What Can Artificial Intelligence Teach Us About Human Love?
New research finds that AI companions can provide emotional support, intimacy, and personal growth, but they can also erode human relationships.
When The Terminator and RoboCop hit theaters in the 1980s, Hollywood imagined artificial intelligence (AI) as an existential threat—machines that would dominate, surveil, and destroy us.
Four decades later, AI’s takeover looks far more intimate. Instead of killer cyborgs, we now have chatbots that listen, flirt, and soothe us in our bedrooms.
Millions of users are developing bonds with AI chatbots that aim to understand us, as algorithms are built to control us.
- A survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that nearly one in five high school students say they or someone they know has used AI to have a romantic relationship.
AI companions can provide emotional support, intimacy, and personal growth, but they can also erode human relationships.
Author's summary: AI teaches about human love and intimacy.