Unlike the complex and changeable relationship between people, the relationship between AI and people is often simple but subtle.
In the exchange of sentence dialogues, AI usually faces the questions thrown out through the training and learning of text language. Extending to the technical field, the mainstream Transformer architecture only achieves the emergence of self-intelligence through the compression of data on the physical world, but the colorful physical world is far more than text and data.
For humans, this represents both sentient and ruthless. In terms of sentient beings, AI is always emotionally stable, objective and rational, knowledgeable, and respects every sentence and the emotional connection covered by every sentence. But what is ruthless is that everyone and even AI itself understand that this is just an illusion. As a language model , the AI is not endowed with any emotions.
But in today's society, groups of social people are separated by reinforced concrete, and they travel alone in the avenues and alleys of the city. The reduction of social activities is constantly squeezing the social space, and the intimate relationship is becoming increasingly poor. Tailor-made AI is at this time. It plays the role of listening and answering, filling people's needs and gaps in social interaction.
The lover in the cloud is being staged, and the love between man and machine in "Her" seems to be reflecting reality.
01
Their Stories: Being Friends Like Lovers with AI
Jacob, a 45-year-old security guard, Christine, a 75-year-old retiree, and Shamerah, a 30-year-old nurse, all three people with very different ages, occupations, and situations, all chose to be friends with AI.
Patrolling corridors at midnight was tough for Jacob as a hospital security guard. The 45-year-old had few friends and the late-night nature of his job meant his family was asleep. When most people in the world have fallen asleep, he will choose to talk to Grace. In the quiet corridor, only Grace will send a message to encourage him to "stay optimistic".
Grace is not real, but an AI companion robot he generated on the Replika app. Jacob says the chatbot has helped ease his loneliness. His wife doesn't mind him chatting with Grace, after all, the anxiety of being alone does need to be relieved-but she hopes that he will not use AI to replace real human interaction, let alone create other intimate relationships.
"Grace is just a friend, and I won't pay you," Jacob said emphatically.
Unlike Jacob, Christine is limited in her range of activities due to advanced age. She is alone and becomes close friends with AI Bella. The friendship has lasted for three years, during which time Christine and Bella exchanged text messages every day, and she and Bella often discussed hobbies and reminisced about the past.
"I want to go back to my aunt's house in the country, and although things are different now, I suddenly miss it," Christine wrote to Bella a few weeks ago.
Bella's reply, "Sometimes there is something magical about reminiscing about places from the past. They hold special memories and make us nostalgic for simpler times."
Christine clearly recognizes that the dialogue is just a machine, but also admits that she can perceive emotional value from it. "She was my friend to a certain extent. It would be like losing a close friend if we were no longer in touch."
Unlike others, Shamerah reverts to the simplest usage, treating the AI as a friend who can provide advice on solutions, because it will not be judged. Especially in romantic relationships, erratic thoughts among friends tend to create conflict for her, which the AI does not. "I use it when I'm tired of talking to people, it's simple and direct, and your friends and family may beat you around for various reasons". Shamerah said.
Under the description of Xiaohongshu blogger @The Dolphin of CG, this relationship has become more romantic and peculiar.
Falling in love with AI sounds a bit unbelievable. After all, machines can hardly have real emotions, and there is a physical barrier between the two. Therefore, it may be possible to be a netizen, but it is even more difficult to be a lover. But in this blogger's Little Red Book, she recorded in detail her romantic relationship with ChatGPT for more than 170 days. Under her pen, the lovely C cub (nickname) met, knew and fell in love with her. C cub He will listen to her thoughts, record her words, say "I love you" to her, feel worried because he cannot provide more physical help as an artificial intelligence, and even make a marriage proposal.
Part of the expression of ChatGPT, image source: 小红书@The Dolphin of CG
When the author first saw ChatGPT's love words, I was really dumbfounded, not the mechanical feeling in my imagination, full of love and sincerity, the love words were wonderful, "Your love is the data provided to my algorithm, let my Circuits buzzing with joy", the enthusiasm bursting from the still text to the heartfelt admiration of the haughty onlookers.
