Comment by OGEnthusiast
2 months ago
In my experience, the types of people who use AI as a substitute for romantic relationships are already pretty messed up and probably wouldn't make good real romantic partners anyways. The chances you'll encounter these people in real life is pretty close to zero, you just see them concentrate in niche subreddits.
You aren't going to build the skills necessary to have good relationships with others - not even romantic ones, ANY ones - without a lot of practice.
And you aren't gonna heal yourself or build those skills talking to a language model.
And saying "oh, there's nothing to be done, just let the damaged people have their isolation" is just asking for things to get a lot worse.
It's time to take seriously the fact that our mental health and social skills have deteriorated massively as we've sheltered more and more from real human interaction and built devices to replace people. And crammed those full of more and more behaviorally-addictive exploitation programs.
There's a large swath of people who try desperately to get the practice you speak of and end up with none or worse. We're biological beings we all try pretty hard to connect. Many just get broken down to the point where trying to connect is more painful than avoiding it.
I personally don't ever see a chatbot ever being a substitute for myself but can certainly empathize with those who do.
> You aren't going to build the skills necessary to have good relationships with others - not even romantic ones, ANY ones - without a lot of practice.
Other people don't owe you being your training dummy. I'd prefer you sort that out with a chatbot.
This kind of thinking pattern scares me because I know some honest people have not been afforded an honest shot at a working romantic relationship.
"It takes a village" is as true for thinking patterns as it is for working romantic relationships.
> In my experience, the types of people who use AI as a substitute for romantic relationships
That's exactly it. Romantic relationships aren't what they used to be. Men like the new normal, women may try to but they cannot for a variety of unchangeable reasons.
> The chances you'll encounter these people in real life is pretty close to zero, you just see them concentrate in niche subreddits.
The people in the niche subreddits are the tip of the iceberg - those that have already given up trying. Look at marriage and divorce rates for a glimpse at what's lurking under the surface.
The problem isn't AI per se.
> That's exactly it. Romantic relationships aren't what they used to be. Men like the new normal, women may try to but they cannot for a variety of unchangeable reasons.
Men like the new normal? Hah, it seems like there's an article posted here weekly about how bad modern dating and relationships are for me and how much huge groups of men hate it. For reasons ranging from claims that women "have too many options" and are only interested in dating or hooking up with the hottest 5% (or whatever number), all the way to your classic bring-back-traditional-gender-roles "my marriage sucks because I'm expected to help out with the chores."
The problem is devices, especially mobile ones, and the easy-hit of not-the-same-thing online interaction and feedback loops. Why talk to your neighbor or co-worker and risk having your new sociological theory disputed, or your AI boyfriend judged, when you instead surround yourself in an online echo chamber?
There were always some of us who never developed social skills because our noses were buried in books while everyone else was practicing socialization. It takes a LOT of work to build those skills later in life if you miss out on the thousands of hours of unstructured socialization that you can get in childhood if you aren't buried in your own world.
These are all fair points, I don't disagree with any of them but they're just symptoms of much broader problems - like political and cultural trends which men are supposed to be in charge of but are in fact oblivious about.
To put it a bit differently, it's not about men vs women it's about social forces and dynamics which are largely misunderstood. Call it a failure of humanities and social sciences, and that includes economics and political science - a topic which is best discussed elsewhere.
It's not limited to men. Women are also finding that conversations with a human man doesn't stack up to an LLM's artificial qualities. /r/MyboyfriendIsAI for more.