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Advantage: Compared to prior AI helpers, they are more individualized.
Since many of the newest AI bots have built-in personalities and the capacity to remember past interactions, they go beyond mere speech or text recognition to provide a more engaging experience. Using “the modality of computer conversation,” Mark Wilson foresaw in Fast Company that “we will all be rethinking our relationship with computers in a profound way” in the coming months. Wilson stated that computing, which was “once simply about completing tasks, will become more personal, nuanced and, above all else, familiar than ever before,” as more individualized AI companions replace traditional aides.
Cons: They only imitate human communication.
Although it may be tempting to build a genuine relationship with AI companions, several experts caution that the technology just simulates genuine human contact. According to Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor at MIT, this “pretend empathy… takes advantage of the deep psychology of being human,” as reported by CNET. She understood why individuals could seek solace in virtual friendships. Turkle stated in MIT’s 2020 Technology Review that chatbots, “no matter how clever, can only disorient and disappoint,” in the end.
Advantage: They enable lonely or disenfranchised persons to find friendship.
AI bots provide some people a chance to engage with others they would not have otherwise had. Those of us fortunate enough to have families and close friends “may look down on tools like this, experiencing what they offer as a cloying simulacrum of the human experience,” Casey Newton wrote on the substack Platformer. “But I imagine it might feel different for those who are lonely, isolated or on the margins.” For instance, according to Psychology Today, “an AI chatbot can offer the gift of constant, caring companionship” to “the elderly in retirement homes or those isolated due to chronic illness.”
Cons: They may spread harmful ideas about relationships.
It is hardly unexpected that applications now let you create partners that can develop a love relationship as AI gets more engaging. With Eva AI, an AI girlfriend app, you can design the ideal virtual companion. However, Tara Hunter, acting CEO of the domestic abuse advocacy organization Full Stop Australia, told The Guardian that it is “really frightening” to have the power to create someone who you control and who complies with all of your demands. “Given what we know already that the drivers of gender-based violence are those ingrained cultural beliefs that men can control women, that is really problematic,” she said.
Advantage: You may practice managing actual interactions with their assistance.
Many users have claimed that AI chatbots enable them to rehearse personal or romantic scenarios in real life, despite all the critics. According to Rita Popova, chief product officer at Blush, there was “actually a lot of value for people in being able to practice more romantic speech and having these more intimate moments” after the teams behind the flirtatious Blush and Replika friend bots began hearing user stories, according to TechCrunch.
Con: They could have a detrimental effect on the birth rate.
“Enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men,” Liberty Vittert wrote for The Hill, referring to the popularity of interactive AI girlfriends. She contends that young men are unlikely to marry or have children with actual women if they choose AI girlfriends over relationships in real life. As the population declines over time, this may eventually result in a reduced workforce. According to Vittert, the tendency could have “devastating effects on the U.S. economy in less than a decade” if it keeps “a generation of lonely men to stay lonely and childless.”