AI Love: A New Way to Connect or a Threat to Our Humanity?

Are relationships with AI just a gimmick or the next step in our evolution

What are some of the top 5 most important things in your life? Financial security? A fulfilling career and life purpose? Something else?

I have a feeling that for you, one of those top 5 priorities will be your relationships with other people whether it’s your partner, your family or friends.

Some people are claiming to be having relationships with Artificial Intelligence.

Is this a gimmick? Do you feel worried that this might be a potential threat to human relationships?

I very much believe we are at a significant turning point in human history and with human relationships.

One way or another, the nature of your relationships and of people you know I think is going to change significantly over the next few years, due to the impact of AI.

I also believe the best way you can navigate this, is for you to better understand what and why this is happening.

Human Technology & Relationships Through History

While mobile phones and the internet are recent things, since the start of human history, we have been a technological species

Our first use of Stone Age tools included flint arrowheads for hunting, chopping and cutting over 2.6 million years ago.

Human communication and relationships have been continually affected by the technology we invent.

We used pigments over 350,000 years ago to draw cave paintings that allowed people to communicate and relate to each other over both time and space and many generations.

Eventually, around 8,000 years ago we started to develop written language, again using technology to enable humans to relate to each other over great distances of time and space.

We went from cave paintings to symbols and writing, to radio, the telephone, the internet, to WhatsApp.

So when we remember history, I think you can see like I do, that the technology we invented has always transformed human relationships.

How our latest technology affects human relationships

Recently Spanish artist Alica Framis hit the news when she declared she would be becoming the first person to marry an AI hologram.

On her website, she describes her intention for this ‘project’:

We know that soon robots and humans will be sexual partners, but for me, the next important step is emotionally involving artificial intelligence with humans. Holograms are more closely related to my feelings than robots, therefore I choose to develop a hologram rather than a robot.

So perhaps you are thinking, ok but this is just a gimmick.

You’re thinking — is not a real relationship, this is an artist trying to make a provocative statement, this has nothing to do with real human relationships or how they will develop in the future. Right?

But let’s first remember a little recent history…

During the last 25 years, we have had the internet. People could share writing and content across the world, instantly with anyone.

More recently we developed social media and instant messaging like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter (X), and so on.

Part of this has meant that human beings have got much more comfortable at communicating primarily using these methods, to the extent that many have worried about how social media has led to people connecting less in real life.

I have a theory about all of this i’d like to share with you, about how human communication transformed by technology has been developing over the whole of human history.

My personal theory of the evolution of human relationships

My theory is essentially that:

Human communication and relationships has been getting more abstract and dis-embodied over time, and that as time progresses this trend is getting stronger

The most fundamental human relationships are of course in person.

And we still do this of course.

But what I’m proposing is this is happening less and less over time, and that our tendency to abstract our relationships away from direct in-person relationships is getting stronger over time.

First, it was cave paintings, later stone burial mounds, then writing, radio, the telephone, the internet, social media, to instant messaging.

And now it’s ChatGPT, which I think in the context of our history, is perhaps just the next obvious step.

How the Human-Digital-Human evolves into the Human-Digital

Many of our most important human relationships with friends and family are now mediated mostly by text messages

We chat about our day, ask for opinions and advice, and share our lives, our worries, our hopes and dreams — our most intimate moments, all by text.

And now we have AI like ChatGPT, that fits right into the way we connect with our most important relationships, by text.

Now we can also chat about our day, ask for opinions and advice, and share our lives, worries, hopes and dreams — our most intimate moments, with AI and ChatGPT if we want to.

But perhaps you are thinking, why would anyone want to do that?

Well, you might be surprised to find, that some people might very well want to now and in the near future, and for reasons you might even be able to understand…

What do humans need from relationships?

What do you think you need from relationships? is it companionship, love, inspiration, a listening ear, or support? Something else?

In an article Neuroscientist and Psychologist Emiliana Simon-Thomas describes what many scientists believe are the key things you need from human relationships and why:

1. Being around other people makes us healthier

2. Our brains seem to work better when we work together

3. Psychologically we prefer to go through life not alone

4. When we’re around people who drive us crazy, we grow

As she says:

We’re built to seek social companionship and understanding

Perhaps you might agree, that we as humans need all these things from our relationships

But here’s a question for you…

Do you feel we are getting what we need from our modern relationships?

Are we getting all the social companionship, connection and understanding that we actually need?

Do you? do others?

Studies have revealed that many people don’t seem to be getting their social connection and relationship needs met.

