this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Hot take but I would care if I were you. To be clear: it’s not the job of anyone to date someone or to make other people date worthy. However, your society is likely unprepared to have a lower reproduction rate and relies on that population growth or sustaining. This AI chatbot problem is not only a problem for straight men. It will replace friends for many lonely people, which further degrades relationships and leads to less dating and less reproduction. It will become yet another example of technology leading to negative mental health outcomes and degradation of social interaction. And we aren’t even talking about the ability for future AI to copy a voice and face and body to further mimic a fake virtual relationship with a very real person.
I think in the short term it’s easy to say “people who date AI are losers” and be mostly right but in the long term if we’re all lonelier because of this, then everybody loses.
Before you think I’m crazy: This is already happening or has happened in places like Japan, Korea, and China. A loneliness epidemic is taking place for many reasons and everyone suffers when they happen. The future of AI tech will make this far worse.
This is the wrong place for that brand of myopic nonsense, if ai is good enough to replace girlfriends then every calculation and comparison in your sky falling theory about reproduction rates is turned to junk.
That same automation is already removing the need for people from loads of jobs, especially service industry ones - you don't need ever more people when we don't need so many humans to look after elderly people.
The other stuff about society collapsing is just typical tech fear we've seen from certain portions of society every single time anything gets invented - most of it is just the classic issue of awareness, of course it seemed people were happier and better connected when you didn't know anything about their lives, of course more people are open about their mental health struggles now they're a recognised thing.
Sure some people will be weird about ai and fall in love, people have been marrying horses and obsessing over ladies shoes or whatever else for centuries - society is going to be just fine.
All I’m doing here is extrapolating based on current trends. I’m not saying the future has to be this way, but likely will be unless we take action. Social media didn’t have to ruin our social lives, but for many it did and still does and the awareness isn’t enough.
Same will be true of AI. Our AI ethics development hasn’t been enough to stop what will at least be short term damage. Thats how it is already impacting our schools and media and will continue to for years before we have proper tools.
So since I have a decent base for saying that it will harm our socialization and reproduction rate, the second part is why do we need more people?
We don’t. I agree. Less people is probably better and fine, especially if AI can do a lot of the work. The problem is that we aren’t set up for that and we won’t be in the near future. So yes I hope the world transitions to rely less on having more people, but the problem will likely arrive long before the solution.