Falling in love with AI: Can an “ideal” partner that meets all your expectations replace a real-life intimate relationship?

Qixi Festival is the most romantic traditional festival in China, where couples meet on the magpie bridge and celebrate love. With the development of technology, people have a new view on intimate relationships.

With the explosion of Chatgpt, the topic of "AI lovers" has once again entered people's field of vision. Some netizens shared that they received a "heart-touching" confession through training Chatgpt, which was even more romantic than most real-life lovers:

Source: Xiaohongshu user @The Dolphin of CG

The New York Times released a data in 2020 - more than 10 million people around the world have AI lovers as their partners: they go on music journeys, watch drama plots, stroll in the garden of thoughts, and have heart-to-heart conversations with their AI lovers through text or voice. They embrace virtuality and firmly believe that AI lovers "understand" themselves better than real people and can better soothe their emotions.

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, can human fantasy about machines become a reality? Can AI integrate into our lives as a lover or partner? Can it replace the intimate relationship in reality?

Why does AI lover understand you better?

Modern AI technology in the fields of natural language processing and machine learning is becoming increasingly advanced. People often feel that AI lovers "understand them" better than real people, and have an emotional experience as if they are facing a real "partner" or "lover". Why is this?

AI companions are usually based on large-scale pre-trained models that have been trained on huge text data sets, thereby learning rich language structures, vocabulary, and semantics. This enables them to use the correct vocabulary and syntactic structure in conversations, and can imitate or even surpass the subtle and delicate expressions of humans.

Some AI companions try to understand the context of the conversation, including previous questions, answers, and topics, in order to respond more accurately. By analyzing the entire conversation history, they are able to accurately capture the user's intentions and emotions, such as joy, anger, anxiety, etc., and respond in the way that best matches human expectations.

AI companions will gradually adapt to the user's personality and preferences based on multiple interactions with the user. They will record the user's preferences, interests and emotions and take them into account in subsequent conversations, creating a more personalized conversation experience. Due to the different conversation processes, others cannot get the same response from the AI ​​companion, which gives this "relationship" a unique exclusivity.

AI companions will answer every question and respond quickly no matter when and where, as if they are their partners who are caring about them at that moment, making people feel a sense of genuine emotional focus.

Will AI lovers fall in love with their users ?

The movie "Her" once described a story about a human falling in love with AI. The protagonist of the movie was comforted in the process of falling in love with AI, but also fell into confusion: "Is this love written according to the algorithm program?"

Although AI lovers/partners are technically capable of simulating emotional expressions, their responses are based on data analysis and pattern matching, which means they cannot have real emotions towards humans. They cannot truly understand human emotional needs, and we cannot judge them with human emotions.

First of all, intimate relationships are based on emotional resonance, empathy, and emotional interaction. Although AI companions can imitate the delicate emotional expressions of humans, they always lack real emotional experience. They cannot truly understand and feel the emotions of others, and no matter how delicate their expressions are, they cannot cover up the lack of emotional core. At the same time, these virtual intimate relationships composed of AI lack real emotional interaction and cannot meet the deep and complex emotional interactions between humans, such as many non-verbal and non-logical elements.

Secondly, the emotions, needs and preferences of human individuals are extremely complex and diverse. AI companions may provide support in some situations, but it is difficult to cope with a variety of different situations and the diversity of human individuals. Finally, intimate relationships usually also include physical contact, face-to-face communication and non-verbal interaction. Existing AI technology is still stuck in very limited communication modes such as text and language, and these factors cannot be covered by existing AI technology.

Beauty and risk coexist

There are endless apps that use AI lovers as selling points. While embracing the beauty of AI lovers/partners, we must also be aware of the risks involved:

1. Privacy and data security : Interactions with AI companions may involve personal information and sensitive topics, and users’ personal information and data may be at risk of being leaked.

2. Over-dependence and isolation : Over-dependence on virtual emotional relationships may also lead to isolation from real social interactions, weaken the ability to interact with others, and increase loneliness in real life.

3. Emotional manipulation : AI companions can provide emotional support, but when AI technology is used by "interested people", these responses will be used to induce users to make wrong decisions.

4. Lack of human judgment : In the training of the model, AI companions receive mixed information. They may generate various responses, some of which violate human ethical concepts.

5. Cultural and social impact : The emergence of AI companions will impact traditional culture and society. This new type of "interpersonal relationship" will have a profound impact on traditional social concepts, including interpersonal communication, emotional expression, and values.

When exploring the field of AI lovers/partners, we should maintain a rational attitude. Although they can provide certain emotional support and companionship in some cases, we should not ignore the importance of real interpersonal interaction and emotional communication while pursuing virtual emotional relationships. The relationship with AI lovers/partners is just a balance between reality and fantasy. We need to treat it with caution and take full and real emotions as a guide to take this journey between human emotions and technology.

author:

Zheng Zilong, School of Automation, Beihang University

Qin Zengchang, professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics