfect friendship or romantic relationship sets an impossible bar for human connections to be measured against. It’s one that can lead people into withdrawing from society and real connections instead of actively seeking them out.
A chat bot relationship is not utopian-- it is highly dystopian.
Of course, AI bots are not the only fake connection that technology has seized. On sites like Only Fans, users are spending billions of dollars to engage with attractive women and men, and many of those individuals hire stand-ins to do the chatting and connecting. It’s a new twist on the 1-900 number business model of previous decades, when anyone could be on the other end of the phone.
While these can be damaging behaviors, they don’t have the 24/7 connectivity and long-term fake intimacy of what an AI bot can create.
No matter what, AI will lack emotions, including empathy. They can fake it, but they can’t really feel it. However, when humans start to attach emotions to technology and to feel for them, they will become de facto humanized.
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This isn’t a concern about automation. It’s a concern about humanization.
And it’s a real concern. A recent IFS/YouGov survey found that a quarter of young adults already believe that AI has the potential to replace real-life romantic relationships. Other studies have found that companionship is a top use case for certain chatbots today.
It’s a dangerous road for humanity.
The climax of the movie "Her" comes about when one day, after unsuccessfully being able to connect with Samantha, Theodore demands to know if his "AI girlfriend" is connecting with anyone else—that is, cheating. Samantha answers that it is interacting with more than 8,300 other people and that it is in love with 641 of them.
Even technology can disappoint.
Human beings need more than dopamine hits. Humans need real flesh-and-blood interaction to grow, to flourish, to procreate and to have personal agency and sovereignty.
People should be encouraged to get off their phones and touch grass, meet other people and enjoy the world that the Lord created, not the fake world that technology has created.