I kinda feel like if people have to turn to AI for companionship, it's the same as using AI for therapy - because the real thing isn't available and any number of systems have failed those people along the way.
In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.
Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.
Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.
If you took someone from the 1990s and dumped them in 2026, I think one of the biggest shocks to them would be how optional humans are everywhere. You can't get a human on the phone when you call a business anymore. We check out our own groceries with machines now. We order fast food from a kiosk or app instead of a person. Self-driving taxis. Robots doing work and AI making content. Apps mediating all kinds of relationships (personal, romantic, business, employee-employer) rather than the humans themselves. We've kind of just allowed technology to start making us all irrelevant. What is the return on this investment?
I've also got $50 on "massive fake jobs program", because the unemployment will be a social / psychological disaster even if the economics turn out to be straightforward.
> We've kind of just allowed technology to start making us all irrelevant.
That accelerated when big tech companies became advertisement companies. Suddenly, there was a push to increase time on the screen thru mass data gathering.
As far as it is profitable to keep people's noses glued to a screen there is going to be an increase on people that is alone and disconnected.
Even dating is done thru apps that promote looking for the perfect inexistent partner. The more you look for a partner and the less you get one the more profits they get. Something should have never been a business.
~$5T/year in profits from the US, concentrated to the ~10% of American households who hold ~93% of equities, while the socioeconomic and social systems continue towards failure. Progress! /s
Off topic, but I have always wondered if the real advantage of an AI therapist is it has little power over you and will not snitch you to the authorities if you say something "wrong." People walk on eggshells when talking to human therapists because they know if they say something about hurting themselves or others, they can end up in a mental institution, losing their jobs, the custody of their children, their home, everything. AI companies seem to just not care enough to monitor the chats for these kind of things. For better or worse.
> will not snitch you to the authorities if you say something "wrong."
What makes you believe this? We had this story[1] just a few days ago where Waymo up and decided to pull over and hand passengers who had guns on them over to the police. If anything, I would trust AI less to keep a conversation private and not flag me for one of its many programmed "safety" triggers.
Also all the hot people can find each other now because of the dating apps and when people are below a certain level of ugliness they don’t want to date each other anymore.
There’s some truth to it. You can now easily meet people in a 100 mile radius, that wasn’t the case until about 20 years ago. Personality matters when people get to see it, not when you make snap decisions based on an image in half a second when you swipe.
I’ve been married for 15 years. When I found my wife even dating apps were much more slow paced, I just feel for the current generation.
This seems like an excuse/conspiracy theory. Hot people could always find hot people: go to where hot people hang out (clubs, hipster bars, art galleries, yoga, etc). What has definitely increased is access to people complaining about hot people not dating them.
If people are born into a situation or simply have had bad luck with who they decided to trust, after enough betrayal you decide that juice of relationships isn't worth the squeeze. I'm pretty much there in my life, I don't seek companionship in AI (nor can I ever imagine doing so) but more than casual friendships and especially romance is not worth the work or the pain.
Ah no. There's pain, and then there's pain that I would never wish on my worst enemy.
The pain I suffer gets worse with every setback and affects my work life for extended periods of time. Past a certain point you need to weigh the risks and tradeoffs, and in my calculus, for my own survival, it swung in favor of no relationships.
Everyone has a different strategy and I prescribe nothing, that is my own way
I'd recommend checking out Sherry Turkle's work. It's not as much about availability as friction. Ai does not come with the friction IRL does, so people turn to it as an "easy mode"
I applaud the CCP for getting out in front of this one. It's way more a concern in my mind than data centers
> She is a specialist in how technology changes us psychologically and socially. Her new book is on our relationships with chatbots —Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. It will be published by Little, Brown and Company on September 29, 2026.
I spent some time on the phone with him the other day, as he wandered around the city where he's working.
It was Sunday there, most people's day off, and he was amazed at how many people were out in the public parks, playing chess and go, kids on the playground equipment. inter-generational interaction.
His impression was that China has a much higher level of people randomly interacting with other's IRL than here in the US.
this is exactly it. cities are bigger and denser. the higher population density means that you have to go out of your way to not run into someone or do something that is not common for chinese to do, like walking around in streets where there are no restaurants or shops.
So you're saying, for instance, if you go for a walk in Manhattan, you'll be more likely to talk to strangers?
I've never lived in Manhattan, but I have visited there many times, I would definitely say that walking the sidewalks and parks there, it's mostly anonymous, with less stranger conversation that say the US suburbs.
HN is a really interesting comments site. Maybe this is true of most internet comments sites. I'm not sure because this is the only place on the web were I have ever made comments. But it seems like there is a large demographic that just wants to disagree.
Before you start making comparisons, I'd recommend actually going to China and seeing.
If you just want to look at wikipedia, this is a fairly typical modern Chinese city:
Yes, very dense, and I can't speak to the public place usage by a broad segment of the population there. But there is no city in the US like this, or any other modern Chinese city.
In general I find the public places in the US to be largely abandoned.
Another related aspect: there are not many publicly visible homeless in China:
i have only spent a day or so in manhattan but i have lived more than a year in some US suburbs and i don't have the same experience. i have also lived in china for more than a decade, so i believe i am qualified to make that comparison. when i said you have to go out of your way to avoid meeting people i was speaking from personal experience. something i have actually done as i was seeking new routes for my daily walk in a chinese city.
and as european i can also tell you that i am most certainly more likely to talk to someone in manhattan than i would in a european city for example.
Yes, Gov's require populations to have "real" offspring. Authoritarian or not, this makes sense. IMO its only a matter of time before some version of this hits the US; if it has not already.
“Robotic productivity” is taxed in every country, including China — the profits go to some entity, to some company. With exceptions for the companies that manage to wrestle themselves in paying virtually nothing in taxes, that profit is taxed somewhere down the line. Nothing special about AI productivity, it’s just money.
“Robotic productivity” is taxed in every country, including China
Only by taxing the humans and human-based corporations that ultimately pay for it. On a longer timeline, the robots are going to become full-fledged economic actors in their own right.
Knowing how big the meltdown it was, you would need to regulate parasocial interactions (of which AI partners are) in general too - beyond just regulating this (and gachas).
Personally no amount of social outlook would want me want children. I simply don't want to have them I don't like raising or interacting with children it's just not in my nature and I really feel like a lot of that has to do with how people are nurtured.
In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.
Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.
Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.
reply