New study reports companion robots with artificial intelligence may one day help alleviate loneliness epidemic. Surgeon General says loneliness may be as pernicious as cigarettes.
I know I am way out there. But is it possible that actual human interaction could have a positive effect on loneliness?
Agreed, but sometimes it’s difficult for people to get that human interaction, for a variety of reasons.
I’m not sure the answer is robots, though…
I think humans are too specifically hardwired for actual human interaction for it to work. Like, it’s so specific that even online communication with real humans doesn’t fill the void. I can talk to friends on Discord for ages, but it’s not the same as meeting up and going to do something.
I really don’t think an AI, even a convincing one, is going to make a large dent on loneliness in the majority of cases.
I think it depends on the humans. Personally, I find online interactions more comfortable than in-person ones, most of the time. In-person interactions exhaust me, if they aren’t with the small handful of people with whom I’m most comfortable, so I can really only take them in short doses. I can chat online without any such issues, so if I were lonely, a companion A.I. that could carry on actual conversations might really help, even if it isn’t a 1:1 replacement for human interaction.
I’m aware that I am probably not representative of the majority of people, but I doubt I’m the only one who feels the way I do, so there could be a place for this sort of thing, where it could do some actual good.
Someone’s already killed themself after encouragement from an ai. I don’t think trusting ai with unrestricted and unsupervised access to vulnerable people is a good idea.
The phrasing of the article makes it sound like robots will be replacements for human companionship, which is probably nonsense in any near term like the ten year period quoted, but it could maybe get to the point of imitating a companion animal like a dog or a cat to alleviate abject loneliness and pester people to move around their house. (The Aibo dream can finally be realized in my lifetime!)
Maybe a robot conversation could fool an older person with dementia or something, but I would definitely worry about leaving anyone detached enough to be fooled into thinking a language model is a conversation unattended with one. And if you’re not fooled then it’s just a spiral.
Getting lied to by a three armed twelve fingered algorithm… Hmm…
I’ve seen this movie before. Langella is so good in it.