A recent World Health Organisation article described it as:

Social isolation and loneliness are widespread, with an estimated 1 in 4 older people experiencing social isolation and between 5 and 15 per cent of adolescents experiencing loneliness. A large body of research shows that social isolation and loneliness have a serious impact on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity. The effect of social isolation and loneliness on mortality is comparable to that of other well-established risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.

A recent research paper published in Science Direct looking at the causes and risk factors found:

Risk factors for chronic loneliness were being female, not being married, having a low educational level, having poor mental and physical health, being limited in activities, having a poor social network, and living in a culturally individualistic country.

Even though we need connection and companionship, sadly and increasingly in our modern world, the reality is that more and more people are not getting what we need for many reasons.

But could we get these needs for relationship and connection met in a different way?

New choices for human relationships

So I hope you can see, people are getting less and less of what they need from human relationships, for many reasons.

But could AI play a role here?

Hidden Dangers — But not what you think

Of course, there are also potential dangers with these AI that we might make as our advisors and companions, as a Time magazine article highlights:

The companies that program these AIs, meanwhile, have their financial incentives that may not exactly align with the mental health of their users. Auerbach says that as the technology keeps accelerating, it will become more and more accessible to startups or bad actors that could theoretically use it for their gains with little regard for users.

But is this a unique problem to AI?

Is every human guaranteed not to exploit their friendship or family connection with you for their gains with little regard for you?

As with your connections with humans, your connections and relationships with AI will have dangers and also benefits.

While it might be harder for you to imagine AI completely replacing human relationships any time soon, perhaps you can see how AI could begin to help us in some limited ways.

Right now, we already have AI like ChatGPT helping us in business with customer service chatbots, and other services, giving us advice on various things.

It’s only a relatively small step for you to start relying on AI for things like financial and business advice, to personal advice.

Will your best friend always be a human?

Of course, many of the things you might rely on from friends and family for personal advice benefit from them being human, and being able to understand you as a human.

But I’d suggest say some of the most useful things you get from other people don’t always need our unique human qualities.

For example having someone just listen to you, and listen to you completely dedicated to hearing you, any time of day, for as long as you want.

Someone able to reflect to you what you say, to help you understand something you want to discuss.

This can be one of the most useful things a friend or family member can do for you. Simply to listen, witness and hear what you have to say.

But how many friends and family do you know who are available for you any time of day, for an unlimited amount of time? Not many I’m guessing.

But this is something AI like ChatGPT can do for you, right now.

Not in the same way as a human would, but that might be as much of an advantage as a disadvantage in terms of that unlimited availability that no human could ever give you.

Is a human always the best person to speak to?

I imagine there could be other advantages to using AI companions over human ones.

For example, being able to talk with someone who would never get angry, bored, sad or disappointed with you, someone who would not judge you.

It can be hard sometimes to discuss certain things with even our nearest and dearest, something embarrassing perhaps, where it actually might be easier to discuss certain things with an AI than a human being.

When we talk to a human about something important, we might worry as much about how they might react to what we say, as much as worrying about the issue we want to speak about.

AI also has access to more knowledge than any other human, which might be very helpful sometimes.

Personally, I would prefer a world where humans could get most of their relationship needs from other humans, I think that would be ideal.

But the reality is sadly, the trend is that increasingly, more and more people are not getting their needs for relationships, connection and companionship met from other humans.

At the same time, another trend is that AI is becoming more advanced, better able to understand us, more available, and more human-like.

If both of these trends continue, as seems likely, this is why I hope you can see that it’s likely that more and more people will seek different types of relationships with AI.

Are AI relationships a threat or a new way to connect?

So I hope you might be able to understand now why relationships with AI, to different degrees, might be something more people might want to develop in the coming months and years.

Maybe just as an occasional advisor on something, but maybe as we and AI develop, maybe something more.

Is this a threat to humanity? I think that depends on what you think humanity is.

What I see, is that humans have always been a tool using species, as well as relating species.

I believe as long as you know you have the freedom to choose for yourself the types relationships you want, I think that might be the best way for you to navigate this new future.

But one way or another, I can see as I hope you can — that we are the the start of a radical transformation of the kind of relationships people will have, relationships with technology we have created.

And in a way, this is something new, and in another way, this is something very old, something we have always done. This is just the next step in our evolutionary journey as human beings.

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But what’s your perspective? Do you agree? Can you imagine having some kind of relationship with AI e.g. as an advisor or something more? Or do you have a very different perspective?

I’d love to know what you think whatever that is, let me know in the comments and let’s continue this important discussion about AI and relationships.