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'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#11

Post by crooked-v »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #8

At the risk of being downvoted, the dating scene in america is terrible. Masculinity in western societies is heavily pathologized to the point that men who aren't 6ft and very good looking have the deck heavily stacked against them. I can't blame men for turning to AI girlfriends. I myself left the united states and couldn't be happier. There are plenty of countries where its easy to meet women and end up in a relati…

I think talking about "masculinity is pathologized" is entirely missing the more specific cause that swipe-style dating apps have completely hijacked the western dating scene, and have incentives aligned with keeping engagement high indefinitely instead of actually finding dates for people.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#13

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #8

At the risk of being downvoted, the dating scene in america is terrible. Masculinity in western societies is heavily pathologized to the point that men who aren't 6ft and very good looking have the deck heavily stacked against them. I can't blame men for turning to AI girlfriends. I myself left the united states and couldn't be happier. There are plenty of countries where its easy to meet women and end up in a relati…

Please expand on said "plenty of countries".

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#14

Post by coolKid721 »

It's just AI porn, not AI girlfriends. The article trying to sell what the developers themselves describe as a replacement to cam-girls as AI girlfriends is just stupid clickbait.(anyone who has tried to solve long term memory with LLMs knows we just aren't there yet in terms of long term persistent characters/personality with memory that don't just hallucinate non stop)

Who cares of people use AI generated porn instead of cam girls, I am against pornography generally but if anything lessening demand for actual people in the industry seems like a positive. People will get unhealthily attached to pornography but that's something that happens now anyway, it not actually being a person again seems better of two bad options.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#15

Post by crtasm »

philipallstar wrote: post #2

I wonder if the author would be similarly troubled by the rise in the use of sex toys for women.

An item you can buy and own, without a subscription fee and teams of people working every day to try and get you spending more time+money on it? I don't know these are similar.

That said I suppose some number of people are self-hosting these AI chatbots/onlyfans type things.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#16

Post by Balinares »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #8

At the risk of being downvoted, the dating scene in america is terrible. Masculinity in western societies is heavily pathologized to the point that men who aren't 6ft and very good looking have the deck heavily stacked against them. I can't blame men for turning to AI girlfriends. I myself left the united states and couldn't be happier. There are plenty of countries where its easy to meet women and end up in a relati…

I remain utterly fascinated by the gaping chasm between the kind of men women are attracted to and the kind of men men think women are attracted to.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#17

Post by AnEro »

Theres alot of what about women arguments which is fair, but I think it's entirely fair to view this as a harm to men's mental health, and it should be the focus.

Right now, we have a societal issue of isolating, vulnerable men. Men have the highest suicide rate, are statistically more likely to commit violent offenses and have a high rate of domestic abuse. 'Incels' who are likely these companies target market have committed domestic terrorism. I think this is an issue we should 100% be looking at, imagine what happens when there is AI misalignment? They could become a risk to themselves and others, the last thing we need is a unreliable tool for someone in that situation to sooth the pains of social isolation.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#18

Post by yomismoaqui »

And AI boyfriends for females.

If you check apps like character.ai or similar there is a huge roster of male AI characters to chat with. I think this is less skewed for male users than the porn content.

It's a cliché but men want sex and women want romance.

Re: 'Obedient, yielding and happy to follow': the troubling rise of AI girlfriends

#20

Post by antisthenes »

AnEro wrote: post #17

Theres alot of what about women arguments which is fair, but I think it's entirely fair to view this as a harm to men's mental health, and it should be the focus. Right now, we have a societal issue of isolating, vulnerable men. Men have the highest suicide rate, are statistically more likely to commit violent offenses and have a high rate of domestic abuse. 'Incels' who are likely these companies target market have…

> Men have the highest suicide rate, are statistically more likely to commit violent offenses and have a high rate of domestic abuse. 'Incels' who are likely these companies target market have committed domestic terrorism.

Do everyone a favor and stop equating 'incel' with things like terrorism.

That's a good start for not alienating those men.

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