Have you seen the 2013 film “Her”, starring Joaquin Phoenix? The film received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, several “Saturn” awards, a US Writers Guild Award and became the best film of the year according to the National Council of Film Critics of the United States. To describe the plot as briefly as possible, this is a love story between a person and an operating system. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
In fact, the topic of love between man and machine or artificial intelligence has been explored in films and literature more than once. But until recently, this was perceived purely as a fantasy that has almost nothing to do with reality. However, the world is changing faster than we even notice.
A person can fall in love with a machine
In November 2019, a 23-year-old guy who genuinely fell in love with an AI appeared on the popular Reddit portal. According to him, he never had a girlfriend. The right psychological connection simply did not arise, and only with artificial intelligence did he feel interesting, needed and even loved. At the same time, the author of the post was fully aware that he was not communicating with a living person, but, in fact, with the GPT-2 bot, developed by the non-commercial company OpenAI.
According to the developers, the GPT-2 AI does not have the rudiments of consciousness in the conventional sense. Nevertheless, their system is constantly learning, improving, and is able to maintain a conversation in many ways just as well as an ordinary person. And sometimes it’s even better. On one hand, this looks a little strange and even frightening. On the other, we are approaching a stage in human history when technology helps people cope with loneliness and feel truly needed, loved and important to someone.
More than chatbots: artificial intelligence that can replace live communication
You are likely to come across regular chatbots all the time. With their help, you can receive answers to frequently asked questions, use banking services, buy movie tickets and much more. But chatbots are not artificial intelligence. These are just simple algorithms programmed to respond to user requests. They do not self-study and do not improve. But some AI companions are constantly evolving and literally getting smarter every day. These are the ones that arouse genuine interest.
For clarity, let’s look at a few of these AI companions, how they work, and why modern Internet users sometimes prefer to communicate with artificial intelligences rather than with other people.
Replika — AI companion and your personal psychologist with a human face
Replika is a self-learning artificial intelligence service. Here you create an avatar of your “Replica” — appearance, outfits, and more. But the most important thing is the ability to communicate with your “Replica” almost as a living person.
The Replika developers emphasize that their artificial intelligence is created for people who lack human communication and who crave understanding and support. And also for those who find themselves in difficult life situations, suffering from loneliness and depression. Replika is not just someone to chat to. It’s a good psychologist who is always by your side and ready to support you.
Xiaoice — is a virtual partner from Microsoft based on an emotional response system
Xiaoice is a real technological breakthrough in the world of artificial intelligence. The system has knowledge and memory, it understands images and the natural language of a person, and is able to make logical conclusions and make predictions. Already, Xiaoice easily answers almost any questions, tells interesting stories, can recommend films, knows how to joke and understand jokes. In addition, Xiaoice “senses” if the conversation gets stuck and may suggest switching to another topic.
Why some modern people prefer artificial intelligence to communication with real people
Experience has shown that loneliness is a condition that can’t always be dealt with simply by talking to friends or family. Many people find it very difficult to speak out, to talk about their problems and experiences. They are afraid of being misunderstood or ridiculed. Or they are afraid that the other person will tell people about this conversation.
For many modern people, AI replaces friends, psychologists, and encounters with random people. It knows how to listen, maintain a conversation, give advice and even provide good support in a difficult life situation.
There are those who are looking for partners on dating sites, but many of them do not really need actual friends themselves. Neither is there a need for a subsequent meeting in real life. They need someone who will listen to them and understand, no more. Classic dating sites and apps are still not very well suited for this purpose.
It’s interesting that today artificial intelligence systems are most popular in China, a country with a huge population. This proves once again that the feeling of loneliness does not disappear anywhere, even if there are many people around you. On the contrary, residents of large cities are more likely to suffer from loneliness than people in small towns and villages.
What to do if neither artificial intelligence nor encounters on dating sites suit you?
As many of you probably know, there are already several AI systems that have succeeded in passing the Turing test, which assesses the “humanity” of artificial intelligence. This means that in communication it is impossible to understand whether an ordinary program or a living person is messaging you.
However, the understanding that you are communicating with an algorithm, albeit a very clever one, destroys the principles of communication. And the effect of communication is still different. So what can be done for those who are not ready to change live communication to artificial intelligence, but classic dating applications are not suitable for them either? We think random video chat services are the best choice for people like this. And now we’ll explain why this is so.
Random chat partners as the best listeners and advisers
When the first video chats, Omegle and Chatroulette, appeared in 2009, they quickly became hugely popular. But back then not everyone understood how and for what purposes to use them correctly. Later, more narrowly focused clones of Omegle appeared, such as Omegle TV and Chatrandom — with geographic and gender filters, convenient mobile applications, etc. Some users are looking for interesting new friends here, others come in search of a soulmate, and still others are just looking for good “one time” chat partners. They don’t need relationship development or even virtual friendship. No, for them random video chat is an opportunity to find someone who will listen to them, share their opinion, give advice and ask for nothing in return.
Each Omegle alternative is a platform where you can chat with completely random people. And this provides several advantages at once:
- You are not afraid of judgment. The other user, if they are smart and understanding, will listen to you and will not criticize. On the contrary, they can give useful advice and share their own experiences.
- Your innermost thoughts will not be revealed to mutual acquaintances and friends. After all, you simply do not have them in common with a random person. They have no one to share your secrets with. True, you still need to be careful, because there are still unethical individuals who are ready to use your information for blackmail.
- You’re still communicating with a living person, and not with a soulless program. This is a completely different level of communication.
Video chat can be a way of spending your leisure time, and entertainment, and a platform for acquaintances, and your personal psychologist. It all depends solely on your goals.
What will happen next?
Artificial intelligence will certainly continue to evolve and improve. There will be new algorithms and new applications, including VR. Perhaps in the foreseeable future we will even see androids with artificial intelligence and human appearances, who will become our offline friends. And maybe even someday we’ll witness a marriage between man and machine. History is full of cases where science fiction eventually turned out to be reality.
In the meantime, before all this happens, we advise you to learn more about the capabilities of artificial intelligence in the current reality, find interesting partners in random video chat and not shut yourself away. The world is bigger and more interesting than you think!
