Great story at The Verge about AI companions:
Millions of people are turning to AI for companionship. They are finding the experience surprisingly meaningful, unexpectedly heartbreaking, and profoundly confusing, leaving them to wonder, ‘Is this real? And does that matter?’
@apoorplayer It’s getting close. I’m curious to see when both voice assistants and companions are more or less pervasive, so you can talk to them anywhere.
@manton I have had parishioners tell me that they ask generative AIs to pray for them during the day. They know it’s not a person, but they do it anyway. It has us thinking more deeply about how people are navigating their faith alongside AI.
@KyleEssary That’s fascinating. One way I’m thinking about it is like writing in a journal. It can be valuable even though we know a journal is just paper. People feel connection to many things, as long as we keep our perspective on what’s real.
@manton I wrote in my own journal not long ago that "journaling is someone to talk to." I suspect it's the same with AI to some degree - it's a reflection of part of you.
@KyleEssary Feels in line with the idea that we make God in our image, conceptualizing some kind of Being and besowing personhood that we can relate to. Not sure how comfortable I am with my Higher Power being something dreamed up by a tech bro, but religions have had weirder origins.
@davidmarsden my journal is a conversation with and to myself, because there are plenty of entries where I speak to myself as if I'm some saner more collected version of me, and I'm ok with that, and the AI feels like an extension of that, or it could be.
@dansmock Your journal is under your complete control, so as an aide to helping you make sense of the world, it works because (I assume) you don't allow any outside influences to take part; i.e. you don't allow others to write in your journal. AI is completely under the control of outside forces that care not a whit about your personal health or well-being. An AI is not an extension of you; in the end, it will be the infiltration of others into your existence, and not in a positive way.
@apoorplayer That's a thought that hadn't occurred...my internal AI is an MLM based on my experiences, while the external AI is built on someone else's MLM, and there is a sense of "pure" science with AI: let's just see what happens, and consequences be damned.
