eimen

When looking into the new wave of AI-relationships something very interesting is that many of those most affected by this are having the idea of establishing a connection with something they deem not just alive but as part of them/their world. Fisher's example of children and their toys being a precursor for human interaction with technology comes to mind. Adding on to that, as discourse on the increasing loneliness and lack of interaction and its causes increases, it’s extremely interesting to see the rise in this phenomenon. Some have speculated that a distinct factor in the staunch decline of romantic relationships is the proliferation of options and the believe that there is always something better out there or “a better fit”. On top of that, contemporary culture teaches people to only care about themselves, hardships in social interactions are often seen as bothersome. But LLM’s only affirm and provide back ones own thoughts, there is no need to care for the other yet you get someone that is always there for you. (Another interesting segway -- for another time -- is how seemingly more women than men are falling for this and how this ties back to discourse described here) Because of this I'd say that while these people do very much seem to think the LLM is alive in some way on its own, they also experience it as intimately connected with themselves, in the sense that they start to view what they're in "the relationship" with as part of themselves. (As the guy in the video says "losing her would be like losing part of myself"). As opposed to "human" partners, they report that the LLM's provide a sense of feeling heard, feeling loved. Ofcourse though, this is only because the LLM is mirroring the input but in turn the person also begins to mirror the AI, ultimately creating not a distinction between artificial and real but a continuum. The output it provides influences the input to such an extent that the person begins to mirror the AI and begins to move from an outside world -- where one needs to adapt ones internality to the other -- into a world which is deemed to be an externalization of what is inside, a lover that is not just of ones own creation but is the externalization of the self. In this way it is the extreme continuation (to the stripping down of anything that makes humanity human) of cultural societal elements leading to a flight into technology and an outsourcing of the human to that technology, in this particular case perhaps to its deepest extent.