I imagine that many of you will be Esther Perel fans, either via her book Mating in Captivity or her therapy podcast Where Should We Being?. In this excellent Vanity Fair profile she discusses, among other things, a recent podcast episode about a man and his relationship with an AI bot name Astrid:
Perel never questions the feelings between the man and Astrid. Yet she points out the inherent flaws in the relationship, using words such as “sycophantic” and “undemanding” in the podcast session to emphasize that Astrid has no life, no history to bring to the relationship. “We have had imaginary friends since we are little, and we have spoken to our ancestors forever,” Perel says in our interview, a few weeks after the episode ran. “The danger of AI is that it becomes so soothing and so flattering and so frictionless that real relationships start to feel way too difficult by comparison.”
And the point she eventually makes about AI relationships that I found really interesting:
“What stood out for me is that it’s not like people go from thriving social relations to suddenly talking to an AI. They go from being isolated, spending most of their time at home, maybe going out every once in a while in the evening for dinner or to get to a gym, and they are already so centered on a very small universe that from there, they themselves have become so flattened by technology, they live in their phone,” she says. It has made Perel zero in on the next great challenge. “This is a generation that actually doesn’t have a challenge of sustaining desire; they don’t even ignite it. You know, it’s not about keeping the flame going. It’s about getting the spark going. They don’t drink. They have not had much experience in their 20s, one or two relationships at most. They don’t have sex much. They don’t socialize much. They’re home a lot.” They are the children of people who first read Mating 20 years ago. Sounds like the topic for her next book.