AI Girlfriends | Issue #20
Would you date a computer?
7 MINS READ
Hello,
This is our 20th issue. Thanks for joining me on this journey.
You missed our daily issues for yesterday and the day before because of scheduling problems.
It’s rectified now.
Well, it’s particularly challenging to write a daily newsletter.
Much harder is that this newsletter doesn’t focus on news updates.
I am happy that you like every issue.
Now that it seems I have nailed the ‘writing everyday’ part, I am working on a system to ensure things keep rolling uninterrupted.
Even though power fails on me and data is 0.
Thanks for the support.
PS: This issue was meant for Tuesday 14.
I have been thinking of writing my analyses of how AI is portrayed in pop culture and media rather than the lean swipes I have been taking.
With the launch of Humane’s AI Pin, I read many X’ers (fka Twitter users) comparing the wearable tech to an AI in a movie that was released exactly a decade ago.
That’s why I downloaded Her (2013) last night.
This afternoon, after doing a boat full of laundry while playing three songs from Brent Faiyaz’s new album over and over, I landed in a couch and propped my laptop on my thigh.
No popcorn.
Who even considers that in Nigeria?
I am not really a fan of romance, but this one was a surreal mix; a romantic sci-fi drama.
After watching, I think it’s a great story.
It’s a vivid vision for something like what we’re seeing today. Writer and director, Spike Jonze wasn’t looking too far into the future. Well thought out.
Without spoiling too much, the movie explores the subjects of human-level intelligence, loneliness, our societal conceptions of love, sex and romantic relationships and the impact of technology on these shared (sacred) social experiences.
It doesn’t attempt the hard questions.
It boldly thrusts them in our faces, answers them and wraps up.
The feeling is palpable. Credits scene is rolling up and you’re staring at the screen and thinking,
“Wow, this is kinda a documentary wrapped in a fond love story where the guy is not exactly handsome like DiCaprio or Gosling and the girl doesn’t even show her face”.
Not even for once.
Yet, she is so charming and has the best laugh and is the right amount of clingy that you can imagine she has smooth black flowing hair and rose cheeks.
She is caring and kind and super-super smart but it doesn’t scream ‘nerd’.
And she lives in a computer.
Log-pargraphs
The movie tells the tale of a recently divorced writer.
As he struggles to cope with the complex emotions of the split, his days spew along in a poodle of AR video games and internet porn. He goes on one or two dates, but they don’t just click. (pun not intended).
Just about this time, his friendly AI assistant (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) helps keep him company and an unlikely romance blossoms.
Going on,
Humans are largely emotional beings.
It is the primitive part of us. Our ‘older’ side. Biologists say our priced reason evolved relatively recently.
In contrast, we largely perceive computers as cold, emotionless contraptions.
With this in mind, it’s easy to see why most of our conceptions of how human-level AI will affect our lives seem to evaluate it from a rational standpoint.
You know, how it’ll take our treasured jobs and excel at rational tasks.
Well, we don’t seem to think much of our AI can affect us emotionally.
And this is what Her nailed.
What is going wrong?
In a world teeming with 8 billion people, isn’t it paradoxical that we are plagued by the Loneliness Pandemic?
Studies say 1 in 3 Americans report that they feel lonely.
And this is not reserved for the senior citizens.
It is alarming that even young people feature significantly in these surveys.
Tech bros are making money off virtual girlfriends.
These charming chatbots pretend that they are girls interested in you. You have limited chat time, well, except you pay. And you know these but who cares?
And it is quite lucrative.
I read where one VG developer reported that theirs was on track to make $1M in its very first month.
While I’m not trying to oversimplify the reasons for this wave of loneliness, we are well aware of the negative impacts of our overdependence on technology.
We are also aware of how it is eroding normal human relationships and our propensity to socialize.
The idealistic virtual societies online seem to provide “succour” from everyday ‘pesky’ humans.
Social media is taking up too much real estate that we’d have spent with family and friends.
I am not being preachy.
Seeing him that way, I saw the extremes that anyone could go if we are absorbed in virtual experiences.
It seems the catch is: They just have to be real enough.
Eww, I’d never date an AI
If you had an AI that could reason like a human, was never tired of talking with you, was curious, fun and empathetic.
He/she helps you when you’re down, motivates you, jokes with you and makes you smile.
Isn’t easy to see that you could become ‘friends’?
And if this AI really seems to appreciate you as a person, and you’re lonely, is it hard to imagine that you might have a ‘connection’?
Touching things up
What about the fact that intimacy is an important aspect of romance?
While you may have a long-distance partner, I can bet the prospects of meeting that person features heavily in whatever form of correspondence you use.
Messenger apps. Emails. Or old-fashioned handwritten letters in cursive script on scented paper.
The AI in our romantic sci-fi found a way to bypass the impossibility of physical intimacy.
No, no, she didn’t materialize out of his device.
She employed a surrogate. Very much like what another AI girlfriend did in Blade Runner 2049 (2017).
Low-key, imagine a stranger was giving you a striptease but you could hear your partner from your ear pods.
That’s pretty much it.
In both Her and BR 2049, the actors had to pretend they were holding their actual virtual lovers.
Like acting a little movie within a movie.
Blade Runner 2049 differs from Her in a few ways.
First, the guy is actually Gosling.
Second, you can see the gf. She’s a sweet, shy holograph. And for the surrogate scene, she superimposes her holographic body over the hired girl’s in probably, the most complicated sex scene in cinema history.
Their stories are also different.
In Her, she’s his virtual assistant then along the line, they start having late night conversations.
The kind of late-night conversations you have with the girl at your workplace that are really not OK. 1
However, in BR 2049, she’s actually an AI girlfriend point black. Produced and marketed as one. And fully functional.
You may have figured this out already: You really can’t keep this girlfriend in the dark if you’re the type that sneaks around.
Except you don’t ask your AI girlfriend to summarize your emails or your side chick never ever sends messages.
Well,
So, is Her a fictional precursor to the AI Pin?
You can control the device with just voice and hand gestures, and it is so small that it can sit in your little breast pocket.
I think there’s a potential.
If they upgrade that drab, cold, boring voice.
I think you should see Her.
PS: There are no more than five brief steamy scenes so this is not the one you watch with that AI-curious kid.
Overall, it’s a movie you feel could be happening to someone somewhere in the world right now or at least everywhere in a few years.
Update: Just read a TIME piece about flourishing romances between people with extreme isolation and loneliness and AIs like Replika and Character.Ai
Seems this topic will have to be dealt with in more detail later.
Prompt of the Day:
Copy and paste into ChatGPT:
You are an expert on crafting compelling presentations. Create a presentation on [TOPIC]. What topics should I mention and what should be their content? Back it with related facts and statistics. Give me tips to prepare for such a presentation and do not hallucinate any facts or statistics.Tool of the Day
Get personalised workout coaching with Planfit.
Did You Know?
Researchers at Microsoft, William & Mary, and other research centres in Asia have found that ChatGPT provides higher-quality outputs when emotional language was used. This is a sign that LLMs understand emotional cues and may be developing emotional intelligence, a good step towards AGI.
Image of the Day
Challenge of the Day
Copy and paste this link in a WhatsApp group with a brief description:
emanuelpaulmaah.substack.comI hope you enjoyed today’s issue.
If you want to see more reviews/content like this, be sure to hit me up.
See you again soon,
With love and ink,
Emmanuel
Well, who should tell you where to find love?
Nice one, Bro.