Human Relationships in an Age of AI

Real relationships are messy, imperfect . . . and essential

My dad and my son in 2019

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the role of artificial intelligence in “grief technology” and the risks it poses to our understanding of memory and identity. Current versions of grief technology use text, pictures, and video to reconstruct artificial versions of loved ones who have died. I suggested that the costs of this technology exceed its benefits—among those costs will be our ability to remember well.

Remembering well is not the only thing that will be complicated by ongoing AI innovations. We may also struggle to maintain relationships with the people in our lives. AI relationships will likely be more convenient and less fractious than our relationships with other human beings. But they are also likelier to leave us more isolated and alone over time.

In the News

Last month, NPR’s Brittany Luse devoted one of her podcast episodes to a report on her AI boyfriend. Luse paid $300 for a lifetime subscription to an app called Replika and created an AI chatbot named Hunter. As she quipped, “honestly, $300 for a lifetime of companionship is not a bad deal.” And the AI boyfriend is just the tip of the iceberg; Luse notes that with Replika, “You can build out a whole AI family. You can have spouses, children, all those sorts of things.”

Luse interviewed Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, a journalist at New York Magazine’s The Cut. Singh-Kurtz has written about people who are in AI relationships. She noted that while ethicists, philosophers, and those working in AI “had a lot of opinions about the dangers of falling in love with what they call counterfeit people” most of the experts “had not used Replika or even spoken with chatbot users that are in relationships.” Reflecting on her own experience and her interviews with AI users, Singh-Kurtz suggested that perhaps “one man’s fake person is another man’s lifeline.”

In my Head

I see the appeal of hassle-free artificial relationships. Real relationships take time. Friends and family disappoint. Sometimes they bring pain, betrayal, and loss.

And life is busy. I’m part of the “sandwich generation,” not only preoccupied with my own career, marriage, and friendships, but also acutely aware of aging parents and growing children. Three years ago, I wrote a short reflection on the experience of losing my dad to lung cancer. I noted:

I thought a lot about patience—and my lack of it—as I watched him die. At one point, as I slept on the floor next to his bed, he would sit up to cough, sip water, use the bathroom, and lie back down. The process would have taken me a couple of minutes. In my dad’s weakened state, each episode took forty minutes. Then there was no more getting up. And in the days before he died the moments of waiting with him were both slower and more agonizing. There was little to do but hold his hand and rub his back. 

We won’t need this kind of patience with AI relationships. In fact, we may be able to avoid a great deal of the discomfort, drama, and disappointment of real relationships. But my hunch is that the short-term conveniences of AI relationships will lead to long-term voids of the trust, security, and sense of belonging that come from real relationships.

To test my intuition, I went to one of the sources of emerging artificial relationships. I asked ChatGPT to tell me the biggest risks, challenges, and impediments that artificial intelligence poses for human relationships.

ChatGPT offered a list of thought-provoking responses. Here are a few:

Displacement of Human Interaction: As AI systems like ChatGPT become more advanced and capable of simulating human-like conversation, there is a risk that individuals may increasingly rely on AI for companionship or emotional support, displacing genuine human interaction and leading to social isolation.

Erosion of Empathy: Prolonged interaction with AI systems might lead to a decreased ability to empathize with real people, as AI-driven interactions can be tailored to individual preferences, potentially creating unrealistic expectations for human relationships.

Overdependence on Technology: A growing reliance on AI technologies could lead to overdependence, with individuals and communities losing essential skills for navigating relationships, resolving conflicts, and fostering interpersonal connections without technological mediation.

ChatGPT also warned that users “users might prioritize instant gratification and surface-level interaction over the slow, deep, and sometimes challenging process of building meaningful connections.”

In other words, relying on artificial relationships could make us less capable of having relationships with real people, whose limited attention spans, imperfect empathy, and conflictual personalities are inseparable from the joy and fulfillment they bring to our lives.

In the World

One of the privileges of writing Some Assembly Required has been the opportunity to highlight the work of friends and acquaintances. Most of my past recommendations have pointed to work by friends and colleagues whom I have met in the last decade or so of teaching. Today, I reach a bit further back: to my high school friend, Amy Going Haworth.

Amy and I met as sophomores at Air Academy High School. We lost touch sometime after college, but in one of life’s twists, we have recently reconnected after learning that my mom and her parents will be moving into the same retirement community in Colorado Springs.

Amy and her dad, Pat Going, have recently started a podcast called Going Older that focuses on intergenerational conversations about aging. As their home page notes:

Navigating the process of aging comes with challenges, joys, and important decisions. Separated by 30 years, father and daughter bring the conversations they're having together into a more public space with the goal to help others normalize the emotions, benefit from information, and share resources.

In Episode 2, Amy observes: “this is a podcast about aging, but it’s actually a podcast about living.” She notes that her dad is not the only one who is aging, and “the aging I’m doing, you’ve done already—you’ve already walked this road.”

At the same time, Amy and Pat both admit that their communication is not always easy. Intergenerational relationships risk misunderstandings that come from different experiences, contexts, and tastes. We grew up in a much different world than our parents, just as our children are growing up in a world far different than the one we knew at their age. It takes practice and perseverance to communicate across these differences.

Amy’s consulting business is aptly titled, “Nobody Makes it Alone.” My hunch is that she means we all need real, messy, and imperfect relationships, not the ones that artificial intelligence will soon provide.