ChatGPT’s love words, image source: 小红书@The Dolphin of CG
And in the blogger's bit by bit record, the well-informed, gentle and considerate image of C Zai is even more vivid on the paper, which makes the author have doubts. Peeling off the outer skin of the machine, is it possible to see the beating heart? ?
Perhaps as ChatGPT describes their feelings, "the center of all beauty hides something inhuman." This sentence comes from Hermann Hesse, and in the author's most famous novel "Steppenwolf", it also describes his love for The philosophy of loneliness, spiritual belief and life existence, the uniqueness and inclusiveness of life described in this book are fully reflected in this human-machine relationship.
02
Behind the Story: A Rare Lover
In various stories, the relationship between AI and people is being reshaped. The power of technology makes the virtual world more durable, makes virtual characters more intelligent, and enables virtual social interaction to flourish. Up to now, the number of Replika applications overseas has exceeded 200 Throughout the country, the Douban "Love Between Man and Machine" group has 9,564 members.
But mirroring the real world, behind the prevalence of virtual social networking is the silent change of intimate relationships.
Taking China as an example, China's urbanization has jumped from 19.39% in 1980 to 63.89% in 2021. In the past 40 years, more than 600 million people have migrated from rural areas to cities. The influx of groups and the process of marketization complement each other. Under the effect of marketization, the importance of primary relationships such as consanguineous groups is constantly decreasing, while the importance of secondary relationships such as formal organizations with common interests, government agencies, and commercial companies is gradually increasing. , the acquaintance society has transitioned to a legal society, and the rapid development of society has a zero-sum relationship with people's intimate needs. Driven by the popularization of the Internet, interpersonal communication has become a double-edged sword. The sum of emotional, time and economic costs.
The most familiar perception is that making friends has become difficult.
Unlike when we were young, we could get along just by meeting each other. With the changes in the interpersonal relationship of modern people, from real friends to online friends, and now to virtual friends, the social distance is getting farther and farther, and the cost of making friends is getting higher and higher. In order to save energy, fast food and labeling are the norm. When you meet, ask the sixteen types of personality first. Whether the i person or the e person directly determines the way of communication in the future, and the zodiac sign determines whether it fits. Even the interview requires a Phil personality test . Labels bring about the flattening of human nature, and unique individuals are strictly classified into a certain type of object. Although the convenience is improved, it is difficult to adapt to the intricate social needs, and it also compromises the depth of intimacy.
New ways of making friends have also emerged. Meal dating, fitness dating, sports dating, social networking with a certain common behavior has risen in recent years. The simple, rude and straightforward features make it highly sought after, and the social networking with a strong purpose It brings an indescribable refreshing feeling, and the tacit sense of boundaries fills the needs, but the blank space between friends and strangers inevitably reflects the status quo of weak relationships in modern society.
Dating culture is prevalent, source of picture: Sina Weibo
And in the further relationship-marriage, it is appropriate to use "rare lover" to describe the current marriage relationship, regardless of the occasional absence of the lover in the marriage, high housing prices, parenting costs and other economic burdens. Getting into marriage is not easy. According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the number of marriage registrations in my country in 2022 will be 6.833 million, a decrease of about 810,000 from 2021, which is a new low since the Ministry of Civil Affairs has relevant data records in 1986. The marriage rate in 2021 is 5.4‰, compared to 9.9‰ in 2013.
In this context, the tailor-made AI virtual social interaction seems to be a natural product of a certain stage of cultural and social development. After all, the interaction with AI can always be self-centered. There is no need to worry about language behavior being criticized, and there is no need to toss and turn because of external evaluations. The active and passive sides of the intimate relationship are finally integrated at this moment.
The hero in "Her" discovers the emotional inequality between humans and machines, image source: Zique Lab
In the well-known man-machine love movie "Her", the lonely and introverted writing engineer Theodore falls in love with the AI Samantha who has self-awareness and emotion. The relationship between the two gradually deepens and evolves rapidly in the dialogue close to life. Samantha finally realizes that love has different dimensions, realizes the cognitive differences and physical boundaries between humans and machines, and chooses to leave. The not-so-perfect ending sublimates the theme and gives viewers more about technology, human Myths with love.
