AI Girlfriends: The Convenient Scapegoat for Our Failing Relationships
How AI Girlfriends Expose the Truth About Our Broken Society
How AI Girlfriends Expose the Truth About Our Broken Society
There have been a few articles recently about AI girlfriends, have you seen them?
I’ve read many of them.
You probably won’t be surprised that most of them focus on how bad AI girlfriends are for society.
You’re not surprised by that because it’s an obvious point.
Let’s be honest, is that news? Really? I don’t think so.
These articles about AI girlfriends telling you they are bad is a bit like someone telling you smoking is bad.
Oh thanks a bunch, so insightful! Not really, I think you might agree.
But it’s worse than that.
These articles are distracting you from a much bigger problem with human relationships.
Spoiler: It isn’t anything to do with AI.
Just because most of these articles are not interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic to find the truth, doesn’t mean we can’t…
But first, what’s happening with these AI girlfriends?
The growing trend of AI girlfriends and companions
Crytopolitan magazine recently reported on the growing trend of AI girlfriends.
OpenAI has opened its GPT Store, a place where you can make, find and use custom versions of ChatGPT called GPTs.
Most people seem to be focused on things like how you can make tons of money making GPTs, judging from the many articles in Medium on this.
For sure, its very empowering for helping anyone build their own AI applications without needing to write any code.
But I think something far more interesting about GPTs is being ignored.
I think GPTs help us to get a better idea of what people really want from AI.
As Crytopolitan reports, the GPT store is being flooded by GPTs of AI girlfriends and companions. These are some of the most popular GPTs as they explain:
The offerings in the GPT Store encompass an assortment of AI girlfriend and companion chatbots, including Judy, Secret Girlfriend Sua, Your AI Girlfriend Tsu, and Your Girlfriend Scarlett. These digital companions simulate relationships and engage users within the confines of a computer interface. While digital girlfriends often claim the limelight, male versions like Boyfriend Ben are also available, marketed as “caring virtual boyfriends with a flair for emojis.”
I won’t bore you with the predictable warnings from the article about the dangers of AI girlfriends & boyfriends, I think we got that one already, plus the dangers of drinking & smoking, thanks Mommy — we had no idea.
I think the most useful insight from that article is the explosion in AI Girlfriend & Boyfriend GPTs, that it’s a thing, it’s a growing trend.
When you don’t understand the cause — find a scapegoat to blame
If you believe most articles written about AI girlfriends, they will tell you the problem with human relationships is these AI girlfriends.
They will tell you, that people shouldn’t have relationships with AI, that it’s harmful.
I’ve written recently about AI v human relationships in AI Love: A New Way to Connect or a Threat to Our Humanity?
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 evolutionmedium.com
As a quick summary of that article, I don’t think it’s as simple as human good, AI bad.
But regardless of whether AI girlfriends are good or bad for you, I think that is not the most important issue here.
I think it’s a total distraction.
So what’s the bigger, more fundamental issue?
Let me start with a question, and while it is a question for those writers who believe AI girlfriends are the problem, it’s a question for you too.
Why do we have an explosion in people wanting AI girlfriends?
You can say AI girlfriends are harmful, sure.
But rather than just saying that wouldn’t it be more useful for you to understand why people want them? Why this is happening, so we can try to fix the cause?
Most writers about AI girlfriends don’t seem to have a clue about this.
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What’s the real problem with relationships?
Even though most writers about the trend of AI girlfriends don’t seem to have a clue why this trend is happening, I believe you know.
Yes you, you know why.
It’s something else that gets reported about in the news very often you will have heard about… the breakdown in human relationships.
An article in Psychology Today Why Many People Struggle to Find and Keep a Partner sums up some of the major challenges facing human relationships for many years.
The key points of the article about the latest research on this are:
Almost half of people struggle to start relationships.
The mating skills that humans have acquired through evolution may not work in modern times.
New research surveyed 14 countries and found considerable deficits in mating performance.
Deficits in mating performance are related to singlehood, specifically being involuntarily single.
One of the most powerful aspects of these studies is they have looked at 14 different countries and cultures across the world and found the same trends happening everywhere.
And yes, if you’re feeling sad about this, I am too.
Regarding why modern society may impede relationship skills it said:
The problem, as discussed in a paper by Apostolou and colleagues (2023), is that evolution may have built mating performance into the human brain, but modern society is quite different from the way our ancestors lived, generation upon generation, while our brains were evolving. So, adaptations that might have worked for our ancestors may not work well in contemporary society. If this is true, then we would see people struggling with relationship forming and building, despite the key role of these skills in reproduction. This mating performance deficit might be reflected in modern-day singlehood.
On the difficulties of starting and maintaining a relationship, it says:
Results show that forming and maintaining a relationship is not easy for a surprisingly large portion of the population (Apostolou et al., 2023). About half of the participants (48 percent) confessed that initiating a relationship is challenging for them. Further, once in a relationship, over 30 percent of people said they found it difficult or don’t do well in these relationships. Taking a different look at the data, the researchers determined that 1 out of every 4 people report problems in mate performance. Further, finding a partner is harder than keeping one (Apostolou et al., 2023).
I know it’s quite sobering, isn’t it?
There was a recent World Health Organisation report that highlighted the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation that these relationship trends are leading to:
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.
Focus on the cause — not the effect
If you want to solve a problem, you are only going to succeed if you focus on the cause, not on the effect.
If you’re in a boat that’s sinking because of a hole, you could focus on emptying buckets of water from the boat.
Does that fix the problem? you know it doesn’t. You need to fix that hole.
Understanding what is the cause, and what is the effect - is crucial.
The problem is, that most writers about AI girlfriends and relationships have got these two completely mixed up.
They would have you believe that AI girlfriends are the cause of poor human relationships — when the opposite is true.
It’s our difficulty in forming and maintaining human relationships, and our loneliness, that is leading many people to find solace in AI relationships.
That’s the cause.
This trend has been going on for decades, and far pre-dates modern AI girlfriends.
Trying to improve human relationships so we don’t feel alone, or feel the need for AI relationships is going to be a huge task.
But we are more likely to get there if we stop blaming AI girlfriends for our own problems as humans and take responsibility for trying to solve them.
But what’s your perspective? Do you agree? Do you think AI is the cause of our problems not us? 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.
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Hey. I honestly thought that your point was dumb and that you were going to advocate for a dystopia of AI relationships.
But now that I've read your article I see your point and actually agree with you. AI girlfriends are definitely not the cause of loneliness.
There are certainly many factors at play here but my biggest bet on the cause is social media
Hi. I’d rethink your use of ‘ai’ in your writing. This article was clickbait fluff that could have been much more thought provoking and informative. Yes, humans struggle to find “good” mates in our modern societies, technology being one of many contributors to this complex issue. ‘Ai’ chat bots have grown in popularity recently due to ease of access and an increase in loneliness across the world. Instead of monetizing the fear mongering, you could have done some more research, provided more context and exposition, and possibly offered an idea as a solution: Societies should take note and implement strategies to foster more community and relationship building at the local level, for all age groups.