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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

#61

Post by fragmede »

coolKid721 wrote: post #14

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 inst…

It's more than simply porn. I know of a couple of people who have named their ChatGPT (at ChatGPT's asking, even) and refer to it by name.

I can't speak to your experience with memories/persistence, all I can say is ChatGPT's memories feature does well enough at remembering preferences. How much it hallucinates and they shrug it off, vs how much it does/doesn't for them, I couldn't tell you.

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

#62

Post by fragmede »

mrguyorama wrote: post #37
Balinares wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Those terms are insufficient to express the reality of what men want to see on a women's Instagram vs what women look for on a man's Instagram. (To be all heteronormative about it, that is.)

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

#63

Post by philipallstar »

crtasm wrote: post #15
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.

> and teams of people working every day to try and get you spending more time+money on it

Time in certain movies and tv shows is spent normalising female sex toys, for the same reason.

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

#64

Post by sph »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #9

Terribly skewed article. When I see people talk about things like character.ai or chatgpt relationships, the ratio of women using it is at least 50%.

There is in fact a subreddit called /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/. The equivalent /r/MyGirlfriendIsAI/ seems to be much less active.

I'll go so far as to say, without offering further explanation, that due to our biology, men do not give as much weight to relationships compared to women, so often porn is an adequate expedient to the abyss of loneliness.

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

#65

Post by UncleMeat »

xigoi wrote: post #60
kelseyfrog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not being bothered by men is tangential to gender equality and the liberation of women from restrictive gender roles. The original comment confuses the goals of feminism.

Weird. I see things like objectification, catcalling, sexual harassment, rape, etc. being discussed a lot in feminist spaces.

Do we have any reason to believe that men using AI as a substitute girlfriend are less likely to do these sorts of things?

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

#66

Post by j_w »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. LLM…

How can a novel compete with an interactive character that provides a roleplay conversation "a la carte" adjusting to the user and their preferences? You want a dominant partner, maybe an initialy cold guy that hides his passionate heart, or just the sweetest more caring girlfriend in the world...? You can have it, just describing what you want in a simple text prompt. Now let's jump ahead and imagine something a lit…

The novel competes because good writers are substantially better than bad writers, and LLMs are bad writers. They [LLMs] may be able to write a coherent chat message or email, but a story? Not a chance.

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

#67

Post by Dilettante_ »

sph wrote: post #64
Dilettante_ wrote: post #9

Terribly skewed article. When I see people talk about things like character.ai or chatgpt relationships, the ratio of women using it is at least 50%.

There is in fact a subreddit called /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/. The equivalent /r/MyGirlfriendIsAI/ seems to be much less active. I'll go so far as to say, without offering further explanation, that due to our biology, men do not give as much weight to relationships compared to women, so often porn is an adequate expedient to the abyss of loneliness.

I think that may be an oversimplification, or a too narrow interpretation of what "relationship" means in this context.

Maybe to the men we're talking about, 'consuming' the presence of their object of adoration(which is to say, regular porn, or for example more story-driven formats like erotic manga), and shows of dedication(Onlyfans, Twitch streamers) are what they're looking for in a 'relationship', while the AI boyfriend women look more for someone/something that gives them personal attention, something where they really get to bring their 'selves'.

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

#68

Post by senordevnyc »

general1465 wrote: post #52
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…

> 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. Bible (2000 years old) is heavily pushing monogamistic relationship from a simple practical reason - horny man is angry man, angr…

Seriously, who could think it’s a good idea to setup society so that access to sex is reserved for whichever small group of men can violently triumph over the rest?

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

#69

Post by rkomorn »

senordevnyc wrote: post #68
general1465 wrote: post #52

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. Bible (2000 years old) is heavily pushing monogamistic relationship from a simple practical reason - horny man is angry man, angr…

Seriously, who could think it’s a good idea to setup society so that access to sex is reserved for whichever small group of men can violently triumph over the rest?

I'd say at least some of these are people who take their cues from watching nature and see it work somewhat similarly for "revered" animals (eg: lions, bears, bulls, rams, etc).

This is in no way an endorsement of that kind of thinking (or even saying that these folks are even right about what happens in nature).

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

#70

Post by naasking »

UncleMeat wrote: post #65
xigoi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. I see things like objectification, catcalling, sexual harassment, rape, etc. being discussed a lot in feminist spaces.

Do we have any reason to believe that men using AI as a substitute girlfriend are less likely to do these sorts of things?

> Do we have any reason to believe that men using AI as a substitute girlfriend are less likely to do these sorts of things?

Yes, because on aggregate, it entirely eliminates intimate partner violence from this group.

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