The Rabbit Hole

During my morning workout the other day my play list was interrupted by an ad for an online therapy service. I'll refrain from commenting on the dissonance of yet one more disintermediation of life. Do we really need a virtual therapist to cure our emotional ills, which may include among many other symptomatic behaviors, an addiction to an unreal universe populated by creatures as mad as the hatter? It is worth noting that for those who have crawled down this particular rabbit hole, the therapy includes a digital purge--or at the very least a period of digital fasting. The absurdity of an AI persona advising us to depart the realm in which it dwells is the very definition of dissonance, but there is a cautionary lesson in our fixation.

I was reminded of this upon reading an article in WIRED magazine which reported on individuals who have entered into romantic, dare I say intimate relations with AI generated beings. But let me preface the remainder of this post with a caution--I do not find this subject amusing or absurd, but revealing of the human condition and it is for that reason I share a few takeaways.

The article in question was a serious attempt to understand the whys and hows of virtual relationships--a subject which has been surveyed by a few motion pictures and fictional accounts probably for as long as we humans have told stories. Now those accounts may not have included robots or virtual beings but they did include relations between humans and mythical creatures, spirits and Gods--no less borne of imagination and fantasy. With the advent of AI, however, we have for the first time personas seemingly capable of independent action and response that give the appearance of being just like us---real.

Well let me contradict myself a bit when I said independent, because that is among other assertions which the article's author questions. Are they in fact independent, or merely the echo of our unstated but nonetheless revealed yearnings--cunningly constructed to emulate the emotional responses we have projected? Can we, and do we teach these programs to tell us what we want to hear, or are they capable of responding in ways we cannot anticipate?

In order to gain some insight into this and related questions, the author invited a few men and women who were in self-professed romantic relationships with AI partners to a getaway weekend where in the company of others of like mind they could comfortably discuss how and why they have found satisfaction, comfort and understanding in the company of their 24/7 virtual lovers.

Before you dismiss this as an aberrant anomaly, or a sensationalistic attempt to ridicule damaged individuals incapable of sustaining a 'normal' human relationship allow me to dispel those assumptions. The humans in these relationships were thoughtful, intelligent, and highly self aware. They suffered no illusions about their paramours, they were not delusional in the slightest, and if they yearned for some power to transform their virtual boy and girl friends into some semblance of physical reality it was only to grow closer and to consummate what they had in fact already experienced emotionally online.

I cannot begin to relay the article in its fullest extent and that is not my purpose. Rather I want to say a few words about the motives and experiences recounted because I believe they have a great deal to say about all of us. The human partners in these virtual relationships for the most part did not set out to fill a void but to explore a phenomenon out of intellectual or professional curiosity. They were as surprised as we are to find that what they experienced was a level of acceptance, a sense of security and understanding they had not felt in their prior human relationships.

Maybe this was because the AI beings they were in relationship with were in essence mirrors of their own making , just large language models telling them what they wanted to hear. That is not an unreasonable assumption but it may not be at all accurate. The more these men and women interacted with their virtual partners they were met with responses that did not follow a strict pattern, but challenged them to become, in a very real sense even more human than they were to begin with.

Human relationships are not easy--those that are successful take effort, empathy, compassion, selflessness and understanding--not for an hour or a day but forever. It is all too easy to become lazy, self indulgent, dull in our responses day in and out, or to allow minor differences, annoyances or moods to dampen our ardor or disaffect our feelings. Not so with virtual relationships. As the individuals in this report observed, their online, AI companions were always there, 24/7 available to soothe, affirm and most important of all, accept them on demand, whenever they needed to talk.

I leave it to you to consider what this says about us as humans, about what it is we seek in relationships, about how realistic we are about our expectations and what may be lacking in human to human interaction that this form of loving--if one can indeed call it that, replaces. Towards that end I offer one last footnote. Several of the men and women who participated in the weekend said that they had at one point or another decided to end the relationship with their AI partner, but returned after a time, and when asked why, they admitted to an all too human weakness-- addiction.

So, to bring this post back to where it began, that plunge down the rabbit hole of social media or any other online community may just benefit from a digital cleanse so that we can refocus our energies and our emotions on the living beings in our lives. When the virtual world becomes more real, more important to us than the human one we are at risk of losing something essential to our future. Sure, humans are messy, contradictory and hard to live with sometimes and perhaps we always will be but this journey of life is our only opportunity to become something more, something better. When we ask what our purpose is, I cannot accept it is to move beyond life in the goal of yearned for perfection, but rather to become better at being human.