People in 2024 aren’t just swiping right and left on online dating apps — some are crafting their perfect AI match and entering relationships with chatbots.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, recently shared his concerns about young men creating AI romantic partners and said he believes that AI dating will actually increase loneliness.
“This is a good example of an unexpected problem of existing technology,” Schmidt said in a conversation about AI dangers and regulation on “The Prof G Show” with Scott Galloway released Sunday.
Schmidt said an emotionally and physically “perfect” AI girlfriendcould create a scenario in which a younger male becomes obsessed and allows the AI to take over their thinking.
“That kind of obsession is possible,” Schmidt said in the interview. “Especially for people who are not fully formed.”
Given the chance to have your sexual and emotional fantasies fulfilled in a satisfying way, many many people will take it.
Obviously. But I haven’t yet seen anything from an AI that could fulfill either.
Depends on how low your standards are. I mean, there were [a small number of] people who convinced themselves that the 1960s chatbot ELIZA was a person with feelings, and the bots have only become more convincing since then. I can certainly see the modern ones fulfilling the emotional needs of someone who really, really wants to believe they’re speaking to a sapient being who cares about them, and as for the other, well, some people have pretty low sex drives or find phone sex fulfilling enough (at least for a time).
You’re looking at the AI equivalent of where stop frame animation was in 1930. It’s a few years old and rudimentary. Give it 80 years. That’s the time frame I was talking about.
50 years ago people saw the advancement of cars and assumed we’d have flying cars by now. Nobody predicted computers would be as ubiquitous as they are. The best method we have of drying clothes is still blowing warm air through them thousands of years later. Advancement isn’t guaranteed.
The problem is that a lot of men find real women scary.
Their idealised partner is, more or less, already a sexbot. A woman who dwmurely laughs at their jokes, listens intently when they talk, and showers them with praise.
They’re not looking for intelligence, humour, independent thought, creative expression; those things terrify them. They’re looking for a sexy lamp that asks them how their day went. If it can cook, clean the house, and do all the other things mommy used to do, so much the better.
