Can anyone think of a more apt way our society comes to a screeching halt than through the monopolization of human attention? It seems we haven't learned much from our experiments in degrading people's dopamine receptors and neural circuits for decades at this point. Still, I have some hope that this 'innovation' will be rejected. Of course, I'm talking about the dystopian idea of turning computers and algorithms into romantic partners: AI girlfriends.
To be abundantly clear, I think that AI boyfriends will be a similar problem for society if/when those ideas are funded and brought to the fore. What we're seeing now is an onslaught of marketing targeted at young men, seemingly for the purpose of generating more incels and tethering them to a series of LaaS (Love as a Service) platforms. It's the psychopath's wet dream made manifest. Clearly, the issue is thinking you can date a computer, which feels absurd to discuss even as I'm typing this out, but maybe with normalization over the course of decades and cynical marketing to make a quick buck, combined with increased atomization of society and an eroding of dating culture altogether, we may come to the disastrous point of acknowledging this as a likelihood.
And… that's fucked.
Whether it's the richest man in the world posting anime women on his social media app, using his LLM to let the animations speak to you, or a small startup hoping to break into the mainstream by addicting you to the hollow feeling of digitized courtship, this is an inflating balloon set to pop sometime in the coming years. The pop won't be isolated either. This will bleed into everything from politics to the general perception of the tech industry. Think of how politics has already been affected by isolated people feeding into extremism or how 'tech bro' has become a pejorative, no doubt as a result of bad actors using the legacy of the tech founder to launder their own reputations and then betraying that long-established foundation.
But, I digress. The real issue is people getting stripped of their humanity decade after decade by the 'innovators' of society. If we're truly innovators, why are we building obvious and evil stuff? I seem to recall a famous search engine's slogan that pertained to this very thing from years ago: "Don't be Evil". That seemed like a good precept. A sole commandment for the tech world that we forgot some time ago.
We could go through a list of other egregious choices that those in the tech world made along the way, like meme-coin/NFT pump and dumps, gambling apps that keep your addiction at arm's reach perpetually, and social media that addicts you in a similar way. The point is, AI girlfriend apps aren't a new category in and of themselves. They're part of a nefarious strain of technology that somehow keeps getting prioritized and allowed to wreak havoc on society.
So, what's the answer? How do we prevent predatory companies from scamming, addicting, and romancing people who are just trying to live a normal life? Some form of regulation is necessary here. Whether it's an age-gate for social media, as Australia has already implemented, or blocking certain features (though this requires knowledge of tech that I don't count on our elected officials to have).
Regulations, however, don't get to the crux of the problem: the disappearance of third places, unwalkable neighborhoods, car dependence/the suburbanization of America, the reliance on these social apps in lieu of a functioning real-life alternative in many parts of the US, etc. Resolving this is much more difficult for obvious reasons. Fixing the layout of neighborhoods will likely be longer fought and more comprehensive than even getting legislation passed. Still, this is a deeply entrenched issue in the United States; I could even point to the individualistic nature of American culture, philosophy, and governance as the starting point to this disembodied superpower we're in danger of becoming. Equal parts hegemonic on the world stage and misconfigured in our communities.
If we do restrain and reform not only tech, but community development, we'll see the beginnings of a slow healing process (and likely some new problem to crop up elsewhere). Truth be told, every generation is handed a set of problems to solve. It's the stone with which we sculpt a new future and the beginning of something else entirely. Unlike generations that mobilized against external enemies with clear front lines, this generation needs to battle isolation, predatory behavior from massive conglomerates, the exploding cost of living, and much more. And, to some degree we'll solve those things and I'm sure we'll plant new seeds of terror for future generations all the while trying to fix our shit.