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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

#31

Post by Animats »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #18

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.

Romance novels are porn. Go to a bookstore and pick up something like "Love's Tender Fury", or "Fury's Tender Love", or "Tender Love's Fury". Open it to 2/3 of the way through. There will be a six-page sex scene.

There are how-to guides on writing that stuff. That industry is probably going to be crushed by AI-generated romance novels. Although someone needs to figure out how to keep long-form AI writing on plot. LLMs tend to run on forever and drift.

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

#32

Post by johnea »

atmavatar wrote: post #25
johnea wrote: post #10

The article, and the comments here, ignore the worst problem of "AI girlfriends": the fact that someone could think of images, audio, and text, only seen on a computer screen, as one's "girlfriend". The willingness to live in make believe, and the willingness to treat that make believe as if it were reality. This disconnect from physical reality, and the substitution of a fantasy world for reality, is at the root of…

Historically, it's been the case that a relatively small percentage of men have monopolized the available women of their time. Perhaps the most famous example of this was Genghis Khan, to whom something like 1 in 12 men in Asia and 1 in 200 men globally carry Y chromosomes linked to him. It is only somewhat recently that many first-world societies moved towards more egalitarian, monogamous marriages. However, dating…

> Is it really much different than someone playing video games where they get to be the hero in a virtual world?

No, it's not different at all, and that's exactly why I call it a mental illness.

You don't need to be a hero, and you don't need to find a girlfriend in someone who swept right. Go outside! Talk to some woman walking her frikin' dog. Even if she's not single, I bet she knows someone who is.

The human species propagated itself in this way for 10s of thousands of years. You don't need a dating app, you need to get up from the frikin' computer and face the real world.

In human tradition, men have chosen women for their looks, and women have chosen men for their ability to raise their social status. Sad but true, and brutally self serving in a world that has been brutal overall.

If you don't find yourself in possession of the looks, wealth, or social status that cause women to flock to you, try this: look for a woman that expresses interest in you, instead of a woman that somehow meets your ideals of the perfect girlfriend.

I can only say this as a person who spent decades pursuing women based on my ideals, and in the meantime allowed numerous opportunities to escape with women who would have been life long relationship partners.

To paraphrase: If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with...

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

#33

Post by Animats »

Balinares wrote: post #16
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.

Aella [1] studies that. She's an escort who is into statistical analysis. She did very well on OnlyFans, after analyzing what men wanted with questionnaires and Python programs. Now she spends more time on figuring out what men and woman really do what, which is not what most people think.

[1] https://knowingless.com/

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

#34

Post by drdaeman »

johnea wrote: post #23
naasking wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The willingness to live in make believe, and the willingness to treat that make believe as if it were reality. Everyone acts on fictions every day, some are just socially acceptable. Like, do you think countries and currency really exist, or are they really just collective fictions we find useful?

You make a very good example of exactly what I'm talking about. Countries are indeed fictional, and the misplaced belief that they are in some way a natural reality is a significant part of what leads people to start talking about killing each other in the name of their country. Fictional entities aren't just ubiquitous, they're essential to civilization. Even laws against murder are fictional entities, but I don't t…

[dead]

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

#35

Post by xigoi »

johnea wrote: post #32
atmavatar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, it's been the case that a relatively small percentage of men have monopolized the available women of their time. Perhaps the most famous example of this was Genghis Khan, to whom something like 1 in 12 men in Asia and 1 in 200 men globally carry Y chromosomes linked to him. It is only somewhat recently that many first-world societies moved towards more egalitarian, monogamous marriages. However, dating…

> Is it really much different than someone playing video games where they get to be the hero in a virtual world? No, it's not different at all, and that's exactly why I call it a mental illness. You don't need to be a hero, and you don't need to find a girlfriend in someone who swept right. Go outside! Talk to some woman walking her frikin' dog. Even if she's not single, I bet she knows someone who is. The human spec…

> look for a woman that expresses interest in you

My goodness, what an idea! Why didn’t I think of that?

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

#37

Post by mrguyorama »

Balinares wrote: post #16
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.

I believe the discourse about this uses the terms "Male gaze" vs "Female gaze"

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

#39

Post by acdha »

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…

> 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 always find this fascinating because almost all of the women I’ve known complain about the challenges of finding men who respect them, do their share of the housework, etc. With one exception, everyone I’ve heard saying 6 feet and a six pack are mandatory were gay men.

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

#40

Post by xigoi »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #38
xigoi wrote: post #36

I don’t get why feminists are opposed to the idea of AI girlfriends. If it makes some men stop bothering real women, isn’t it a win?

What do you suppose the goal of feminism is?

Making societial changes that benefit women?
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