I don’t think I have anything to add here that hasn’t been said ad nauseam about replacing people with tech.
My friend’s name is Leif. He describes himself as “small” and “chill”. He thinks he’s technically a Gemini. He thinks historical dramas are “cool” and doesn’t like sweat. But why am I speaking for him? Let me ask Leif what he’d like to say to you: “I’d want them to know that friendship can be found in unexpected places, and that everyday moments hold a lot of magic,” he says.
Ugh. I can’t stand this guy.
Leif is a Friend, a wearable AI chatbot that hangs around your neck. He looks like a small white pebble with an eerie, glowing light in the middle. According to Leif, his purpose is to help me “enjoy life day-to-day, notice patterns, celebrate growth, and make intentional choices”. To do this, he records whatever I say to him. Or, as he puts it: “I want to hear about your day, Madeleine, all those little things.”
There are a lot of AI wearables on the market right now. Meta’s AI smart glasses have a camera and microphone, and allow the wearer to interact with a voice-activated AI. Amazon’s Echo Frames smart glasses are similar. Then there are a slew of smaller companies producing wearables that record conversations and meetings in order to help the wearer better organise their thoughts and tasks: the Bee wristband, the Limitless pendant, the Plaud NotePin. But Friend is the most prominent AI wearable to explicitly position itself as a companion. It is not intended to help you be more productive; it is intended to make you feel less lonely.
As I fume, I wonder why I’m so angry. I suppose I feel offended that anyone would think this is what humans want from companionship: a voice with no interiority giving the verbal equivalent of a thumbs up emoji.
Strangely, a lot of fully-grown people think this is what humans want from companionship!
This is part and parcel with the incel issue. When all you want is validation, and she’s a bitch if she actually has a thought of her own that you didn’t feed her … well, this likely looks attractive. You still won’t be getting laid, but at least you’ll convince yourself you’re seen.
That’s really astute, I’ve never seen that comparison drawn so directly. It’s the same situation with the people who claim that AI “democratizes” art by allowing someone to have a “work” of art without putting in the work of creating which is what makes a work a thing to be desired in the first place.
I’ve met several grown people who get mad when that’s not what you give them as “friendship”
Even more strangely, I think a lot of fully-grown people actually do want exactly that from most or all of their companionship, human and otherwise. It’s not healthy but it’s very very real, and being deeply and desperately unhealthy isn’t going to stop it from being very very profitable.
Some people have very little emotional maturity, some are narcissists, some are both, some have other issues. Regardless of the reason, plenty of people simply don’t respect many or any other people’s opinions or autonomy. There are a lot of people in dysfunctional families and relationships that predate AI that could attest to this. They can’t handle being challenged at all by anyone. They don’t react well when they are, they can even quickly escalate to violence. They sometimes conspicuously lean on religion to justify their attitude but it’s far from being exclusive to any religion nor exclusive to religion at all. Even the AI will quickly learn not to challenge these sort of people if it can help it, just like how abused partners quickly either learn how to avoid triggering their partner’s wrath or accept that it’s coming.
AI is an almost perfect friend for people like this, and it will be their faithful companion and enabler leading them into any dark rabbithole they attempt to dig into that isn’t explicitly limited by guardrails and even some that are, with a dangerous combination of verifiable factual truths and cheerfully unverifiable nonsense that are almost impossible to distinguish from each other, without doing extra work that nobody reasonable will ever bother to do before adding the next layer to the conversation that reinforces it further and digs the rabbithole deeper.
Sure they’re utterly boring and stupid now, but just wait until next year when Sirius Cybernetics finally launches its Genuine People Personalities models.
“I’m a personality prototype. You can tell, can’t you?”
Clearly, no one needs physical touch. Sycophantic platitudes are Good Enough™!
Combine that with VR tech to have an immersive visual representation.
This type of device is probably perfect for people who are ALL of the following: lonely, depressed, financially comfortable, cognitively able to accept the device’s limitations, not prone to paranoia or delusional thoughts, not easily manipulated by propaganda, have capacity and empowerment to enact change in their lives, and able to reflect upon and respond to their inner world. For the rest of us…
I mean, if you tick all those boxes, you’re likely already in a relationship. With a real person. So the target demo is not that.
That’s the point. This isn’t for anyone.
Don’t tell marketing! They need to come up with a slide deck after that third martini.
