‘Better than a real man’: young Chinese women turn to AI boyfriends::Twenty-five-year-old Chinese office worker Tufei says her boyfriend has everything she could ask for in a romantic partner: he’s kind, empathetic, and sometimes they talk for hours.
Things like this make me wonder if the uncanny valley exists because we’ve previously developed computer technology in the past, and it destroyed civilization, taking with it everyone who couldn’t easily distinguish between humans and AI.
I like to think uncanny valley exists because of other homo species we would have interacted with in pre-history. Obviously this is just a fun theory since we have evidence of mixing.
The simple explanation I’ve heard is that the uncanny valley protects us from diseases etc. by making us stay away from very sick or dead people. A bloated corpse is still human, so you need some part of your head to say “stay away from that thing”.
Or genetic defects.
“Something about that person is extremely off-putting. I do believe I’m not going have sex with them.”
These headlines are more often just native ads for the apps being reported on. Don’t lose sleep over an eyeball-grabbing “techxplore.com” article based on a handful of testimonials from alpha users.
It’s hardly an idea that I only just formed from a headline. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, which only seems to collect more support as time goes on. One of the most prominent events I can recall was when TwitchCon built a foam pit for people to jump into, with a single layer of foam blocks over solid concrete, then even after a girl broke her back in it they still kept going. Computers are doing something very weird to people’s brains.
You can find young people ready to do silly reckless shit easily enough. But that’s one reason why shit like OSHA exists. But instead of San Diego DAs and safety regulators wading into the mess, what we saw was a bunch of Silicon Valley lawyers waving boilerplate release forms in an effort to obscure their own liability.
That’s a bit separate from a Computers issue. Its more a bullshit legalese issue that’s designed to keep working stiffs marginalized while tech companies do as they please.
TBF we haven’t set the bar particularly high.
Speak for yourself, I’m an absolute treasure.
old, buried underground and forgotten?
If all you want is attention and you’re not willing to reciprocate, then yeah, maybe computer is your best hope.
Maybe it’s more like not able rather than not willing. As someone in a happy relationship that can’t imagine my life without it, relationships are hard, and modern life is hard.
I mean, may they be happy. If they are not ready or able to commit to a relationship, but they need comfort in our increasingly lonely world, this may be a band-aid. A good solution would be to find out why people are lonely in the first place, and address it.
Is it loneliness or is it selfishness? They could get conversation online. This is a specific kind of “all about you” experience.
I’m not really arguing against it. If a person is happier having those emotions generated by a computer, good for them.
It’s kind of like porn, or a romance novel. Sometimes fiction is better than reality.
This was literally a joke in 30 Rock: Pay per view “porn for women” where it was literally just a hot guy saying into the camera “Tell me how your day was”, “I think you were right”, and “Well it’s his loss”
If men did this they would be labeled pathetic…
You’re 100% correct lol. Men who do this are roundly mocked and called sad creepy incels.
That said, the culture and dating scene for women in China is pretty awful. My ex was Chinese and had some awful dating stories, now she avoids dating Chinese men. Easy for her to do as she left china, but not everybody can/wants to.
We need to learn to be a little less mean to anybody who uses these apps. They’re likely doing it because they see little alternative, yet still want affection. Calling them losers, be they male or female, achieves nothing other than hurting them.
Only thing it does is makes mean people feel better about themselves by punching down.
If an AI friend is “better” than a normal friend, it looks like something in the social environment is seriously broken.
I mean, it will be. The AI friend is always available, always knows what to say, never fights with you, and never messes up (ideally).
However, all those things are part of the human element: and at the end, you’re still talking to a computer. The AIs are just trying to please you. A person can actually love you, and that’s something else. And I’d take that over the perfect chatbot any day.
The AI friend is always available, always knows what to say, never fights with you, and never messes up (ideally).
And isn’t that what people really want in a relationship? A perfect, frictionless yes-person trained to parrot whatever you wanted to hear six weeks ago.
The AIs are just trying to please you.
Its a bit worse than that. Monetized social media is designed to provoke engagement. So the AI isn’t trying to please you, its trying to maximize your utilization. That means establishing a clingy, desperate, attention seeking (ie, toxic) relationship that keeps you looking at your phone for as long as possible.
Its pleasurable in the same way a heroin addiction is pleasurable.
That’s just a friend, then. I would think a boyfriend would be a friend you could be physically affectionate to, which obviously you can’t with a chatbot. I’m not against people having virtual friends, I just don’t see why it’s a boyfriend.
same. it’s just clickbait adjacent wording to catch eyeballs for fun and profit.
Sounds like Chinese demographics are going to only get worse…
Why are you being downvoted? I have no context
No idea, I’m only pointing out the obvious.
