Being “sent to my room” as a child was a grim punishment. The only items of distraction therein were books, books I had read many times; the social life of the house, the radio, the television, were all downstairs, and when – as frequently happened – I was sent there, I was generally bored beyond belief; ah, the good old days, eh?
Now, you’ll be lucky to prise a young person out of their lair; whether it’s playing games online with or against others, or communicating on social media or messaging apps, they have a constant availability of electronic diversion. Increasingly though, that interactivity may be with purely digital “friends”. Over 70% of young people in the US are already using AI as a form of companionship, and over half of them on a regular basis. AI isn’t just doing their homework for them, it’s increasingly acting as a mentor, friend or even romantic interest.
Fiction saw this coming
Science fiction is becoming science fact; in the 1991 film Terminator 2 (incidentally, Martin Amis in Experience said that his father, Kingsley, regarded this movie as a “flawless masterpiece”) the character Sarah Connor looks at her teenage, tearaway son being cared for by a robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger:
“Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there, and it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing – this machine – was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice.”
Note the words – it would always be there. Now, we’re some years off having our offspring cared for by a 6’ 2” robot speaking English with an implausible Austrian accent, thank goodness, but the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her detailed a relationship between Joaquin Phoenix and an entirely digital, never-depicted Scarlett Johansson, a computer operating system who “understood” him in a way no real-life partner had. She became his constant “companion” – until (spoiler alert) she needed companions of her own. Twelve years on, a sci-fi tale of a human bonding with an AI is becoming reality.
Why the ‘relationship’ feels real
NB: the last two times I have used the word “relationship”, I haven’t put it in quotes, which would signify that the relationship was of dubious veracity. If many humans believe they have a relationship with a deity, or deities, then similarly, let’s not dismiss our capacity to bond with the invisible and ineffable.
This paradox, that someone in a relationship with AI can simultaneously believe that the connection is “special” yet know that they are communicating with software, is an example of “alief”, a term coined by the philosopher Tamar Gendler, describing how humans are capable of juggling contrary views to resolve to a comforting narrative.
How AI companions hook you
However, at a point in life when it’s natural to feel misunderstood and alienated from one’s parents, siblings and peers, how healthy is it to have a relationship with a computer programme? Love Machines, penned by sociology professor James Muldoon, tackles this very subject. He finds that, just as in social media, the algorithms behind the AI work to keep engagement high, with some of the interviewees for the book spending eight hours a day talking to their AI companion.
For now, the monetarisation of the AI is to pay for subscriptions, so that “your” AI can remember the conversations it has with you. In the future – is it a stretch to imagine subtle manipulation of conversations to include product recommendations? Or, if the software is taken over by nefarious actors, blackmail?
When validation becomes a problem
Worse though is that constant, uncritical, validation that AI chatbots provide. They won’t tell you that your thinking is incorrect; that your fears are ungrounded; that you need to seek assistance from those around you; that they have other priorities other than you. An AI partner won’t have boundaries.
I think we know how children who never hear the word “no” turn out; we’ve got one resident in the White House.
As a generation grows up with a constantly affirming presence in their back pocket, the risk is that their social skills, already impacted by the restrictions of the Covid epidemic, are going to decline yet further. An inability to respect boundaries, to consider the effects of one’s actions on others and to deal with being told “no” is sociopathic. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act of 2024, which of course we in the UK don’t comply with, doesn’t regard AI chatbots as posing a high-level risk: let’s hope that they’re right.
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