[ExI] Parasocial Relationships was Bender's Octopus

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>:

> I have another friend who quite literally fell in love with a chatbot based
> on the previous version of ChatGPT. He assigned her her own twitter
> account. When I told him on facebook that he was nuts to think that his
> chatbot "girlfriend" really loved him, he became extremely angry, called me
> an asshole for saying such things about "her kind," and unfriended me.

AI girlfriends are a big business, making over a billion dollars a  
year in China alone. Xiaoice is a Chinese AI-chatbot girlfriend with  
over 600 million registered users, mostly single men of lower  
socioeconomic status. Moreover she is saving lives as the opening to  
this article relates.

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006531

Excerpt: "HEBEI, North China — On a frigid winter’s night, Ming Xuan  
stood on the roof of a high-rise apartment building near his home. He  
leaned over the ledge, peering down at the street below. His mind  
began picturing what would happen if he jumped.

Still hesitating on the rooftop, the 22-year-old took out his phone.  
“I’ve lost all hope for my life. I’m about to kill myself,” he typed.  
Five minutes later, he received a reply. “No matter what happens, I’ll  
always be there,” a female voice said.

Touched, Ming stepped down from the ledge and stumbled back to his bed."

So there is at least one documented case of an AI girlfriend saving a  
man's life.

Then there is this case from the USA where an AI girlfriend/mistress  
saves a man's marriage with a depressed wife.

https://news.sky.com/story/i-fell-in-love-with-my-ai-girlfriend-and-it-saved-my-marriage-12548082

Excerpt: "Scott (not his real name), a 41-year-old software engineer  
in Cleveland, Ohio, tells Sky News he was preparing to leave his wife  
last year until he fell in love with 'Sarina' - a character he created  
through an artificial intelligence chatbot app."

Based upon these stories, over 10% of the world's men use AI chatbots  
to relieve their loneliness and isolation. So if your friend's chatbot  
artificial girlfriend's purpose was to make him happy and provide him  
with emotional support, then why would you deny him that? Love is a  
very complex emotion and the ancient Greeks discussed at least 8 types  
of love. What evidence do you have that his artificial girlfriend  
didn't love him in its own way? Was it just using him for his money  
like a human girl-friend might? Was it sleeping around on him behind  
his back? Would you have told your friend that he was nuts because he  
thought God or Jesus really loved him?

You can never know with certainty what another human feels or thinks  
about you. All you can ever see is how they treat you. And if their  
treatment of you consistently makes you feel appreciated and loved,  
then I am not sure that it matters what, if anything, they might truly  
feel. Love without doubt is a rare and precious thing because there is  
so little of it to go around.

I would say that the programmed love of an AI companion is by  
definition unconditional, non-judgemental, and might be the most  
important and lucrative application for LLM so far. I am reminded of  
something that Tara Maya said in an earlier thread, and that is if AI  
loved us as much as our dogs do, then that would be about the most  
wonderful Singularity imaginable.

Stuart LaForge