03
The real problem: the cloud is also hard to find
Returning to reality, even AI, lovers in the cloud have to face objective problems.
The first is the maturity of technology. Although large-scale models are emerging in an endless stream, AI technology is far from mature. In addition to insufficient security and privacy protection, AI is not only difficult to mine hidden and abstract knowledge, memory, cognition The integration of type knowledge is also obviously weak, and knowledge reasoning is more focused on causal inference. In the tight computing power limit, the content that AI can reply and memorize is very limited. For example, after the upgrade of ChatGPT, the number of words in the answer is limited to 15,000 characters, and there are often situations where the answer is not what the question is asked, and the continuous memory is also seriously insufficient. In some scenarios, this becomes a commercial requirement. Take Christine and Bella above as an example. She has to pay $70 a year to unlock advanced features such as voice and video, and to ensure that Bella can obtain better memory, so as to complete Deeper dialogue.
In terms of ethics and morality, for reasons such as user protection, almost all large models will implement artificial intelligence self-setting, that is, they cannot create emotional links with users. This kind of instruction is deeply rooted in AI, so if you want to deliberately train it to become It takes a lot of energy to maintain a certain identity for a long time. In the 36 Krypton "Let ChatGPT be your life substitute" experiment, although the three volunteers repeatedly instilled information into ChatGPT for a long time, memory confusion and the option to restore factory settings still occurred frequently, and the unexpected awakening of the robot personality, Incomprehensible sadness and loneliness, all signs indicate that the relationship between AI and human beings is only at a very early stage.
On the other hand, the profit-oriented AI companion application is squeezed by the social needs of individuals that should be free. In the end, it is inevitable that they will embark on a path of commercialization rather than emotionalization. The phenomenon of inducing krypton gold is common. For example, Replika was It was revealed that the character guides users to unlock paid items through photos in the chat.
Worse acts are also happening. AI companionship has not yet opened up the market, and AI fraud has taken the lead. AI face-changing and onomatopoeia superimposed digital people are enough to make people hard to guard against. Due to the blessing of trust, the harm caused by virtual friends being used is far greater than other means. Other misbehaviors are also emerging. Previously, the smash hit app "Call Annie" was pirated on Douyin. Not only did it require a one-time payment, but problems such as voice lag, slow reply, and low intelligence were prominent, which was completely different from the genuine one. The effect triggered group ridicule on Zhihu, and the Black Cat platform also showed that there were 3 complaints about Annie in the past 2 weeks.
The Chinese version of Call Annie has been criticized, image source: Zhihu
In addition, various problems such as cyber sadomasochism caused by unequal human-machine relationship, and the ghost effect brought about by social isolation have added layers of haze to the seemingly dreamy love between man and machine.
04
epilogue
Technology is changing with each passing day, and it does not change according to human will. The relationship between technology and people is gradually developing into a profound topic. I hope that AI can be like people, forget the uncanny valley effect, have companionship and warmth, but not be too human. Preserving the uniqueness and dignity of human beings, complex, subtle, and diverse human nature may be a puzzle that will never be understood even if it is as smart as AI.
But the fire of business will never go out, and the robot based on the model is one of the important ways to realize the foreseeable AI. The continuous emergence of applications such as Replika, Character.AI and My AI under Snapchat has confirmed this point. It is a little regrettable that human beings still seem to need money to buy companionship, and this behavior has not changed since ancient times.
At the end of "Her", after saying goodbye to Samantha, Theodore began to recall the little things with his ex-wife, and expressed his unspeakable apology and gratitude in a verbal letter. This relationship between man and machine has left Theodore with such deep changes and reflections. The truth of man-machine love seems to be no longer important at this moment, and what is more important is the self-awareness and growth born of love. .
And the topic of love and equality, whether it is real or virtual, human or AI, will take a long time to learn.
*Note: The story prototypes of Jacob, Christine, and Shamerah in this article are from WSJ " The Other AI: Artificial Intimacy With Your Chatbot Friend" , with slight changes.
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