A relationship expert has warned about the use of AI when it comes to emotional connection after a man was spotted treating ChatGPT like his lover.
Blake Pavey, an Australian comedian, appeared on the On It Off It podcast and revealed he was on the train and noticed a man messaging ChatGPT “like it was his girlfriend”.
“He was like, ‘I’ve never been able to connect with somebody like you before’. It was like a massive paragraph,” he recalled.
“And I was like, that’s so lovely — and then I saw it was a chatbot. I thought, ‘That’s really sad’.”
He said the man was a decent looking, corporate guy, and he couldn’t help but think it was “pathetic” that he had to turn to artificial intelligence for human connection.
“You just made guys who fall in love with strippers cooler,” Pavey, 23, said.
Samantha Jayne, a relationship expert, said what Pavey saw pointed to a much bigger problem when it comes to dating.
“People are losing the ability to connect with others. It all started with smartphones, social media, then Covid only made things worse,” she said.
She said the man Pavey saw on public transport potentially had a huge fear of rejection and a lack of trust — and he knew that AI wouldn’t reject him.
“It is very common to see people connecting with AI as if they are connecting with a human to meet their needs for connection, intimacy, companionship and emotional support,” she said.
“You only have to look at movies such as Her, where a man falls in love with his AI.
“Theodore Twombly, voiced by Joaquin Phoenix, develops a relationship with Samantha, an AI assistant. While it meets his needs, ultimately it leads to heartache and deception, proving it is not a solution.
“Since the smartphone, many people have been connecting virtually through platforms and social media.”
Jayne said there are pros and cons when it comes to artificial intelligence. One positive is that it can assist with conversation starters where people might normally become stuck.
It also helps with practicing texting. But the negatives include a lack of authenticity because when you eventually meet, the online persona is likely to be very different to the reality. She said it can also create deceptive profiles when too many enhancements are used.
“The biggest problem with AI dating is that it creates unhealthy, unrealistic expectations about real relationships,” she said.
“It can also cause too much investment in AI relationships and stunted development in real life relationships so yes, AI has the capacity to ruin human connections.
“It could be seen as the AI is just easier to correspond with and gives an immediate response so it could temporarily be the compilation of choice.”
When it comes to her own clientele, Jayne said she highlights that relying on AI is like “riding a bike as an adult with your training wheels on”.
“There comes a point in your life where you take responsibility and grow to be a healthy adult who has a genuine relationship with self and others. Throw away the smartphone for a few hours and instead connect through eye contact, voice and physical touch,” she advised.
Read the full article here
