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We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

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71–80 of 194 posts

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#71
post #5

I don't know why people are focusing on what men will do with AI girlfriends - the actual question is what women will do with AI boyfriends. On every single AI chat app like character.ai the majority of users are women, and the most popular characters are men. Women are people who read romance novels and are even more attracted by the "emotional validation". > Now we’re facing a future where guys could get addicted t…

The real question is a marketing/product one. Is the AI gf (or bf) a real replacement product or direct competition, or is this an alternative targeting a different segment?

My guess is the guys using these AI gfs and amazed that they don't complain, argue, etc are already out of the dating pool. For example, there are plenty of guys that don't want to deal with arguments and other BS and wouldn't get married etc even if AI didn't exist. Same sort of thing for women and AI bf - they can't find a real bf due to their high standards set by fantasy media.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#72
post #41

Most young men are single. Most young women are not. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo... I guess I'm not surprised young men have turned to AI girlfriends.

How does that make sense? Are there significantly more young men than women? Or do the women date older men?

> How does that make sense? Are there significantly more young men than women? Or do the women date older men?

Yes, yes, and multiple women can "date" one man.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#73
post #24

As a new parent, handling all this is terrifying. I do try and remind myself that we had games and grainy 56k porn far too young and turned out ok, but there was no instagram, and certainly no submissive A.I. avatars. It’s not like this has to go badly, it could allow people an avenue of expression and development currently denied. But it’s not like teenage boys conditioned to abundant free porn has gone particularly…

> I do try and remind myself that we had games and grainy 56k porn far too young and turned out ok, but there was no instagram, and certainly no submissive A.I. avatars. Someone commented here the other day about how going online used to be a distinct activity; that once you disconnected, you were again alone and offline. I think that physical distinction helped create a mental one as well when we were young.

Increasingly the online world is the "real world" and offline is "not real".

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#75
post #41

Most young men are single. Most young women are not. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3868557-most-yo... I guess I'm not surprised young men have turned to AI girlfriends.

How does that make sense? Are there significantly more young men than women? Or do the women date older men?

> Or do the women date older men?

Yes. This isn't even new, this has been the case for decades. The effects aren't usually heavily pronounced (spouses are usually within 10 years of age of each other), but in almost every marriage on record where the two participants are not of the exact same age, the woman is younger than the man.

I think the Internet likely changed things or accelerated some trends, but I'm not a social scientist. But this shouldn't surprise anyone. There's the semi-confirmed belief that women mature faster than men (emotionally/socially) that has stood in to explain this for decades, who knows, it might even be true.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#76
post #26

This feels like a bit of a premature moral panic. AI chat bots are obviously not replacing real relationships. They do not "provide" the same thing.

I want to know what academic invented the words "moral panic" as a way to handwave any issue; even though the application of it is hilariously inconsistent. Is being upset about Ukraine being invaded a moral panic?

You could just google it you know. Wikipedia has an article.

Moral panic implies 2 things:

- it is about the structure of culture or how people interact with each other (moral)

- it is irrational (panic)

Russia vs Ukraine meets neither of those criteria.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#77
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not possible from a statistical standpoint unless men account for 80% of the total human population. And we know for a fact that it's a lot closer to 50-50. By extension, it means that if most men do not have a partner, then most women do not either.

The key word is "young".

Among 15 and 20 year olds, the most skewed results (India and China) are 106 to 100, a difference of 6%. Rest of the world is pretty close to 50-50 [1].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#:~:text=In%20the%20g....

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but there are many, many studies showing that on dating apps, it's 80% of the women choosing 20% of the men. Many women are also fairly ignorant about how unrealistic some standards (over 6' tall, makes over $100K/yr.) are.

Assuming those are your only two criteria, that narrows the population to 2.5%. If you throw age and relative health then all bets are off.

Tangent: where'd you get that number? Not questioning it, I'd just love to know if there's a tool that makes it easy to get intersections with that kind of data.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#79
post #5

I don't know why people are focusing on what men will do with AI girlfriends - the actual question is what women will do with AI boyfriends. On every single AI chat app like character.ai the majority of users are women, and the most popular characters are men. Women are people who read romance novels and are even more attracted by the "emotional validation". > Now we’re facing a future where guys could get addicted t…

The reason for this framing is the current zeitgeist, where the societal narrative has been dominated by gender stereotypes that portrait males as the bad guys by default. Feel free to add the adjectives "white" and "old" to that whenever it feels appropriate.

Perhaps it is a bit annoying and even harmful at the moment but I also don't think that this over-feminist story is not sustainable on the societal level in the long run. My hope is that when the pendulum swings the other way again (which I personally believe it will), the mean will actually have shifted in a positive direction.

Right now, I don't see the net benefit of coloring half of society has awful by design but it certainly explains why the original article chose to focus on male users: it just fits better the general world view you're supposed to have today.

Re: We Can't Compete with AI Girlfriends

#80
post #14

This is overblown as you're not actually competing over someone who's using an AI girlfriend since they have removed themselves from the dating pool. If someone's using it while in a real relationship, that should be addressed in therapy.

>you're not actually competing over someone who's using an AI girlfriend since they have removed themselves from the dating pool.

They're still competing for the attention of men they don't desire.

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